technical solution for censorship [was: UK internet filtering]

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Scott Bennett <bennett at cs.niu.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>     That some people have found tor to be helpful in bypassing censorial
> regimes' efforts is one of the nicer unintended consequences of tor's design,
> but such use is fallout from, not motivation for, the design.

I thought a driving idea behind TOR was to bring together people with
different goals but a common need (or at least a set of tightly
related needs) so that we form a larger anonymity pool and benefit
from common investment in infrastructure.

Many Tor users regard some of the uses to be unfortunate but tolerable
side effects.  I run nodes primarily because I want to help people
avoid censorship, I regard anonymity (except to the extent that it is
needed to avoid effective censorship) to be socially detrimental
collateral damage. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/)

So when you use Tor to achieve anonymity you should be thankful that
there are other people who use the same tools to avoid censorship.