Is "gatereloaded" a Bad Exit?

[John Case]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Mike Perry wrote:

>> Exit policy is currently at the operator's pleasure, need and design.
>> If exit policy mandates will help solve some Tor scalability or
>> attack vector issues, in a substantive way, from an engineering
>> standpoint, fine. But please, don't claim it makes users any more
>> 'safe' from sniffing.
>
> I've already addressed the rest of your points.  For the record,
> you're just strawmanning here. I never made the claim this was safer.
>
> I cited several engineering reasosn why this type of exit policy
> is a pain for us.


I think these reasons should be worked around or ignored.

I think you, and others on that side of this argument have a very, very 
myopic view of the constraints and non-technical decisions that go into 
running a particular node - exit or not.

Rich white people in the north can just trade some dollars for 
co-location, exercise their free speech, and argue back at the police, as 
their equals, when they come calling.

That's not the case for everyone - and even in those rich, white 
countries, there are political and economic ramifications for running a 
Tor node, exit or otherwise, that seem to have not occurred to you.


> I've also made the claim that there is no rational reason to operate
> an exit in this fashion, other than to log/monitor/censor traffic or
> because of undesirable network conditions, and no one has disputed
> that claim.


No, there is no _technical_ reason to operate an exit in this fashion. 
There is no reason, from a myopic, borderline autistic view of the 
externalities involved, to run an exit in this fashion.

However, I can think of many, many reasons to:

- run a node with no contact information
- run a node with an odd set of exits
- run a node with plain (unencrypted) exits
- run a node with odd (non standard port) exits

You have absolutely NO FUCKING IDEA what a node has been deployed for, who 
is using it, and how many layers of subterfuge are being employed between 
the external function and the true function underneath.

Further, the power of a platform such as ToR is in the arbitrary extension 
of the base set of capabilities, and many, many different models of 
subterfuge, trust, anonymity, etc., can then be built - at arbitrary 
levels of complexity - and you are chopping those off at the knees.
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