[tor-talk] Comcast looking for Tor traffic, contacting customers to threaten termination of service.

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 03:35:56PM -0700, The Doctor wrote:
> "Reports have surfaced that Comcast agents have contacted customers
> using Tor and instructed them to stop using the browser or risk
> termination of service. A Comcast agent named Jeremy allegedly called
> Tor an ???illegal service.??? The Comcast agent told its customer that
> such activity is against usage policies."
> 
> http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/09/13/comcast-declares-war-tor/
> 
> Think I'm going to ping my lawyer about this.

This article confuses me.

For example, it has this statement:
"Because Tor Browser provides online anonymity to its users, only the
ISP used along with it can ascertain what activity takes place on Tor."
which sure makes it sound like the author thinks that the local ISP
can learn what destinations you are visiting, which isn't (supposed to
be) true.

And then this statement:
"Comcast has previously been blacklisted by the Tor project." sounds
like maybe it's referring to
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs
which a) has to do with recommended relay locations, and b) isn't
really "the Tor Project", but I can understand how they'd be confused.

That said, I guess part of the confusion here stems from a lack of
transparency on Comcast's side, about what guidance they're giving their
first-level helpdesk people. Is this two rogue underpaid undereducated
employees who read an article about Tor and decided it should stop
existing? Or is there some document that Comcast wrote? If the latter,
can somebody get us a copy of it?

Thanks,
--Roger