[tor-talk] Please Remove Tor bridge and... from Censorship countries.

[Jim]

Seth David Schoen wrote:

> One thing that might be useful would be a way for Tor users to actively
> pick what jurisdictions (or fiber optic cables or Internet exchange
> points) they do or don't want their data to pass through, and have the
> Tor client respect those preferences.  This is helpful both because
> individual Tor users believe different things and because they have
> different threat models.  I believe there's an old mechanism in the
> torrc configuration file to avoid using nodes in particular countries,
> but very few Tor users use this or understand how to use it.  Maybe it
> could be made clearer and more convenient and integrated with the Tor
> Browser interface in some way.


To continue that thought, and perhaps partially address the OP's
legitimate concerns, I wonder if there would be some way a prospective
bridge user could specify such criteria when requesting bridges.  Even
if "ExcludeNodes <country code>" works for bridges (I don't know if it
does or not), I could imagine problems with using it for bridges since 
bridge users are only given a few bridges at a time (for legitimate 
reasons).  I would think in the special case of bridges it might be 
better to specify such restrictions at the time bridges are handed out, 
if such a system could reasonably be implemented.

Seth, thanks for your detailed explanations of the issues involved with
this. The OP's legitimate concerns once again raise the question of
whether the strengths and weaknesses of Tor are adequately explained to
non-technical users.

Jim