[tor-dev] The Torouter and the DreamPlug

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Robert Ransom <rransom.8774 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:15:43 +0000
> Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> wrote:
>
>> I think that we should probably setup a hidden service on each one and
>> ensure that we can remotely administrate them with the consent of the
>> testers. This will help us to perhaps make some of these choices differently
>> down the road.
>
> The Tor Project cannot ship a backdoored product of any kind, *ever*.
> No one would ever trust *any* of our hardware or software ever again,
> and rightly so.
>

Hi Robert,

I did not suggest a backdoor! I suggested a method of remotely helping
a limited number of (alpha testing) users debug reach-ability issues
with their consent. We've never tested tor-fw-helper in the wild and
we have never deployed something like the Torouter, we're also
discussing an alpha test deployment without any user friendly UI. It
is totally reasonable to explain that we're willing to help this
specific, special group of people out with the bumps that will appear
along the way.

Please re-read what I wrote again and try to assume good faith FFS.
Also, consider that if a user wasn't interested, we could simply not
enable it. We're talking about hand flashing a bunch of devices, we're
not talking about what we want to ship to every user on the planet
someday. It's a bad idea to just mail off a bunch of hardware and hope
for the best. We should provide some kind of support and help for the
device during the alpha testing phase of the project.

All the best,
Jake