[tor-dev] Desired exit node diversity
Griffin
griffin at cryptolab.net
Thu Sep 24 06:12:00 UTC 2015
Virgil Griffith wrote:
> Tor "exploits the military" into lending cover to activist groups,
> which they would presumably support.
> This may be too naive a view of the situation.
Exploit is definitely the wrong word here. Different people who
disagree about {policy|topic|whatever} can all see the value of
anonymity, without viewing it as ab/using the other contributors.
More relays are always good, but don't necessarily counter the
occasional fatalist opinion 'surely n relays are bad and surely n
represents enough to de-anonymize me no matter what, so why bother' [0].
Ongoing research does a lot of good here, but some people will never be
swayed.
~Griffin
[0] "Is your relay hiding BOLSHEVIKS?"
> Re: socially connected. That's interesting. I'll see what I can do.
> Chat more in Berlin.
>
> -V
> On Thu, 24 Sep 2015 at 13:19 Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 06:18:58AM +0000, Virgil Griffith
> wrote:
> > Exit nodes seem a nice place to start concretizing what's
> meant when we say
> > we want relay diversity. Comments immensely appreciated
> because as-is I
> > don't know the answers to these questions.
>
> Hi Virgil,
>
> I've been pondering the opposite of this topic, after looking
> at the
> recent tor-relays thread about some ISP not wanting to let
> somebody
> host an exit relay because they figure a lot of the Tor
> network is
> run by government agencies. My usual answer to that concern is
> "no, we
> *know* the operators of more than half the capacity in the Tor
> network,
> so this cannot be the case". And I think this is increasingly
> true in
> the era of activist non-profits that run relays -- Germany's
> got one,
> and so do the US, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Luxembourg,
> etc etc.
>
> But it would be neat to have a mechanism for learning whether
> this is
> actually true, and (whatever the current situation) how it's
> changing.
>
> The tie-in to Roster would be some sort of "socially
> connected" badge,
> which your relay gets because you're sufficiently tied into
> the Tor
> relay operator community.
>
> And then we'd have something concrete to point to for backing
> up, or
> disputing, the claim that we know a significant fraction of
> the network.
>
> Of course, the details of when to assign the badge will be
> tricky and
> critical: too loose and you undermine the trust in it (it only
> takes a
> few "omg the kgb runs a relay and look it's got the badge"
> cases to make
> the news), but too strict and you undercount the social
> connectedness.
>
> In a sense this is like the original 'valid' flag, which you
> got
> by mailing me and having me manually approve your relay (and
> without
> which you would never be used as the entry or exit point in a
> circuit).
> Periodically I wonder if we should go back to a design like
> that, where
> users won't pick exit relays that don't have the "socially
> connected"
> badge. Then I opt against wanting it, since I worry that we'd
> lose
> exactly the kind of diversity we need most, by cutting out the
> relays
> whose operators we don't know.
>
> But both sides of that are just guessing. Let's find out!
>
> --Roger
>
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