Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

[Thomas Sjögren]

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) has
released a "Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents":
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

Topics include:
  	How to blog anonymously
	Technical ways to get around censorship
	Ensuring your e-mail is truly private
	Internet-censor world championship

From the chapter "How to blog anonymously":
"Step five - Onion Routing through Tor
[...]

Given the complexity of the technology, Sarah is pleasantly surprised to
discover how easy it is to install Tor, an onion routing system. She
downloads an installer which installs Tor on her system, then downloads
and installs Privoxy, a proxy that works with Tor and has the pleasant
side benefit of removing most of the ads from the webpages Sarah views.

After installing the software and restarting her machine, Sarah checks
noreply.org and discovers that she is, in fact, successfully "cloaked"
by the Tor system - noreply.org thinks shes logging on from Harvard
University. She reloads, and now noreply thinks shes in Germany. From
this she concludes that Tor is changing her identity from request to
request, helping to protect her privacy.

This has some odd consequences. When she uses Google through Tor, it
keeps switching language on her. One search, its in English - another,
Japanese. Then German, Danish and Dutch, all in the course of a few
minutes. Sarah welcomes the opportunity to learn some new languages, but
shes concerned about some other consequences. Sarah likes to contribute
to Wikipedia, but discovers that Wikipedia blocks her attempts to edit
articles when shes using Tor.

Tor also seems to have some of the same problems Sarah was having with
other proxies. Her surfing slows down quite a bit, as compared to
surfing the web without a proxy - she finds that she ends up using Tor
only when shes accessing sensitive content or posting to her blog. And
shes once again tied to her home computer, since she cant install Tor on
a public machine very easily.

Most worrisome, though, she discovers that Tor sometimes stops working.
Evidently, her ISP is starting to block some Tor routers - when Tor
tries to use a blocked router, she can wait for minutes at a time, but
doesnt get the webpage shes requested."
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