Can governments block tor?

[David Benfell]

On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 17:00:17 -0700, eric.jung at yahoo.com wrote:

> Secret rendezvous addresses for tor dir servers aren't necessary. In China, for
> example, all network traffic goes through government-owned firewalls and
> routers, just like the traffic at your workplace goes through company-owned
> routers and firewalls. The traffic can be sniffed and logged without blocking
> it. That way they know who's using tor. It's probably valuable to know who's
> trying to be a dissedent and what it is they think they're discussing
> privately.
> 
> As for a protocol to keep that hidden, SSL comes to mind. Personally, though, I
> don't believe you can ever be truly anonymous or secret, so I act accordingly.
> 
I'm seeing this as a nightmare.  If it isn't possible to disguise the
fact you're using or serving tor--and last time I did a tcpdump on my
outside interface, it stuck out like a sore thumb--doesn't that
undermine its usefulness?  (And I assume you mean SSL could be used to
encrypt content, not the destination of a tor server.)

-- 
David Benfell, LCP
benfell at parts-unknown.org
---
Resume available at http://www.parts-unknown.org/