[tor-talk] Will Hidden Service Be Removed?

[Andrea Shepard]

[Yeah, yeah, trolling the troll back will get boring fast, I know...]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 10:59:40PM -0700, Daniel Dennis wrote:
> Personally I don't really like them. I think using hidden service as an
> IP address for peer to peer (like torchat) is a risk factor although I
> don't know enough to know for sure. (Maybe the already in place guards
> fix that?). But I also think all the content in a hidden service are not
> beneficial to anyone. Wikileaks may have been one but it looks like they
> have no problems getting hosting/a domain and staying online

Kindly do explain why your opinion of what is 'beneficial' should take
precedence over that of the users and publishers of those sites.  Evidently
*someone* considers them as such.

> Is there a real reason why the or project can't just disable hidden
> services? IMO no positive exists as the content can be served on
> clearnet (once again wikileaks is fine and that is a big deal). Hidden
> services is just carrying negatives.

Silk Road sure looks like an epic win to me.  Some of us actually believe
in free speech on both ends of the socket. [1]

> I guess my question is will it be removed and if not can I assume it
> will always exist and also why will it not be removed?

When the heat death of the universe destroys the last trace of Tor code,
as far as I have any say about it.

[1] To complete the analogy, if a normal Tor connection is equivalent
to client side TCP ("active open" in the RFC's terminology) and a hidden
service is server side ("passive open"), what's our analogue of the
simultaneous open edge case where the SYNs cross on the wire? :)

-- 
Andrea Shepard
<andrea at torproject.org>
PGP fingerprint: 3611 95A4 0740 ED1B 7EA5  DF7E 4191 13D9 D0CF BDA5
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