[tor-talk] What should our 31c3 talk be?

[Griffin Boyce]

Roger Dingledine wrote:
> Two lessons I've learned from recent CCC talks:
> 
> A) Social commentary works much better than technical things. That is,
> the audience respects us for our technical work, and now they want to 
> hear
> our perspective on what's going on in the world. So while my instinct
> is to use the talks to make the audience more technically competent and
> thus more able to help us in this growing global conflict, the talks
> that work best these days are more like social rallies.

   It's possible to split the difference a little bit.  You've identified 
that it's difficult to bring people up to speed technically, and *also* 
hard to cover most of the ecosystem in a meaningful way.  There are 
dozens of components and tor-related projects.  While you and Jake both 
talkfast, there's only so much that you guys can cover in an hour.

   I think it makes more sense to start from the beginning.  Talk about 
the social problems that Tor tries to solve, and then talk about the 
technical ways that Tor actually solves them.  Domestic Violence victims 
are easily tracked via email and other means, so using tor will help 
prevent that by giving them a different IP address and preventing niche 
attacks that are otherwise hard to mitigate.  People with serious 
medical concerns use it to keep their private information private.  
Everything from pregnancy to rape to transgender status can cause 
someone's personal data to be more valuable to big corporations -- or 
put them at risk of death, depending on location.  Someone wants to look 
up OSHA regulations anonymously and maybe file a complaint about their 
dangerous workplace -- Tor helps make sure they're really anonymous 
through the magic of onion routing.  Anonymous bloggers and journalists 
need it for the same reason.

   People frequently need to get through filters to be able to speak 
freely, and as surveillance and censorship technology improves (eg, 
DPI), then Tor conducts serious research to bypass those measures 
quickly (Meek, obfs4, FTE).  There's an endless list of use cases and 
case studies that can be used as entry points into basic technical 
overview of core components.  Projects like Orchid/Shadow/Cupcake are 
all great, but don't necessarily speak to what Tor actually strives for 
-- which is to give people tools so that they have the option to speak 
and learn freely.

   With that approach, I feel like what is truly meaningful will get 
covered.

best,
Griffin


-- 
"I believe that usability is a security concern; systems that do
not pay close attention to the human interaction factors involved
risk failing to provide security by failing to attract users."
~Len Sassaman