[tor-talk] Tor is anti-censorship software

[Paul Syverson]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 11:10:36AM -0400, Chris Dagdigian wrote:
> 
> Seriously?  I spent some time trying to parse Juan's various messages
> yesterday to try to understand his point of view ... if you remove all of
> the insults and snide remarks the only concrete position I could discern was
> that he was legit upset over the marketing/PR approach of the Tor project.
> He wants the Tor project to do better messaging to make it clear that Tor
> can't protect anyone who may be facing an adversary with nation-state levels
> of technical resources. He feels strongly that the project should not
> advertise or promise "anonymity" given that it's pretty clear now that
> someone with significant resources and technical assets can de-cloak
> individual Tor users who catch their attention.

Vitriol aside, the problem is that you don't get to just apply your
own intuitive decisions about the meaning of technical terms and then
complain based on that. To get out of my own technical area to one I'm
guessing is more familiar to those who seem to favor political points
regardless if they make any scientific sense: I could say that
democracy is when each person in a society has a say (vote) on any law
or official decision that society makes.  This is not entirely
unintuitive (and I really don't want to get into quibbles about what's
a person, etc.)  One problem is that, whether that definition is right
or wrong, there are almost no democracies anywhere, and everyone
recognizes that this couldn't scale to societal size in practice. The
closest to this definition in the U.S. might be New England town
meetings. But even small towns typically elect officials to decide
various things. Somebody who decides that is how the term must be used
and thus runs around saying "that's not democratic" about every action
of a town council or school board is not contributing anything
constructive by doing so.

The Tor Project remains the exemplar of being up front about what it
provides and doesn't, what needs improvement, what people have found
about weaknesses etc. (I know simply saying nobody is doing it better
is not an excuse for not trying harder, but it is a standard of
reasonableness). "Anonymity" has some intuitive meaning that has been
articulated to multiple meanings as lots of precise mathematical and
technical analysis teases intuitions out. If you have a better single
word than 'anonymity' that conveys to people who don't want to read
all that technical mumbo-jumbo what Tor provides, I think we would
all be happy to use it. (Well I would anyway.)

> 
> I actually sort of agree with that argument but sadly it was lost amidst a
> deluge of venomous words - the same sort of aggressive "you are all just
> useful idiots of the DOD/NSA" word salad stuff that causes people to hit the
> delete key right away. And 100% a contribution to worsening signal-to-noise
> ratio on this list.
> 
> Beyond suggesting that the project do better PR/Marketing about the real
> levels of privacy/anonymity offered I can't think of any other useful point
> raised. Everything else was just a rehash of what you hear from people who
> think the projects origin, backers and developers make it unsuitable for use
> by anyone at any time. Not new and not interesting at all.


Thanks. I do think Tor people work hard not just making good things to
make the Internet a safer more secure place but also trying to figure
out how to articulate that usefully to the broader public. I can say
that many times when I have suggested some more precise description of
what is provided, people who understand public communications way
better than me, gently pat me on the head and explain that nobody's
going to understand what I just said and/or that people will grab some
technical nuance in it and draw the totally opposite conclusion of
what is intended.  Constructive contributions there, as in the
technology itself, would always be welcome.

aloha,
Paul

> 
> My $.02 of course
> 
> Spencer wrote:
> >
> >Juan's comments, in particular, have been most valuable in pointing out
> >the network's shortcomings in this area.
> 
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