On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 9:59 PM, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) < li...@infosecurity.ch> wrote:
> On 9/19/12 9:41 PM, Paolo Palmieri wrote: > > It is also interesting to note that, after this, a sizable portion of > > Italian Internet users now uses a DNS other than the one supplied by > > their ISP, and usually a foreign one. This reduces the impact any > > further censorship imposed at the DNS level might have. > So dumb form of censorship... unfortunately effective for dumb people! > I'm not sure the Tor usage in Italy would be reduced as a censorship bypassing technology. as first, the DNS blockage is apply only for gaming. The general purpose censor tech in Italy is the IP-blocking, requested to obtain a "remote interdiction" of a server (every time a persecutor want to close a foreign server "to avoid reiteration of an offense". IP block law is born for specifics content, then has been used in the most various cases.) anyway users overcome on this issue without Tor (they simply found a more or less similar, not yet blocked, service) as second, I believe a certain percentage of users has start to be affected by the privacy advocacy. Maybe they not understand correctly their threat.. but I've got unexpected people that asked to me supports in Tor. and not because I was promoting Tor, just because "I'm the guy expert with computer". "Just for know, why you want Tor ?" I asked, "just to prove it, you know, for personal security during the navigation" the answer. And this remind me a common mistake of ours as privacy advocate. more than 10 years of conferences by winston smith project, various university with an eye for the human right apply to the network, had bring to a _public request for protection solutions_. ... plus, the advocacy moved the target audience from the technical people, to the "influencing people". As common behavior, when I/we explain the importance of some technical properties like "integrity" "end to end encryption" "metadata filtering" (applied to the public company, to the journalist, to the lawyers...) and someone ask "ok, but which software I need to use to obtain protection ?" you have two options: . explain the VPN services, explain encryption for browser plugins, explain the GPG, explain that some issue are not solved by software but only with aware behavior... . or simply: "use Tor" (closed source software is not acceptable in the answers :) ) The second one is not the most technical truly answer, but it's an answer easy to be be remembered, and is the only software that with few clicks give an immediate feedback to the user. Just to be clear, I/we use the first answer, when there are time, when you're confident that your audience is not crumbing by sleep, and that is able to understand a technical answer more complex that: "this is Tor, use it". But is obvious that users remember tend to remember the simpler solution available. Ok, take this behavior, imagine these words spread continuously in the journalist environment and in the lawyer environment. After years of this inertia, you start to found free press in the underground station talking about Tor. and this is happen, it's not an hypothesis :) (just for Italians: Milano-X, free press, had dedicated a central page to Tor and panopclick, Nova of Sole24Ore talk about Tor every time a journalist need to drop a Tip about safety). And I'm not talking about hacktivism related press, but general purpose. dealing with more influencing people, aiming for their influenced users, mean that only simplified solutions would be spread. and if we can be happy about this Tor spreading, we know also that is not the correct path. It's a security tip applied to various and uncertain threat model. Tor its an easy answer, because is _the most usable tool_ for "privacy and security enforcing" that should be suggested to an user. I wonder if this behavior would bring more issues in Tor, than positive feedbacks, in a long term. I strongly believe, that if a suite of tools providing: censorship circumvent, browser security end to end encryption for daily communication might be accessible with easy like TorBB, the amount of Italian adopters of Tor would decrease. cheers, v _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
