Re: technical solution for censorship [was: UK internet filtering]

[Curious Kid <letsshareinformation@xxxxxxxxx>]

You are describing a gargantuan problem beyond the scope of Tor.

A tool to compare the results from various exit nodes would be nice, though. That would be a powerful tool to determine what is blocked in various locations. That output could be exported to a large database keeping track of Internet censorship.

Check out Psiphon. It's purpose is undermine Internet censorship.
http://psiphon.ca/



----- Original Message ----
> From: Benjamin S. <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: or-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Monday, December 8, 2008 8:05:09 AM
> Subject: technical solution for censorship [was: UK internet filtering]
> 
> Am Samstag, den 06.12.2008, 19:49 -0500 schrieb Gregory Maxwell:
> > 
> http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009938o-2000331777b,00.htm?new_comment
> > 
> > I've confirmed the reports of UK ISPs censoring Wikipedia using some
> > UK tor exists.
> 
> I think it's time to find a better technical solution to deal with
> censorship in different countries.
> Censorship is increasing all around the world and we should be prepared
> that sooner or later nearly every country will censor the internet for
> different reasons (cp, intellectual property, politcal reasons, etc.)
> and in a different way.
> 
> A perfect technical solution would make it possible to request any
> ressource as long as there is just one exit-node which isn't affected by
> censorship. 
> But at the moment TOR-Nodes doesn't know which ressources are censored
> and which really doesn't exist, so it can happen that you use a circuit
> which is not able to bypass censorship.
> Putting them on the bad-exit-list is no solution, because first that way
> they are lost for the network for all requests which are not censored at
> all, and second the specific user has to know that the requested
> ressource does exist, which nodes are able to access it and how he can
> force TOR to do so.
> 
> This could be done better: TOR itself should know which nodes are
> affected by censorship and use another for the specific request.
> 
> The list could be auto-generated by the exit-nodes. For example an exit
> which gets back a 404 or a negative DNS-result could simply ask some
> other exit nodes (in a different country) to check if this is "real" or
> censorship. If last one, the specific request could be put on a list and
> published to the directory.
> Other TOR-Servers could use this list to check if they are also
> affected; clients would be able to check if the existing circuit is
> affected for the specific request and build up a different one.
> 
> Not every censorship would be recognized this way, but for the other
> ones there could be a button implemented to TOR-Client. If pressed, the
> TOR-Exit is forced by the user to do the check.
> 
> A nice side-effect is, that we get the neccessary data to check the
> censor which could be useful at least in democratic countries which have
> no public lists ('cause of index liborium prohibitum).
> 
> So far,
> B.
> -- 
> Surf anonymously and reach Hidden Services by using TOR, JonDos (JAP)
> and I2P with https://tor-proxy.net .