7v5w7go9ub0o wrote: > On 02/18/10 20:07, Jacob Appelbaum wrote: >> The performance of Tor is similar to any other Tor client - this is our >> reference C implementation running on the N900. >> >> With that said - You may want to hold out and get an Android phone. >> We're looking to do a release of Tor on Android next week. We have some >> very promising alphas and it's quite exciting! > > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but am a little surprised at the > interest in TOR on Android - Android seems a closed, phone-home "cloud" > computer with little/no regard for privacy or anonymity. I'd always > wonder about a nice little log somewhere on my phone and/or in the "cloud". > I think that Android offers us a new possibility for telephones. I also like the N900 but I feel that Nokia often screws their user community. It's good to have options and so the more Tor on the more devices, the better. You may be interested in hearing about the Guardian project: http://openideals.com/guardian/ Additionally, you may also be interested in Noisedroid: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisedroid Or perhaps the more well known cyanogen firmware: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ All of those offer a possibility for an Android system built entirely from Free Software pieces. The big missing piece is the baseband and when last I checked there was not a single smart phone with a free baseband firmware. Harald Welte is currently working on on solving this problem for the Calypso chipset: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/02/19/#20100219-announcing_osmocom_bb The future looks nice all around. Having Tor on as many of these devices will provide many people with options beyond what we can imagine. > OTOH, IIUC, The N900 can be configured as a traditional lap/desktop. > (Arguably, one may want to hold out for an entirely open-source meego > N900 with the new Intel chip) > The same can be said about almost any phone software. You can hack it and the barrier for entry is really the only sticking point. The N900 and Android aren't too terribly different from a consumer standpoint. If you're running the stock firmware from your phone provider, you're beholden to their backdoors or whatever crazy bugs they haven't patched. In any case, Tor provides you with a nice anonymity solution. It is far from perfect (baseband security issues, etc) but it's certainly better than nothing. Having Tor in the Android Market and having Tor in the Maemo repository allows people to choose. We'll also hopefully have Tor on Windows Mobile in the future but I can't seem to find anyone who wants to Bell The Cat. :-) Best, Jake
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