Re: What will happen to Tor after the new German data retention law takes effect?

[Eugen Leitl <eugen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 05:58:41AM -0700, JT wrote:

> Tor is the most advanced anonymizing system and will be outlawed first.
> I am sure. :(
> The more advanced the greater the chances we will see it go first.

I suggest we stop playing Chicken Little, and first see what
the actual law says when passed, and then consider whether it's worth
complying (in the worst case, I might start logging connection
info (and just that) to an encrypted partition (so seizing hardware
without passphrase will be useless), announce that
much to the list, and post an announcement to the list, including
details, if I'm being contacted and asked for said info -- in
case there's a gag order, I will stop operating -- so if I stop
running shrek/shrek2, and won't tell you why, you'll know why).

If things get bad enough it is actually worthwhile to consider
moving elsewhere. Or revive the White Rose. 
 
> Really, I can not believe this is happening. There won't be any more
> normal discussions on the net. Everybody will be extremely careful what
> to say knowing every post is logged for a long time and can be googled
> within seconds.

There's been some talk about ad hoc encryption setup (like ad hoc IPsec
for every TCP/IP session), which would require a MITM to listen to,
which can be detected in principle by storing host fingerprints in a
p2p web of trust, using personal knowledge for as an additional
trust metric. This is quite open to traffic analysis, but at least
what's being said remains invisible, and will be more than a major
nuisance to the gestapo, if deployed widely, and with some
background traffic acting as chaff.

Of course, outlawing encryption will be the next step, and rather 
soon after that, there will be concentration camps. See you in the showers.
 
> Should we all move to China? They are not as nuts as the Europeans.
> Seriously. 

All the control freaks in the world everywhere are exactly the same.
What only varies is how much leeway they have.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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