Re: [tor-talk] Pissed off about Blacklists, and what to do?

[Akater <nuclearspace@xxxxxxxxx>]

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On 09.03.2014 0:48, Mirimir wrote:
> Even with reduced exit policy, running a Tor exit can get your IP
> blacklisted. Most Tor users are seeking privacy and anonymity, so
> having their IP listed as a Tor exit is counterintuitive. There are
> idealists, of course. But I can't imagine how ~7% of Internet users
> would be that idealistic.

There is no reason why authorities should handcuff the owner of the
particular node that redirects some data they find
dangerous/criminal/extremist enough. It only happens because of the
centralized design of the current Internet. If the Internet was
decentralized since the very beginning, and nodes were redirecting
others' traffic routinely nobody would even bother, “because that's
how Internet works”. It's those who wanted global surveillance would
then have to try hard to create centralized networks and make them
popular.

This state of things wouldn't take a tiny bit of idealism to
estabilish. Internet just wasn't design this way (for a variety of
reasons, rather irrelevant, IMO). Unfortuately it's us who are in
defensive position right now but it does not mean that Internet is doomed.

- From this angle, it's not so counterintuitive to run exit node, as
well. The best (if not only, in certain sense) way to obtain anonymity
is to get lost in the crowd. I'm sure that if Tor became at least
moderately mainstream, and the common attitude would be “Yes, I
redirect Tor traffic. We all do. That's the way we guarantee ourselves
protection.”, then nobody would care about creating blacklists
anymore, or at least everyone would become much, much less paranoid
about that. Expropriating home computers running Tor relays or exits
would not only become immoral (shame it isn't so now) but ineffective
as well. No first world society can allow itself to label 7-10% of
population as potential terrorists, criminals and abusers.

It's all about creating a tradition, or a fashion. It only takes
idealist users to run Tor exits on the *initial* state of the project.
Besides,
- - actual risks of having problems  with authorities are not that high;
- - community support in the first world societies would make a lot of
difference, especially if it included legal support backed by human
rights organisations or maybe fundraising.

The real problems are:
- - the large amounts of people who are interested in privacy issues
these days, due to media coverage of Snowden, PRISM, etc., may easily
disappear sooner than we might expect. The attention of crowds is
unpredictable and thus extremely valuable. It's almost a crime against
humanity to miss all those opportunities now, in my humble personal
opinion;
- - the situation in the second and third world societies; it does take
some idealism to fight for freedom there, and lawyers' help doesn't
mean much. Still, the community support does, as always (I can tell);
- - lack of interest on the hackers' side to interact with PR/adv guys.
An example of stupid inability to cooperate with those not like you
that had by now successfully prevented lots of great stuff created by
hackers to get the popularity it deserved.
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