Re: Wikipedia & Tor

["Bryan L. Fordham" <bfordham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 12:13:39PM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I don't follow your failure to follow.

Oh boy, this could get very recursive if we're not careful 8)
 
> Tor provides the internet equivallent of the real world anonymity
> which he enjoys.  Banksy can't do what he does in the real world
> because bits of internet architecture accidentally track him.  Tor
> changes that balance.

If you don't know me and I walk in, then, well, you don't now me.  So by
default I'm anonymous.

If I visit your website, and you don't know me, you can see my IP address in
the logs, etc. So by default I'm not anonymous, and I need tor to help.

My point (and I'm certainly willing to concede it may be invalid) is that
tor changes the default, which makes is very different than the inherit
anonymity in the real world.

(And yes, I'm leaving things out like video monitoring for simplicity)
 
> That changed balance doesn't come with a morality bit:  If we let
> people be anonymous, some of them will do bad things, others will do
> great things.

Of course. But does that mean we ignore the ones who do bad things?

Which raises the question: what is bad, anyway? And can we prevent the abuse
without preventing the overall good?

Or to make it concrete: Can we prevent abuse of wikipedia without preventing
people who use tor legitimately (if that's the right term) from being able
to do what they want?

(perhaps that should be "can the abuse of wikipedia be prevented" rather
than "Can we prevent", as I'm not certain it's tor's problem)

if I haven't mentioned it already: I'm not saying tor is useless; I believe
quite the opposite. But we need to be careful and thoughtful in our
arguments.  Not that I'm the one to decide what's careful and thoughtful, by
any means

--B