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Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc. How many pedo/drug/etc. illegal sites are still

Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc. How many pedo/drug/etc. illegal sites are still there and will be there in the future where the owners know proper opsec. I get the point that journalists/political dissidents want some anonymous communication channel, but do we have to tolerate shit like this? Maybe tor without the hidden services would be morally less contemptible? I suppose its likely that the NSA controls/monitors a sufficient amount of tor nodes to make this already be the case anyhow.

colejohnson66 9y ago
There’s this thing called the slippery slope. The reason backdoors are bad is because: once one government shows they can get a backdoor, every other government will want one. The FBI wanted a backdoor for iPhones while completely disregarding the fact that if Apple added one, what’s to stop China from demanding one, too?
- nikanj 9y ago
  Apple being an US company?
  - loup-vaillant 9y ago
    Doesn't count if they sell stuff in China. Chinese iPhones will have a Chinese backdoor, US iPhones will have a US back door. And since it's easier to program one backdoor to rule them all, we may even have all iPhones be accessible from both US and China…
- rallycarre 9y ago
  There is a back door to every Iphone. Just ask around Boston.
betterunix2 9y ago
"Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc." How will we ensure that only the Western States that are supposed to use the backdoor will be able to, and that e.g. the governments of Russia, China, or Iran will not have access? Remember that Tor was created by the US government for the purpose of evading surveillance and national firewalls, and that many countries would like to have access to that backdoor for less acceptable purposes. "I get the point that journalists/political dissidents want some anonymous communication channel, but do we have to tolerate shit like this?" Tor is not really the issue here. Pedophiles do not really depend on Tor as much as you might think. Pedophiles are known to use the postal system to send and receive encrypted DVDs. They are known to operate legitimate websites as "fronts" for pedophile forums (not hidden services). They have used Usenet, IRC, FTP, and BBSes. They use sneakernet. Child molesters often go undetected for years, despite not using the Internet at all. Child molesters rely less on systems meant to evade mass surveillance than on the fact that we do not live in an Orwellian world of total and pervasive surveillance. I think we would all agree that the priority is to arrest people who abuse children; yet that is a crime that occurs offline, is not in any way aided by Tor, and still remains hard for the police to detect and stop. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that were it not for Tor, the police would have an easy time catching pedophiles or that child sex abuse imagery would stop being produced.

colejohnson66 9y ago

There’s this thing called the slippery slope. The reason backdoors are bad is because: once one government shows they can get a backdoor, every other government will want one. The FBI wanted a backdoor for iPhones while completely disregarding the fact that if Apple added one, what’s to stop China from demanding one, too?

nikanj 9y ago
Apple being an US company?
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  Doesn't count if they sell stuff in China. Chinese iPhones will have a Chinese backdoor, US iPhones will have a US back door. And since it's easier to program one backdoor to rule them all, we may even have all iPhones be accessible from both US and China…
rallycarre 9y ago
There is a back door to every Iphone. Just ask around Boston.

betterunix2 9y ago

"Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc." How will we ensure that only the Western States that are supposed to use the backdoor will be able to, and that e.g. the governments of Russia, China, or Iran will not have access? Remember that Tor was created by the US government for the purpose of evading surveillance and national firewalls, and that many countries would like to have access to that backdoor for less acceptable purposes. "I get the point that journalists/political dissidents want some anonymous communication channel, but do we have to tolerate shit like this?" Tor is not really the issue here. Pedophiles do not really depend on Tor as much as you might think. Pedophiles are known to use the postal system to send and receive encrypted DVDs. They are known to operate legitimate websites as "fronts" for pedophile forums (not hidden services). They have used Usenet, IRC, FTP, and BBSes. They use sneakernet. Child molesters often go undetected for years, despite not using the Internet at all. Child molesters rely less on systems meant to evade mass surveillance than on the fact that we do not live in an Orwellian world of total and pervasive surveillance. I think we would all agree that the priority is to arrest people who abuse children; yet that is a crime that occurs offline, is not in any way aided by Tor, and still remains hard for the police to detect and stop. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that were it not for Tor, the police would have an easy time catching pedophiles or that child sex abuse imagery would stop being produced.