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Throw away account (does not do much good with modern AI and ML). But here goes. I am a US citizen (never left the country) and I always vote Republican. Down-

by noone1954 5y ago

Throw away account (does not do much good with modern AI and ML). But here goes. I am a US citizen (never left the country) and I always vote Republican. Down-vote away! The FBI came to my house in October 2021. Two special agents (one of which I knew from prior IT Security engagements) and a 'Threat Assessment' Police Officer from the local police department. They asked me if I was an Islamic extremist/terrorist. I am not. I am not religious at all. I am an IT security practitioner and amateur cryptographer. I once used Tor for remote network security assessments and to maintain my privacy. I ran Tor hidden services (as experiments) and posted code showing best practices on how to do this without revealing the clear-net IP address. I no longer do this. I believe that is one reason I was targeted. I have written one-time pad software and other cryptographic tools that may be used to evade IP/Cellular network meta-data analysis and tracking. I believe this is another reason I was targeted. The agents told me that I was considered a threat and an extremist because someone had used my home network to search for Islamic extremist videos. I have not done this. And, to my knowledge, none of my family members have done this either. I am not sure why this happened. I may never know. But I do know that true end to end encryption is critical to maintaining our security and privacy (assuming end devices are not compromised already). That is a big assumption IMPO. Now, I also encourage people to not use Tor. I feel it is backed-doored and mostly controlled by Nation State actors to identify 'interesting' subjects via meta-data analysis alone. That's my story. I hope you all do well.

mint2 5y ago
Why was your political affiliation relevant to that story? Peppering that non-sequitur in might mean you’re more focused on politics as teams than is warranted or justified.
ttybird2 5y ago
Is this you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29399051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29399051
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mjevans 5y ago
More plausibly, someone used extremely weak WiFi cryptography to access the Internet through your ISP. Even if you have a password on such services, between routers with vulnerabilities, backward compatible connectivity (E.G. for your old game consoles / appliances), and maybe even passwords guest devices have shared with the cloud; it really could be anyone who was ever near your connectivity. I am sorry that these things happened to you, and this highlights how the rights of the accused to face their accusers, with legal representation present as well as to not be discriminated against before adjudication of those charges should be the standard and only procedures. Maybe for some highly important things these accusations might initially be under seal; but there should still be a defense present to advocate for the accused.
rz2k 5y ago
I know this isn't the point of your post, but what does your party affiliation mean in this context? I have known people from both parties who believed their party affiliation was central to their anti-authoritarian stance, and people from both parties who thought that their preferred form of good government would control people. Do you think your party loyalty made you a more likely target, or should have made you a less likely target? That said, I use Tor for anything medical related. The NSA might wonder why I am licking my paws so much, or why I keep worrying about foxtails in my ears, but they haven't knocked on my door yet.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Why do you go out of your way to protect medical information? If the government cared enough to get your medical information illegally, couldn't they just get it from your doctors? And if they did decide you were an "enemy", what good would knowing your medical information do?
  - quinnjh 5y ago
    Poster maybe isnt trying to hide health info from state level actors, rather limiting the layers of collections identifying them as "possible customer for __ treatments" ..hopefully they posted from tor and arent about to get a ton of popups now about "do you have foxtail in your ears"
  - rz2k 5y ago
    It's mostly a matter of principle since I assume internet searches to be closer to a postcard than a letter. I could write about some health-related thing that is potentially embarrassing in a postcard, because I doubt the post office cares, or that my mail carrier reads postcards, but I'd probably prefer to put it in a letter delivered inside an envelope. It seems like better practice to learn which sources tell mainstream, reliable information about things like bordetella vaccines and regular nail clipping, before I get really emotional about an anal gland that needs to be expressed or before my person finds a weird lump on my front leg. More seriously, back to human medicine, I am disappointed that so many reputable medical information sources with read-only information prevent Tor network users from accessing their information even though malicious Tor users aren't able to add misinformation.
sweetbitter 5y ago
>Now, I also encourage people to not use Tor. I feel it is backed-doored and mostly controlled by Nation State actors to identify 'interesting' subjects via meta-data analysis alone. No, you should encourage them to use it as much as possible to increase the anonymity set. Tor is not 'backdoored' (it is Free Software) and it is incredibly unlikely for most relays even to be malicious. Rather, Tor has a defined threat model and in the interest of offering high performance with low latency at a low cost, eschews the so-called 'Anonymity Trilemma' and it is thus possible to trace connections through the network if you can monitor the entry stream as well as the exit stream. There are a large number of entities who control various parts of the physical infrastructure between each link of your Tor circuit, from your router, to your ISP, to the local internet exchange point, and every other hop along the way to a destination. If an adversary controls even one of these entities in between you and your chosen guard relay, and between your chosen exit relay and the destination (including even the destination logs), it may be possible to perform correlation attacks to confirm whether or not a particular user connected to a given host (something which is easier to do if the stream is more 'distinct' from other streams, as well). Tor is a tool which serves to significantly increase the cost of undermining user privacy, and while it is true that it should not be treated as some end-all-be-all of internet privacy, I fail to understand why it should be discarded, rather than treated as just one of a number of tools in the toolkit. For example, if you are attempting to make it more difficult for these global adversaries to trace you, you may consider physical indirection (driving around), adding a layer of wireless relays before the connection to the Internet backbone, exclusion of relays in countries which your own nation can more easily influence in your torrc file, inducing dummy traffic in some capacity, preferring anonymity over pseudonymity, and a myriad of other techniques.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
Did they ever present you with evidence of anything? From what I've heard it's quite possible to identify Tor traffic if you're determined enough. Perhaps they were pressuring you because they thought you were running a relay/node?
- brightball 5y ago
  Maxmind API's will identify Tor traffic pretty reliably fwiw. I tried Tor one time years ago when I was testing Maxmind. It always seemed like if you were using it you'd become an exit node by default (I could be completely wrong on this, I haven't looked into deeply). Just gave me the impression that my IP address would suddenly be associated with whatever anyone else was doing and that seemed...bad. Totally understand that there are plenty of perfectly valid uses of Tor but you don't really hear much about those.
  - miloignis 5y ago
    Exit nodes are specifically set up and run, you do not become one by default. Using the Tor browser doesn't even make you a relay node: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-33/ https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-33/
    - brightball 5y ago
      That’s good to know.

mint2 5y ago

Why was your political affiliation relevant to that story? Peppering that non-sequitur in might mean you’re more focused on politics as teams than is warranted or justified.

ttybird2 5y ago

Is this you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29399051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29399051

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mjevans 5y ago

More plausibly, someone used extremely weak WiFi cryptography to access the Internet through your ISP. Even if you have a password on such services, between routers with vulnerabilities, backward compatible connectivity (E.G. for your old game consoles / appliances), and maybe even passwords guest devices have shared with the cloud; it really could be anyone who was ever near your connectivity. I am sorry that these things happened to you, and this highlights how the rights of the accused to face their accusers, with legal representation present as well as to not be discriminated against before adjudication of those charges should be the standard and only procedures. Maybe for some highly important things these accusations might initially be under seal; but there should still be a defense present to advocate for the accused.

rz2k 5y ago

I know this isn't the point of your post, but what does your party affiliation mean in this context? I have known people from both parties who believed their party affiliation was central to their anti-authoritarian stance, and people from both parties who thought that their preferred form of good government would control people. Do you think your party loyalty made you a more likely target, or should have made you a less likely target? That said, I use Tor for anything medical related. The NSA might wonder why I am licking my paws so much, or why I keep worrying about foxtails in my ears, but they haven't knocked on my door yet.

Buttons840 5y ago
Why do you go out of your way to protect medical information? If the government cared enough to get your medical information illegally, couldn't they just get it from your doctors? And if they did decide you were an "enemy", what good would knowing your medical information do?
- quinnjh 5y ago
  Poster maybe isnt trying to hide health info from state level actors, rather limiting the layers of collections identifying them as "possible customer for __ treatments" ..hopefully they posted from tor and arent about to get a ton of popups now about "do you have foxtail in your ears"
- rz2k 5y ago
  It's mostly a matter of principle since I assume internet searches to be closer to a postcard than a letter. I could write about some health-related thing that is potentially embarrassing in a postcard, because I doubt the post office cares, or that my mail carrier reads postcards, but I'd probably prefer to put it in a letter delivered inside an envelope. It seems like better practice to learn which sources tell mainstream, reliable information about things like bordetella vaccines and regular nail clipping, before I get really emotional about an anal gland that needs to be expressed or before my person finds a weird lump on my front leg. More seriously, back to human medicine, I am disappointed that so many reputable medical information sources with read-only information prevent Tor network users from accessing their information even though malicious Tor users aren't able to add misinformation.

sweetbitter 5y ago

>Now, I also encourage people to not use Tor. I feel it is backed-doored and mostly controlled by Nation State actors to identify 'interesting' subjects via meta-data analysis alone. No, you should encourage them to use it as much as possible to increase the anonymity set. Tor is not 'backdoored' (it is Free Software) and it is incredibly unlikely for most relays even to be malicious. Rather, Tor has a defined threat model and in the interest of offering high performance with low latency at a low cost, eschews the so-called 'Anonymity Trilemma' and it is thus possible to trace connections through the network if you can monitor the entry stream as well as the exit stream. There are a large number of entities who control various parts of the physical infrastructure between each link of your Tor circuit, from your router, to your ISP, to the local internet exchange point, and every other hop along the way to a destination. If an adversary controls even one of these entities in between you and your chosen guard relay, and between your chosen exit relay and the destination (including even the destination logs), it may be possible to perform correlation attacks to confirm whether or not a particular user connected to a given host (something which is easier to do if the stream is more 'distinct' from other streams, as well). Tor is a tool which serves to significantly increase the cost of undermining user privacy, and while it is true that it should not be treated as some end-all-be-all of internet privacy, I fail to understand why it should be discarded, rather than treated as just one of a number of tools in the toolkit. For example, if you are attempting to make it more difficult for these global adversaries to trace you, you may consider physical indirection (driving around), adding a layer of wireless relays before the connection to the Internet backbone, exclusion of relays in countries which your own nation can more easily influence in your torrc file, inducing dummy traffic in some capacity, preferring anonymity over pseudonymity, and a myriad of other techniques.

LMYahooTFY 5y ago

Did they ever present you with evidence of anything? From what I've heard it's quite possible to identify Tor traffic if you're determined enough. Perhaps they were pressuring you because they thought you were running a relay/node?

brightball 5y ago
Maxmind API's will identify Tor traffic pretty reliably fwiw. I tried Tor one time years ago when I was testing Maxmind. It always seemed like if you were using it you'd become an exit node by default (I could be completely wrong on this, I haven't looked into deeply). Just gave me the impression that my IP address would suddenly be associated with whatever anyone else was doing and that seemed...bad. Totally understand that there are plenty of perfectly valid uses of Tor but you don't really hear much about those.
- miloignis 5y ago
  Exit nodes are specifically set up and run, you do not become one by default. Using the Tor browser doesn't even make you a relay node: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-33/ https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-33/
  - brightball 5y ago
    That’s good to know.