7 ms·

Swedish aid money to Tor, online activism

50 points by jacobr 14y ago

hastur 14y ago
Wow, this is awesome. While the world's biggest "democracy" (India) censors the web, Swedish government sponsors means of dissidence.
- daeken 14y ago
  FYI, Tor was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Lab, and the US has always been a pretty bad player in this regard (though more so now than in the past).
  - maayank 14y ago
    whenever I discuss Tor with people who have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, I hear "yea, but it was funded by the US so it probably has a backdoor/wouldn't be funded if they couldn't read the data". I don't agree with that, but what can you say other than "it's open source so many eyeballs are auditing it"?
    - aurelianito 14y ago
      Besides that, I use to say that I would not put a backdoor in the system used by my spies to communicate. It would be really dangerous for me if it fallen in the wrong hands.
      - im3w1l 14y ago
        if messageSigned (msg, nsaPublicKey): obey
        jlgreco 14y ago
        Now hide that. Any backdoor in TOR that could remain hidden for so long would have to be a protocol flaw. Implementation changes too much to rely on an obfuscated 'bug' and anything as straightforward as your suggestion would simply be found and removed immediately. Protocol flaws can of course be found and used by anyone.
        polshaw 14y ago
        I am no expert, but I thought the weakness of tor was that a goverment could control many of the exit nodes (combied with timing attacks to find the user?), since most users don't want to run them for fear of being arrested for whatever the users were doing on the network?
- sdqali 14y ago
  I, as an Indian am tired of the 'World's Biggest Democracy' label. I feel it is a clever way for India's politicians to mask huge problems we face as a democracy - rampant social inequality, throwing money at problems that need creative solutions cotinuous effort and commitment etc. Except for very few states, turn up for elections seldom crosses 50%. If the number of people participating is the measure for biggest, I would think there are other places with bigger participation in the electoral process.
  - polshaw 14y ago
    >huge problems.. social inequality.. turn up for elections seldom crosses 50% Sorry to be depressing, but that sounds pretty par-for-the-course democracy to me. Particularly the turn out.
  - celer 14y ago
    As an American in politics, I dearly wish I could get 35% of my countrymen to vote in the elections that most impact their lives.
Yrlec 14y ago
Sweden is a really amazing country! In addition to being a well functioning democracy it also has these features: * A flourishing market economy that has created everything from IKEA and H&M to Spotify and Skype. * Free health-care * Free college education * Low corruption * A well functioning justice system (practically no patent trolls!) It certainly has it's problems but compared to other countries it is truly amazing how it has managed to balance social well-fare and capitalism. Disclosure: I am Swedish.
- kryptiskt 14y ago
  > (practically no patent trolls!) There is Håkan Lans, probably the patent troll with the best PR in the world.
  - Yrlec 14y ago
    But he's suing in the U.S. Not in Sweden.
- T-A 14y ago
  It also has the FRA law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law which lets it legally do what it wants to prevent other governments from doing. Because they are, you know, not the Swedish government. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
  - Yrlec 14y ago
    I agree that the FRA-law is incredibly bad but overall I still think Sweden is a lot better at protecting civil liberties than most other nations.
  - bjelkeman-again 14y ago
    Indeed, and we work on at rolling that back. A whole lot of other governments have the same stuff, I would hazard to guess that they all do (Eschelon for example) and Sweden has actually been open about the fact that it has it, and has shown how the oversight is being done, whereas with other governments this is all a secret. Not justifying it, but just saying that because Sweden has said it does this, doesn't mean it is the worst or the only government spying on Internet traffic. Indeed: I am a Swede.
joelhaasnoot 14y ago
Dutch government is also supporting similar efforts, seems together with the US governement. http://www.nu.nl/internet/2688855/nederland-steekt-6-miljoen-in-internetvrijheid.html http://www.nu.nl/internet/2688855/nederland-steekt-6-miljoen... (Dutch link) We then proceed to accept new laws regulating net neutrality, but all major ISPs by next tuesday have to block the Pirate Bay. Something seems wrong...

50 points by jacobr 14y ago

Wow, this is awesome. While the world's biggest "democracy" (India) censors the web, Swedish government sponsors means of dissidence.

daeken 14y ago
FYI, Tor was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Lab, and the US has always been a pretty bad player in this regard (though more so now than in the past).
- maayank 14y ago
  whenever I discuss Tor with people who have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, I hear "yea, but it was funded by the US so it probably has a backdoor/wouldn't be funded if they couldn't read the data". I don't agree with that, but what can you say other than "it's open source so many eyeballs are auditing it"?
  - aurelianito 14y ago
    Besides that, I use to say that I would not put a backdoor in the system used by my spies to communicate. It would be really dangerous for me if it fallen in the wrong hands.
    - im3w1l 14y ago
      if messageSigned (msg, nsaPublicKey): obey
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Now hide that. Any backdoor in TOR that could remain hidden for so long would have to be a protocol flaw. Implementation changes too much to rely on an obfuscated 'bug' and anything as straightforward as your suggestion would simply be found and removed immediately. Protocol flaws can of course be found and used by anyone.
        polshaw 14y ago
        I am no expert, but I thought the weakness of tor was that a goverment could control many of the exit nodes (combied with timing attacks to find the user?), since most users don't want to run them for fear of being arrested for whatever the users were doing on the network?
sdqali 14y ago
I, as an Indian am tired of the 'World's Biggest Democracy' label. I feel it is a clever way for India's politicians to mask huge problems we face as a democracy - rampant social inequality, throwing money at problems that need creative solutions cotinuous effort and commitment etc. Except for very few states, turn up for elections seldom crosses 50%. If the number of people participating is the measure for biggest, I would think there are other places with bigger participation in the electoral process.
- polshaw 14y ago
  >huge problems.. social inequality.. turn up for elections seldom crosses 50% Sorry to be depressing, but that sounds pretty par-for-the-course democracy to me. Particularly the turn out.
- celer 14y ago
  As an American in politics, I dearly wish I could get 35% of my countrymen to vote in the elections that most impact their lives.

Yrlec 14y ago

Sweden is a really amazing country! In addition to being a well functioning democracy it also has these features: * A flourishing market economy that has created everything from IKEA and H&M to Spotify and Skype. * Free health-care * Free college education * Low corruption * A well functioning justice system (practically no patent trolls!) It certainly has it's problems but compared to other countries it is truly amazing how it has managed to balance social well-fare and capitalism. Disclosure: I am Swedish.

kryptiskt 14y ago
> (practically no patent trolls!) There is Håkan Lans, probably the patent troll with the best PR in the world.
- Yrlec 14y ago
  But he's suing in the U.S. Not in Sweden.
T-A 14y ago
It also has the FRA law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law which lets it legally do what it wants to prevent other governments from doing. Because they are, you know, not the Swedish government. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
- Yrlec 14y ago
  I agree that the FRA-law is incredibly bad but overall I still think Sweden is a lot better at protecting civil liberties than most other nations.
- bjelkeman-again 14y ago
  Indeed, and we work on at rolling that back. A whole lot of other governments have the same stuff, I would hazard to guess that they all do (Eschelon for example) and Sweden has actually been open about the fact that it has it, and has shown how the oversight is being done, whereas with other governments this is all a secret. Not justifying it, but just saying that because Sweden has said it does this, doesn't mean it is the worst or the only government spying on Internet traffic. Indeed: I am a Swede.

joelhaasnoot 14y ago

Dutch government is also supporting similar efforts, seems together with the US governement. http://www.nu.nl/internet/2688855/nederland-steekt-6-miljoen-in-internetvrijheid.html http://www.nu.nl/internet/2688855/nederland-steekt-6-miljoen... (Dutch link) We then proceed to accept new laws regulating net neutrality, but all major ISPs by next tuesday have to block the Pirate Bay. Something seems wrong...