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I agree that they are vastly inflating the utility of Tor for people in repressive regimes given how easy it is to block Tor at an ISP level (e.g. Tor is comple

I agree that they are vastly inflating the utility of Tor for people in repressive regimes given how easy it is to block Tor at an ISP level (e.g. Tor is completely blocked in China).

ossreality 12y ago
Do you understand how the internet works? Probably not.
canjobear 12y ago
They pointedly didn't mention China in their list of repressive regimes: "Iran, Syria, and Russia". I think for most people, China is the first country that comes to mind when you think about internet censorship. But my experience is that it is impossible to connect to Tor there. Maybe they are acknowledging that tacitly. Or maybe they were trying to make the blog post more palatable to US government readers, since Iran, Syria, and Russia are currently bad guys, while things with China are supposed to be fine.
- wfn 12y ago
  As 'blunder has mentioned elsewhere, you should use pluggable transports (try obfs3, scramblesuit, fte in https://bridges.torproject.org/options https://bridges.torproject.org/options) when in mainland China. Don't use vanilla Tor bridges or vanilla Tor there.
justcommenting 12y ago
there are ~1200 directly connecting users [0] and ~200 bridge users [1] who might dispute the assertion that 'Tor is completely blocked in China'. instead of casting aspersions on a free software project, i would encourage you to please help make tor more useful for these users, or to build your own alternative. [0] https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2014-09-21&end=2014-12-20&country=cn&events=off https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?... [1] https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?graph=userstats-bridge-country&start=2014-09-21&end=2014-12-20&country=cn https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html...
- olalonde 12y ago
  There is a small subset of IPs in the Shanghai Free-trade Zone which are not subject to the same Internet restrictions as the rest of China. This along with government IPs and inaccurate IP-to-country mappings could account for those stats. For comparison, there are more than 300000 users in the US for a country that is considerably smaller in terms of population. For what it's worth, I have unsuccessfully tried using Tor (and Tor bridges) a few times in Shenzhen and I'm a lot more tech savvy than your average political dissident. Tor's blog even has a post about how it is being blocked in China if you don't believe me: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/closer-look-great-firewall-china https://blog.torproject.org/blog/closer-look-great-firewall-... > instead of casting aspersions on a free software project, i would encourage you to please help make tor more useful for these users, or to build your own alternative I doubt I could build a better alternative and I was not criticising the Tor project as a whole.
  - blunder 12y ago
    Try using obfuscated bridges [1] next time you're in China. [1] - https://bridges.torproject.org/options https://bridges.torproject.org/options
ikawe 12y ago
If you, like me, didn't know how Tor is being blocked in China: https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protected-files/winter_foci12_slides.pdf https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protec... Interestingly it's partially the same issue - the directory servers have static IP's. ISP's are simply blocking traffic to these directory server IPs. Without access to the directory servers, can you still use Tor? Also see above article for thoughts on how to circumvent this mode of censorship.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dsl 12y ago
  Tor has a network of unpublished bridges it provides via offline methods in high risk countries. You can also request unpublished bridges via email [1]. Pluggable transports [2] allow your tor traffic to look like Skype or SSL. These tools combined allow most of the "noble use cases" of tor to operate without being hunted down. 1. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en 2. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en#PluggableTransports https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en#PluggableTra...
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  The last update I heard is that the GFW does active probing to detect Tor bridges and relays. That is, there are computers inside China that are triggered by something, which then actually speak the Tor protocol to an IP to check if it's capable of subverting the firewall. If so, it gets blocked. There isn't really any way around that which scales, which is why Tor is basically a non-entity in China right now. Everyone I know from the west who spends time in China just uses commercial VPN services, not Tor.

I agree that they are vastly inflating the utility of Tor for people in repressive regimes given how easy it is to block Tor at an ISP level (e.g. Tor is completely blocked in China).

ossreality 12y ago

Do you understand how the internet works? Probably not.

canjobear 12y ago

They pointedly didn't mention China in their list of repressive regimes: "Iran, Syria, and Russia". I think for most people, China is the first country that comes to mind when you think about internet censorship. But my experience is that it is impossible to connect to Tor there. Maybe they are acknowledging that tacitly. Or maybe they were trying to make the blog post more palatable to US government readers, since Iran, Syria, and Russia are currently bad guys, while things with China are supposed to be fine.

wfn 12y ago
As 'blunder has mentioned elsewhere, you should use pluggable transports (try obfs3, scramblesuit, fte in https://bridges.torproject.org/options https://bridges.torproject.org/options) when in mainland China. Don't use vanilla Tor bridges or vanilla Tor there.

justcommenting 12y ago

there are ~1200 directly connecting users [0] and ~200 bridge users [1] who might dispute the assertion that 'Tor is completely blocked in China'. instead of casting aspersions on a free software project, i would encourage you to please help make tor more useful for these users, or to build your own alternative. [0] https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2014-09-21&end=2014-12-20&country=cn&events=off https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?... [1] https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?graph=userstats-bridge-country&start=2014-09-21&end=2014-12-20&country=cn https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html...

olalonde 12y ago
There is a small subset of IPs in the Shanghai Free-trade Zone which are not subject to the same Internet restrictions as the rest of China. This along with government IPs and inaccurate IP-to-country mappings could account for those stats. For comparison, there are more than 300000 users in the US for a country that is considerably smaller in terms of population. For what it's worth, I have unsuccessfully tried using Tor (and Tor bridges) a few times in Shenzhen and I'm a lot more tech savvy than your average political dissident. Tor's blog even has a post about how it is being blocked in China if you don't believe me: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/closer-look-great-firewall-china https://blog.torproject.org/blog/closer-look-great-firewall-... > instead of casting aspersions on a free software project, i would encourage you to please help make tor more useful for these users, or to build your own alternative I doubt I could build a better alternative and I was not criticising the Tor project as a whole.
- blunder 12y ago
  Try using obfuscated bridges [1] next time you're in China. [1] - https://bridges.torproject.org/options https://bridges.torproject.org/options

ikawe 12y ago

If you, like me, didn't know how Tor is being blocked in China: https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protected-files/winter_foci12_slides.pdf https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protec... Interestingly it's partially the same issue - the directory servers have static IP's. ISP's are simply blocking traffic to these directory server IPs. Without access to the directory servers, can you still use Tor? Also see above article for thoughts on how to circumvent this mode of censorship.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dsl 12y ago
Tor has a network of unpublished bridges it provides via offline methods in high risk countries. You can also request unpublished bridges via email [1]. Pluggable transports [2] allow your tor traffic to look like Skype or SSL. These tools combined allow most of the "noble use cases" of tor to operate without being hunted down. 1. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en 2. https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en#PluggableTransports https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en#PluggableTra...
mike_hearn 12y ago
The last update I heard is that the GFW does active probing to detect Tor bridges and relays. That is, there are computers inside China that are triggered by something, which then actually speak the Tor protocol to an IP to check if it's capable of subverting the firewall. If so, it gets blocked. There isn't really any way around that which scales, which is why Tor is basically a non-entity in China right now. Everyone I know from the west who spends time in China just uses commercial VPN services, not Tor.