- cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Re: Is the Wikileaks Party a cypherpunk party?
by James A. Donald 18 Aug '13

18 Aug '13

On 2013-08-17 8:01 PM, CryptoFreak wrote: > While I'm American, I've been paying close attention to the Wikileaks > Party in Australia. Could it be the political embodiment of the > cypherpunk movement? > > Regardless of what some think of Julian Assange, he certainly holds > true to the cp ethic and the parties belief in accountability, > privacy, and justice, seem well aligned with the movement. > > So what do you think? Is their finally a political party more closely > aligned with the cypherpunk ideal than the Libertarians? > > Regards, > CryptoFreak > Libertarian Party, and its organs, such as "Reason" Magazine, have not been libertarian for some considerable time. As the inner party (Democrats) and the Outer Party (Republicans) continue to move left on racial and sexual differences and on sexual preferences, the "Libertarians" attempt to maintain a a "balanced" position between them - which means that they steadily move left on these issues, adopting ever less libertarian positions, positions that a decade or two ago would have been seen not merely as statist, but as insanely statist. They theoretically support the abolition of welfare and open borders, but actually support open borders with welfare for underclass immigrant bastard spawn, a disturbingly different proposition. In California, we are getting more Indios than Mestizos. They did not work in Mexico, and even less are they working in California. They theoretically support freedom of speech, but repression of speech on racial and sexual differences is just fine by them. They theoretically oppose welfare, but do not actually oppose welfare. They oppose profiling - you are allowed to reason about some matters, but not others. The took a "balanced" position on the Zimmerman case "President Obama spoke some undeniable truths when he noted that the African-American community’s intense reaction to the case must be seen in the context of a long, terrible history of racism" "No one except Zimmerman knows whether he continued to track Martin—or, as he claims, headed back to his truck only to have Martin confront him. No one but Zimmerman knows who initiated physical violence" In fact we have compelling forensic and circumstantial evidence that Zimmerman spoke the truth on both of these questions. Reason Magazine is lying, they are merely lying less egregiously than the rest of the mainstream media. Their position is "reasonable doubt", whereas in fact we have enough evidence to convict Martin Trayvon, a drug addled burglar, had he lived. When discussing this case "Reason" regularly make the pious affirmation that the poor blacks are being victimized by evil whites, while, Martin Trayvon exemplifies black privilege, both in his reaction that Zimmerman dissed him by profiling him as the drug addled burglar that he in fact was, and in that for affirmative action reasons he was not charged with burglary under circumstances where a white boy at the same school would have certainly been charged with burglary. (The government did not like the criminal system having disparate impact on the kids in that school, and were taking affirmative action measures to correct the disturbing fact that lots of black kids were being imprisoned, and few or no white kids - since equal discipline and law enforcement had unequal consequences, they were applying unequal discipline and law enforcement. ) When reason magazine discusses the curious anomalies leading to massively unequal university education for males and females, their explanation for all discrepancies favoring women is that women are wonderful, even though many of these discrepancies are demonstrably the result of systematic discrimination against males and intentional penalization of males for being male. All increases in female representation in academia and decreases in male representation, are, according to reason magazine, sunshine, lollypops and rainbows, a manifestation of the fact that decreases in evil sexism now allow women to demonstrate their true abilities, which are of course equal to men, except that women, being wonderful, are a lot more equal than men.

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[tt] NYT: Microsatellites: What Big Eyes They Have
by Eugen Leitl 17 Aug '13

17 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Frank Forman <checker(a)panix.com> ----- Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:19:39 +0000 (GMT) From: Frank Forman <checker(a)panix.com> To: Transhuman Tech <tt(a)postbiota.org> Subject: [tt] NYT: Microsatellites: What Big Eyes They Have Microsatellites: What Big Eyes They Have http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/business/microsatellites-what-big-eyes-th… By ANNE EISENBERG PEOPLE already worried about the candid cameras on Google Glass and low-flying drones can add a new potential snooper to the list: cameras on inexpensive, low-orbiting microsatellites that will soon be sending back frequent, low-cost snapshots of most of Earth's populated regions from space. They won't be the first cameras out there, of course. Earth-imaging satellites the size of vans have long circled the globe, but those cost millions of dollars each to build and launch, in part because of their weight and specialized hardware. The new satellites, with some of the same off-the-shelf miniaturized technology that has made smartphones and laptops so powerful, will be far less expensive. The view from high up is rich in untapped data, said Paul Saffo, a forecaster and essayist. He expects the new satellite services to find many customers. Insurance companies, for example, could use the satellites' "before" and "after" views to monitor insured property and validate claims after a disaster. Businesses that update online maps for geologists, city planners or disaster relief officials could be customers, too. The images could also be used to monitor problems like deforestation, melting icecaps and overfishing. And food companies and commodities traders could use the images to keep track of crops and agricultural yields all over the planet, Mr. Saffo predicted. But the images are also likely to be viewed as the latest mixed blessing by people already apprehensive of Big Brother-like surveillance in their lives. First into space in the microsatellite business will be the San Francisco company Planet Labs, which plans to launch a fleet of 28 small satellites at the end of the year that will photograph the planet around the clock, with frequent updates. The company has already sent up two trial satellites for test runs, and will dispatch the entire set, called Flock-1, in December, said Will Marshall, a co-founder of the company and a former NASA scientist. The Planet Labs' satellites won't be able to distinguish your face or read your license plate--the cameras don't have that level of resolution. But the frequency with which images can be updated could raise privacy questions, said Timothy Edgar, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and a former director of privacy and civil liberties in the Obama administration. Mr. Edgar contrasted the satellite images with those provided by Google Earth--the ones that people zoom in on to see, for example, an aerial view of their homes."That's just an image of your house that was probably taken a few years ago," he said. "It may feel like you are being watched, but you aren't. It's just a static picture that's most likely several years old." But a satellite that regularly passes over your cabin deep in the woods and photographs a car that is sometimes parked there--and sometimes not--has different ramifications. "It can show a pattern, for example, when you appear to be at home and when you're away," he said. Planet Labs' technology, like that at other microsatellite companies such as Skybox Imaging, are benefiting from the progressive miniaturization of consumer electronic components, along with a federal effort to commercialize space. "What we are seeing are smaller satellites that have similar capabilities to much larger, traditional satellites," said Glenn Lightsey, a professor at the University of Texas who founded and directs the Texas Spacecraft Lab there. "Since putting a satellite in orbit is a function of its size, these new satellites are able to get into orbit at a much lower cost," he said. The lightweight satellites have another advantage: the companies don't have to spend millions of dollars for a rocket to get them into space. Instead, they can hitch a ride as a secondary payload on a rocket already making the trip. Planet Labs will send its satellites on an Antares rocket when it heads out on a cargo transportation flight to the International Space Station. Investors have flocked to the new satellite companies, though neither Planet Labs nor Skybox Imaging has disclosed what it will charge customers. Planet Labs has obtained $13.1 million in funding, led by Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Other backers include O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Data Collective and First Round Capital. Five ground stations will receive the Planet Labs imagery as the satellites pass overhead. Dr. Marshall would not disclose how often the satellites would pass the same spot. "The point is that by putting up lots of satellites, we can image the whole Earth on a much more frequent basis," he said. Skybox Imaging, in Mountain View, Calif., aims to provide sharply detailed images as well as high-definition video with its satellites. The company, which has raised about $91 million, expects to put its SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 satellites into orbit later this year, said Dan Berkenstock, a co-founder, and then follow with a group totaling 24 satellites. Customers will be able to buy images or an appliance to download information directly from the satellite. "They can log onto our satellite and ask it to take pictures," he said. Japan Space Imaging, a subsidiary of the Mitsubishi Corporation, recently signed a contract with Skybox allowing it to directly downlink imagery for agricultural and maritime monitoring as well as for disaster response. Microsatellite services promise a new, accessible way to monitor global changes such as crop growth, said Anthony Janetos, director of Boston University's Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. "You can't understand these forces if you can't measure them," he said. "These services will be useful in gathering those measurements." The new satellites are yet another stage in the expansion of the human view aided by powerful cameras and digital communication, said Mitchell Stephens, a journalism professor at New York University and author of "The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word." This change has pluses and minuses, he observed. People who try to build a private hideaway in the woods might come to realize that it isn't so private. But such images could also spot illegal logging in remote spots. "Now we can have a Godlike view, looking down from the heavens," he said. "I can understand why people would be nervous. But the cameras can make the world more transparent and open. I'm for that." E-mail: novelties(a)nytimes.com. _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt(a)postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [Doctrinezero] A brief note on ZS ideas and the relationship with Marxism, Communism, & The Zeitgeist Movement
by Eugen Leitl 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Rüdiger Koch <rudiger.koch(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:38:29 +0200 From: Rüdiger Koch <rudiger.koch(a)gmail.com> To: doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is Subject: Re: [Doctrinezero] A brief note on ZS ideas and the relationship with Marxism, Communism, & The Zeitgeist Movement Reply-To: doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is Power comes from control over the monetary system. Remove that - walk away from the bank and their power gets diminished. That is why Austria stomped on the Wörgl experiment. That is why they go against Bitcoin and other alternatives with such a vengeance - it is by no means justified by the actual size of the currency. Money is their power and their Achilles' heel. Try to overthrow them - the Stasi knows about your plans before you know them - failure at a very early stage is inevitable. Violence is futile. But get them at the money - by walking away from it, and they will be as powerful as the ancient gods. How did they lose their power? People walked away from them. What can we do? We define our own money. Bitcoin is a start. Zero Reserve is a perfect complement. It closes the main vulnerability of Bitcoin - the centralizen exchanges. Zero Reserve has the potential to obsolete the banks. It can democratize money. It allows everyone, literally everyone, to act like a bank. Zero Reserve is real. It is a workable plan. We can do it without parliaments, lobbying or anything - by simply doing it. Will it create a perfect world? No. Miracles are for religion. This is it: https://github.com/zeroreserve/ZeroReserve/wiki You can keep talking about the perfect world. You can talk about redistributing money. I talk about *distributing the monetary system*. And I am not just talking - I am programming the means to it. Distributing the monetary system is one of the few good chances I see to avert the desaster of the coming crash. Much of the value that is produced is consumed by the monetary system. Make this system obsolete and everyone can be much richer than today. We need not fear the robotic revolution if access to the means of production is possible for everyone. But to permit that, first we have to obsolete the monetary system. -Anu _______________________________________________ Doctrinezero mailing list Doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is Unsubscribe: https://lists.zerostate.is/mailman/listinfo/doctrinezero ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [cryptography] LeastAuthority.com announces PRISM-proof storage service
by Eugen Leitl 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from zooko <zooko(a)zooko.com> ----- Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 23:11:22 +0400 From: zooko <zooko(a)zooko.com> To: Nico Williams <nico(a)cryptonector.com> Cc: cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] LeastAuthority.com announces PRISM-proof storage service User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 03:16:33PM -0500, Nico Williams wrote: > > Nothing really gets anyone past the enormous supply of zero-day vulns in their complete stacks. In the end I assume there's no technological PRISM workarounds. I agree that compromise of the client is relevant. My current belief is that nobody is doing this on a mass scale, pwning entire populations at once, and that if they do, we will find out about it. My goal with the S4 product is not primarily to help people who are being targeted by their enemies, but to increase the cost of indiscriminately surveilling entire populations. Now maybe it was a mistake to label it as "PRISM-Proof" in our press release and media interviews! I said that because to me "PRISM" means mass surveillance of innocents. Perhaps to other people it doesn't mean that. Oops! Regards, Zooko _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [cryptography] LeastAuthority.com announces PRISM-proof storage service
by Eugen Leitl 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from zooko <zooko(a)zooko.com> ----- Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 23:05:24 +0400 From: zooko <zooko(a)zooko.com> To: Nicolai <nicolai-cryptography(a)chocolatine.org> Cc: cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] LeastAuthority.com announces PRISM-proof storage service User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 01:52:38PM -0500, Nicolai wrote: > > Zooko: Congrats on the service. I'm wondering if you could mention on the site which primitives are used client-side. All I see is that combinations of sftp and ssl are used for data-in-flight. Thanks! I'm not sure what your question is. The available interfaces to the gateway -- i.e. the cleartext side that is marked in red on [1] -- are: * the "tahoe" command-line tool [2] * your unadorned web browser, even with JavaScript turned off, pointed at the gateway over localhost (or over SSL to a remote host, or whatever you want) * your FTP or SFTP client * FUSE (although in a Rube Goldberg-esque setup where FUSE is chained to the aforementioned SFTP server through the "sshfs" tool; Like a Rube Goldberg device, it actually does work once you get all the pieces set up next to each other.) The semantics of what you can do with this are described in summary here: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/docs/about.rst#access-… And in much more detail in the documentation pages linked from there. Does that answer your question? Regards, Zooko [1] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/chrome/LAFS.svg [2] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/docs/frontends/CLI.rst P.S. This is a test of charset handling through GNU screen, mutt, and GNU mailman: ¹ (That should be a superscript "1".) _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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"Don't use LastPass"
by Kyle Maxwell 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

Anyone more qualified than me (read: nearly everyone on this list) wish to comment on this analysis of a crypto-related vulnerability disclosure in LastPass? http://tobtu.com/lastpass.php -- @kylemaxwell

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New Wikileaks insurance files
by Max R.D Parmer 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

Quite a lot. Around 400G. Initial tweets: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/368411280622620672 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/368411399053008896 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/368411566229577728 Probably Snowden's collection, given the size. Maybe indicates the heat on WL/Snowden is cranking up? Did WL entrust the passphrase(s) to folks more or less likely to randomly publish them this time?[1] > $ for file in `cat dl.txt`; do echo $file; curl -I $file; done; > http://wlstorage.net/file/wlinsurance-20130815-A.aes256 > HTTP/1.1 200 OK > Server: nginx/0.7.67 > Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:05:09 GMT > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > Connection: keep-alive > Content-Length: 3565158464 > Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 20:38:46 GMT > X-CDN: a > Accept-Ranges: bytes > > http://wlstorage.net/file/wlinsurance-20130815-B.aes256 > HTTP/1.1 200 OK > Server: nginx/0.7.67 > Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:05:09 GMT > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > Connection: keep-alive > Content-Length: 49912218080 > Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:10:48 GMT > X-CDN: a > Accept-Ranges: bytes > > http://wlstorage.net/file/wlinsurance-20130815-C.aes256 > HTTP/1.1 200 OK > Server: nginx/0.7.67 > Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:05:15 GMT > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > Connection: keep-alive > Content-Length: 349385526464 > Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 19:08:57 GMT > X-CDN: a > Accept-Ranges: bytes [1]: http://www.wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html -- @maximus_freeman 0x7D964D3361142ACF

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Re: [guardian-dev] An email service that requires GPG/PGP?
by Eugen Leitl 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Tom Ritter <tom(a)ritter.vg> ----- Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:12:24 -0400 From: Tom Ritter <tom(a)ritter.vg> To: Richard <rz(a)linux-m68k.org> Cc: guardian-dev <guardian-dev(a)lists.mayfirst.org>, liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [guardian-dev] An email service that requires GPG/PGP? On 14 August 2013 18:01, Richard <rz(a)linux-m68k.org> wrote: > On the other end of the paranoia scale I would like to remind folks of the > the mixmaster remailer chaining technique which does much more than plain > encryption - as far as I can see it is theoretically completely untraceable. That statement is not correct. Mix networks require more effort to trace than normal packets or Onion Routing, but are not even close to "theoretically completely untraceable". I'll point to Syverson's papers (Why I'm not an entropist, and Sleeping dogs lie in a bed of onions) and Serjantov's "From a Trickle to a Flood." On 14 August 2013 10:17, Ralph Holz <holz(a)net.in.tum.de> wrote: > Hi Tom > >> Aside from StartCom (free) most CAs have roughly the same price and >> service. Since service is equivalent, you're free to choose a CA >> based on your political opinion, and not worry about missing out on >> 'features'. It's basically like voting in an election - elections are >> won by tens or hundreds of thousands of votes, so it seems like one >> vote doesn't matter. But it can add up. > > Not sure if you know this one, but this article paints a somewhat more > complex picture of the HTTPS economics. In particular, companies buy > from the big players because, alas and behold, they're too big to fail > and will never be removed from root stores: > > @INPROCEEDINGS{Asghari2013, > author = {Asghari, Hadi and van Eeten, Michel J. G. and Arnbak, Axel > M. and van Eijk, Nico A. N. M.}, > year = {2013}, > month = {March}, > title = {Security Economics in the {HTTPS} value chain}, > location = {Washington, D.C., USA}, > booktitle = {Proc. 12th Ann. Workshop on the Economics of Information > Security (WEIS 2013)}, > } I had not seen that paper, that's cool thanks. However, it seems they're observing data (EFF Observatory and Market Prices) and drawing conclusions about why companies make decisions. It would be easier and more reliable to just... ask the companies why they do what they do. They seem to omit that somewhat important step to support their conclusions. -tom _______________________________________________ Guardian-dev mailing list Post: Guardian-dev(a)lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev To Unsubscribe Send email to: Guardian-dev-unsubscribe(a)lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/guardian-dev/eugen%40leitl.org You are subscribed as: eugen(a)leitl.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [liberationtech] Google confirms critical Android crypto flaw
by Eugen Leitl 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Maxim Kammerer <mk(a)dee.su> ----- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:38:56 +0300 From: Maxim Kammerer <mk(a)dee.su> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Google confirms critical Android crypto flaw Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Nathan of Guardian <nathan(a)guardianproject.info> wrote: > The best description is here: > http://armoredbarista.blogspot.ch/2013/03/randomly-failed-weaknesses-in-jav… Unbelievable… It seems that PRNG implementers suffer from NIH syndrome. If you are going to use /dev/urandom, then use it all the time, and rely on code that's reviewed and maintained by thousands of kernel people, not just your favorite buggy seeded PRNG du-jour. And even sans the bugs, consider something like the following in Apache Harmony (precursor of Dalvik's class library) [1, p. 131]: iv = sha1(iv,concat(state, cnt)); cnt = cnt + 1; return iv; So they're essentially constructing a state-based bit stream that varies in each block, and hash it with SHA-1 — exposing each intermediate hash value in the middle. Who the hell told them it's safe from cryptanalysis POV? E.g., SP800-90A's Hash_DRBG [2, p. 40] resembles nothing of the sort. [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36095-4_9 [2] http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[tor-talk] Flattor: A practical crowdfunded Flattr-like incentive scheme for Tor relays
by Eugen Leitl 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from George Kadianakis <desnacked(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:25:41 +0300 From: George Kadianakis <desnacked(a)riseup.net> To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Flattor: A practical crowdfunded Flattr-like incentive scheme for Tor relays User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5843 Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org ==tldr (Too Long, Didn't Read) Where will Tor's bandwidth come from in 20 years? Will solo volunteers still exist, or will all the bandwidth come from Tor-friendly organizations? Tor incentive schemes are interesting. There are many proposed schemes but their crypto needs to be reviewed and lots of code/spec needs to be written before they can be deployed. This document describes the idea of a Flattr-like crowdfunding model for tor relays. ==Intro (skip if you know why Tor incentive schemes might be useful) One of the goals of Tor is to increase its reach and get tens of millions of Tor users. This makes sense from an anonymity point of view, since an increase on the number of users is also an increase on Tor's anonymity set. One of the problems of scaling Tor to tens of millions of users is that Tor's bandwidth capacity is finite. The current total relay bandwidth is about 4GB/s [0], and it's donated by kind volunteers and various organizations [1]. As the number of users increases, Tor's bandwidth must also increase. Lately the bandwidth coming out of Tor-friendly organizations (like torservers.net, universities, etc.) seems to increase. Currently, there is 50% chance of exiting from an org-controlled exit node, as can be seen in slide 30 of http://freehaven.net/~arma/slides-dimacs13.pdf If this trend continues, Tor might end up looking like the Bitcoin network -- where a number of organizations (mining pools) drive the network. Unfortunately, in contrast with the coin minting of Bitcoin, there is no incentives for organizations to contribute to the Tor network. At the moment, organizations and solo volunteers pay out of their own pocket (or accept donations) to maintain their Tor relays. There must be ways to help reimburse their costs. ==Incentive schemes (feel free to skip if you know this stuff) Incentive schemes for anonymous networks have been extensively researched and there are multiple papers for systems that apply specifically to Tor [2]. Most of those systems require to modify the code of the Tor network, to be able to give "contribution tokens" to relay operators. Then those tokens can be exchanged to get "premium Tor service" or other goods. These systems have a few issues that make them hard to implement and deploy: a) Baking anything inside Tor is a lengthy procedure. Secure designs and code must be written, time must pass for the new code to be deployed and used by the majority of the network, etc. b) These schemes might cause anonymity issues, since the set of people who have "contribution tokens" is smaller than the set of Tor users. The proposed incentive schemes try to fix these issues; for example, LIRA solves it by creating a lottery system (yes, on top of Tor) that rewards "contribution tokens" to random relays. c) Alternative currencies, like "contribution tokens", are not easy to get right. Baking them inside the Tor network is not a trivial task While these proposed "complex" schemes might be The Right Thing for the long-term, we might be able to create an incentive scheme based on already existing technologies; like the bandwidth authorities and Bitcoin. ==Flattor: A simple incentive scheme Flattor is (fictional) software (or a website) that given a Bitcoin wallet and a number of Bitcoins that the user is willing to spend, splits those Bitcoins in chunks and sends them to contributing relay operators. The idea assumes that there is some way to find the Bitcoin address of relay operators. There is no standard way to do so, but operators who are interested in getting reimbursed can put their address in the Contact field of their relay. Flattor uses the bandwidth estimations of Tor to find the contribution factor of each relay. We will assume that these estimates are accurate, since the security of Tor depends on them anyway. As a simplified example, if the Tor network has 4 relays with bandwidth contribution 0.05, 0.05, 0.3 and 0.6 respectively, and the user is willing to spend 1 bitcoin, Flattor will send 0.05, 0.05, 0.3 and 0.6 bitcoins to each relay operator respectively. Of course, this gets more complicated as the number of relays increases, or when only a subset of the relays have a registered bitcoin address, etc. ==Why this might be a good idea It's simple to implement and easy to understand, it doesn't require any Tor code to be written and it can even be started as an unofficial project. Furthermore, it doesn't cause anonymity issues, there are no middlemen, and it doesn't centralize bandwidth to a single relay operator. ==Why this might be a bad idea (This concern is based on a discussion with gmaxwell.) Incentivising Tor relay operators with money is not a good way to run an anonymity network Currently, (we want to believe that) the Tor network is run by a bunch of cypherpunks that are contributing bandwidth because they believe in the Cause. If relay operators start getting money for their bandwidth, we might end up with relay operators that are just in for the money. It might then be easier for a three-letter org to persuade those relay operators to snoop on their users (by giving them double the money they are currently getting). While I agree that this concern is legitimate, I would say that it's pretty far off at the moment: I doubt that anything like Flattor will ever generate a considerable income for anyone. Still, it's something that we should have in mind. (Furthermore, since the Bitcoin blockchain is public you can see how much money each relay operator has gotten so far. Maybe there should be some kind of limit on the number of money each operator should get per time period.) ==Final thoughts There are many details that must be sorted out before Flattr can be implemented. There are also multiple improvements that can be applied on top of the simple model described above. Also, there are ethical issues that spawn up when real money is given to relay operators. My plan was to expand on all these issues in this paragraph, but it seems like I've already spent too many hours writing this document. I'm not planning to implement this system before I hear some opinions from other people. To be honest, I'm not even sure if such an incentive scheme is a good idea, but posting bad ideas to mailing lists is what the Internet is for, right? Thoughts? [0]: https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html#bandwidth [1]: https://metrics.torproject.org/bubbles.html#contact [2]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/two-incentive-designs-tor http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~jansen/papers/lira-ndss2013.pdf (see section 'VI. RELATED WORK' of the LIRA paper) -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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