Internet Anonymity: Tor
Unless you’re a security nerd (or paranoiac… wait, is there a difference?), you probably haven’t heard of Tor, The Onion-skin Router. Brought to us by the freedom-loving EFF, this program tries to do one-step better than a proxy: it actually randomly shuffles your packets around in its network so nobody can tell where they came from. It’s perfect for whistleblowing, government criticism, or keeping large corporations from building “psycographic profiles” of you. You can use it for more than web browsing as well - for instance, you can anonymize chat if you want to talk in a rape survivor chatroom.
Sound great? It did to me too, until I tried it - it is extremely slow. The install was easy, they have a lot of tips on the website on how you can guarantee anonymity, but it’s just too slow to use all the time. You probably want to avoid it unless you really need anonymity. But therein lies the problem - the network loses value if it’s not big and full of traffic. If it’s so slow, who is going to be using it unless they really have something to hide?
It’s the kind of thing that I really want to see succeed, and I suggest you use it if you don’t want Google, Myspace, or Youtube to build a comprehensive profile of you. But the performance hit is so large I can’t yet recommend it to everyone, which is what it needs to be successful. Install it, think about running a node, but maybe keep it turned off unless you really don’t want anyone knowing what kind of porn you like.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Psychographic profiles autocompiled by searching is bad. Online profiles constructed by you on those 7 social networking sites on your homepage is good. Anonymity by default, however, is also bad, because allowing people to hide behind a mask tends to lead to fuckwaddage (cf. your SL post).
I agree with all of those statements too. But there’s some kind of contradiction buried there. Perhaps our online profiles could be automatically compiled by our activity and actions and we would be as naked to each other as before the eyes of God. Would that be good? Would it be good if it wasn’t chained directly to marketing and corporate profit? Or would that always be an Orwellian nightmare, and if so, why exactly is it bad?
May 9th, 2007 at 10:32 am
So, 2 points:
1) Is there a contradiction in giving away information the same time as wanting to hide it?
No, because it’s different information. I don’t tell you in my friendster profile that I like to look at rotten.com if I want to keep that private. However, if I’m not actively protecting my privacy, others could know this - not only rotten.com, but their advertisers (if they have any, I am scared to check), my DNS provider, and my ISP. That’s a lot of people who know something that I decided not to make public.
Now, I could be hiding some genuinely bad thing. I could have done something illegal, or I could have just done something mean that would hurt my reputation. Maybe I’m a rabbi and I cursed at a child who wouldn’t recognize me. The e-version of this is maybe I PK’d in a counterstrike game against my own clan with a throwaway player name for fun. There’s definitely a contradiction if my public image says I’m the opposite, but sometimes people violate their own identity. That’s not a contradiction inherent to privacy though.
2) Is it intrinsically bad if we lose all privacy, or is it only bad because we lose privacy to assholes?
I think the answer is yes it is intrinsically bad, but it’s a nebulous opinion that I haven’t investigated in any rigorous manner. I feel like “big brother” always creates just that. One case where that hasn’t happened yet is Google. I think part of the reason they haven’t become big brother yet is precisely because they are aware of the danger and prevent themselves from doing so. They throw away data; what oppressor does that? I’m not saying it’ll never happen - what happens if management changes there?
The people I really worry about are AT&T and Comcast. They have WAY more info than google does, and I haven’t heard anything convincing and positive about what they do with my data other than, you know, give it to the NSA.