Hi tor-talk! This is a request for input. Pedagogical input, but I'm also aware of how crazy smart you all are in general! About six months ago, one of you described vaguely how your servers were seized by German cops and you explained to the police how Tor works using envelopes within envelopes. I had the thought that this kind of a technique could be really helpful in teaching non-technical folks how some aspects of Tor works through a hands-on demonstration. This semester, I'm teaching a class of upper-division undergraduate students in a Communications department at NYU about privacy. I want them to know more about Tor, and thankfully I have Runa and Aaron stopping by my class. woo! However, I sat down recently and tried to sketch out how an in-class hands-on exercise might work that explained some of the core features of Tor. Here is the result: https://josephhall.org/tor/tor-exercise.html https://josephhall.org/tor/tor-exercise.text (Markdown input) This is my first draft. It really only works with a small class (mine is 11) or a sub-set of a larger class. It also doesn't let the students choose much about the messaging (this is to avoid distractions like the hunky guy getting a bunch of love letters during an in-class exercise! ... or more negative versions of the same.). However, it has some serious flaws... for example, the students don't "build circuits" through successive tunnels; the circuits are sort of handed to them. Also, the way it works right now the instructor is a central big brother node. I have tried to think about ways students could be assigned a message and recipient and then roll dice to decide the circuit path, but nothing seems terribly workable (and I don't want it to get much more complex!). Another self-criticism is that it's not immediately apparent what part of this who charade Tor takes care of. ::) So, having a real physical demonstration of onion-routing may be unrealistic... but I'm wondering if you all have comments or better ideas about how to make it realistic without making it terribly complex (Ideally, smart high school or grammar school students could be taught about Tor using this kind of an exercise). best and thanks, Joe -- Joseph Lorenzo Hall Postdoctoral Research Fellow Media, Culture and Communication New York University https://josephhall.org/ _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk@lists.torproject.org 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://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE