...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/30/pakistan-bans-encryption-softwar...

It is very bad news because I am affraid that another tyrannical regimes such as Russian can make do it too. But it seems to me that Tor-users can use bridges and etc. for avoiding repressive measures from "law enforcement bodies" of their countries (if the termin "law is applicable to such bodies :) ).

Hi Orionjur, Sorry to burst your bubble, but Russia is one of the last places I can imagine banning VPN's and Tor, especially from what I gather from my contacts in Russia... the FSB already has direct access to all Internet connection hubs (i.e. in an apartment building), completely by-passing ISPs and legal requirements! Have you seen the Russian net? The amount of piracy (as well as Tor traffic!) that goes through there is staggering! Regardless of all of the capabilities, authorities are simply not interested in you unless you *really* step on some toes (and, hint hint, running a Tor relay or exit node hasn't drawn their wrath so far)... And if you do happen to be such a person, it is much easier to break your door down using existing laws (using the crackdown on pirate copies of Windows as an excuse, for example) than amending the laws to include VPNs! But you're definitely right about the danger of the capability to block VPN's - I thought it was restricted to China and other such extreme regimes. If they can break your door down *just* because they're seeing encrypted traffic, there's definitely a problem! Which, of course, doesn't eliminate false positives, like running Facebook with the https always option turned on, or gmail, or any other SSL-encrypted site... -- GPG Key: CF345FAE _______________________________________________ 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