[arma at mit.edu: Re: Wikipedia & Tor]

[lists]

Tyler Durden wrote:
> Sorry...I don't understand...why would psuedonymity services be provided 
> within Tor?
> 

I find the concept of having both pseudonymous and anonymous traffic
through TOR quite interesting. In some cases, you really do wish to just
separate yourself from your meatspace identity but you may want the
reputation of a bitspace identity; in other cases, you want to
completely separate yourself from any identity. There are audited
anonymizers that provide a form of pseudonymity, in that, they know who
you are and can regulate your behavior accordingly. These are generally
in the commercial space. Building a TOR nymspace would be much more
interesting and distributed.

TOR itself does not necessarily have to deal with this. There could be
services flowing through TOR that provide this. However, TOR nodes
implementing pseudonymous traffic for their own network seems more
natural and easier to do. Entry/exit nodes, some nodes, all nodes, or
whatever subset makes the most sense could then authenticate
pseudonymous traffic and determine capabilities based on things like
reputation.

But, that was not a why. Anonymity has the property of removing
responsibility from the actor for their actions, which is not always a
good thing. I am sure TOR exit nodes are hit with the responsibility for
those actors, which can lead to the end of exit nodes. At a minimum,
pseudonymity can provide a degree of responsibility through reputation.
Exit nodes could support either pseudo or anon, or both, depending on
beliefs, risks, etc. Also, users could select anon or pseudo as needed.
I like choice.

Anyway, that is a why and an interesting topic, but TOR has other things
to focus on.

-Andrew