[tor-talk] Tor in Mexico

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Wed Nov 16 05:04:41 PST 2011


Tor is not alone in misleading users about online security.
It would be worth repeating that security online, as offline,
is always an iffy promise and that communication and
identity-protection caution is a basic requirement.

Offerers of security in whatever guise -- national,
governmental, commercial, organizational, religious,
individual -- are well aware of the limits of what is being 
offered and thus over-promise to conceal those limits.

Security should be understood to mean limited security,
which is how security experts know it. A few of them laugh,
or growl, at the ease with which scoundrels among them
deceive the public. Most, however, enjoy the rewards of 
keeping quiet, or most likely, shading the truth in such a 
way that when vulnerabilities are exposed -- ie, people 
die (far more than sacrosanct journalists, entire duped
populations) -- they roll out the usual exculpations of 
charging the victims with complicity in their suffering 
for believing what they were told.

Never trust a security expert for they an incapable of
knowing the full consequences of what they are advising
about, having been trained to fudge, blather, brag, warn, 
and promulgate the faith.

Security means to blame the victim, that is, require to
the victim to believe in corrupt security, to never doubt 
the security offerers, all of whom are motherfucking 
liars, cheats and false priests, most often in pay of 
those who reap great fortunes fucking the people,
themselves protected by secrecy.

Without secrecy none of this shit would work. Thus,
above all else, cloaking secrecy with evasive bullshit 
is essential, for example, the open source religion
which hides crimes and misdemeanors around
the globe, above and below.

Dinky revelations of vulnerabilities hide great ones.
Thus, the near monthly revelations of data hacking,
the crowing about finding holes, the issuing of new
patches and protections, the revisions of privacy
policies, the proposed new legislation and regulation
to control violations, the warnings of national attacks,
the grandstanding virii of machinic attacks, the calls
for digital identities and banning of anonymity, the
jailing of a few pipsqueak examples, the avoidance

of effective law enforcement and punishment of
major cartels and spy regimes inside and outside 
government, the excusing of corporate and institutional
siphoning of user data, the lack of constraint on military
arms sales and product promotiing wars, well, its a 
long list of what secret security fosters.

Believe nothing you hear about security, should be the
motto required of every peddler and advocate of it.

Alternatives to security are available but get no traction
against the hegemon.




At 11:05 AM 11/16/2011 +0100, you wrote:
>----- Forwarded message from andrew at torproject.org -----
>
>From: andrew at torproject.org
>Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:49:34 -0500
>To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
>Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Tor in Mexico
>User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)
>Reply-To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
>
>On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 08:30:45PM +0100, matej.kovacic at owca.info wrote
1.0K bytes in 28 lines about:
>: The site mentioned (http://www.nuevolaredoenvivo.es.tl/) is promoting
>: Tor use. It seems the victim used Tor, but the gangsters were able to
>: identify and kill him anyway...
>
>There's nothing in the chron.com report, nor that site, that ties Tor
>usage to the targeted/killed people. 
>
>Using a hidden service may help protect both the site and users.
>
>I talked to a journalist from a newspaper in Mexico City concerned about
>journalist safety in light of the ongoing drug wars. Most of the
>discussion was about how internet surveillance can happen and things
>people can do to stay safe, even if they aren't reporting on the drug
>wars.
>
>There was another journalist from an activist organization with the same
>sorts of questions.
>
>In both cases, the bulk of the discussion wasn't around the technology,
>but about the social aspects of anonymity. If you use tor to successfully
>hide from an adversary who runs the ISP, but login to facebook and join
>an anti-zeta group under your real name and profile, well, you've lost
>your anonymity.
>
>I mentioned http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/, specifically
>http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/guide/, as examples of
>places to learn more about blogging/reporting in dangerous areas. CPJ
>also has a guide to reporting in dangerous places,
>https://www.cpj.org/reports/2003/02/journalist-safety-guide.php. 
>
>This violence against journalists (both citizen and traditional) is
>nothing new for lots of places in the world. It seems American's aren't
>used to seeing it this close to our borders,
>https://www.cpj.org/americas/mexico/.
>
>Tor alone cannot save you in completely hostile situations. Understanding
>the environment and making decisions on your own is key. Many people are
>struggling with the understanding part due to being overwhelmed with
>the technical knowledge required to stay completely safe online, yet
>still live in a hostile area. The lack of understanding leads to poor or
>uninformed decisions. No software is going to solve some of these issues.
>
>>From talking to DEA agents and former drug/gang members, the drug cartels
>are just as advanced as the police forces, if not more so.  We're seeing
>the results of this in the targeted killings based on online activities.
>
>-- 
>Andrew
>pgp key: 0x74ED336B
>_______________________________________________
>tor-talk mailing list
>tor-talk at 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





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