OnionShare Tor

[jim bell]

 On Friday, October 18, 2019, 09:56:12 AM PDT, Greg Newby <gbnewby at pglaf.org> wrote:
 
 
 On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 02:54:37AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
>  
> 
>    On Thursday, October 17, 2019, 05:43:04 PM PDT, Punk <punks at tfwno.gf> wrote:  
>  
>  On Thu, 17 Oct 2019 20:16:28 +0000 (UTC)
> jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >> The way I see it, there are at least two ways to promote TOR.   
> >> 1.   Openly promote TOR:   "TOR is great".  "TOR is secure enough".   "We don't need an improvement to TOR".
> >> and the second is:
> >> 2.  Oppose potential improvements or augmented systems other than TOR.   List their potential problems.  Ignore their possible benefits. 
> >> I think there are clearly people who are choosing to do the second kind of promotion of TOR.
> 
> 
>  >   I think a key aspect of the tor mafia is that getting a few million dollars from the pentagon each year allows them to outcompete anybody who could challenge them. They don't even have to 'oppose' anything. Just fail to fund it.
>  That sounds quite correct.  Somebody needs to challenge them.

>It seems that TOR could be as a starting point, if it were possible to validate the software before building upon it. I'm not sure it is, though.

>Jim's proposal would seem to require a few important things:
1. free software (of course) that is open to inspection
2. verifiable functionality
3. trustable deployment

>#1 implies the full stack, from network, to hardware, to OS, to libraries, to application. This is harder as you dig more deeply into what needs to be validated.

>#2 and #3 are also hard, whether using TOR or something completely new.

>Are #2 and #3 easier if we start with the TOR base software or design? With 600K+ lines of code, TOR is unwieldy to validate. The design could be a starting point.

>I'll make some obvious statements that I haven't seen in this thread yet (apologies if I missed them):

>Verifiable functionality means that the software, wherever it's deployed, can be trusted (to whatever extent is needed). This is challenging for any software, and more challenging when you need to worry about the entire stack including the hardware.

>Trustable deployment means that we can validate the nodes in the mesh, to whatever extent is needed. This is a perpetual issue with TOR, because players can do things antithetical to the design (such as collusion or surveillance). 


I think it's important to put up and run SOMETHING, a network separate from TOR, even if it must initially use pre-existing software that hasn't been completely verified. (yet)   There's an enormous difference between a mere promise (it's coming "real soon now", as Jerry Pournelle used to say) and an actual useable system.  
A currently-useable system would ignite far more interest, including donations perhaps, than a mere promise, especially if the software was all open-sourced and potentially verifiable, with the knowledge that it would be verified or replaced in the future.  
             Jim Bell

Interesting historical interest:
     In about 1979 when I was studying at MIT, I was logged onto a computer system. (It might have been either network node "70" or "134".  Strange that I remember that!)   I did a WHOIS command, listing the other users of the system.  Some other student, looking over my shoulder, said, "Hey, that's Jerry Pournelle!", because one of those logged in was "pourne".   I, never having been a science fiction buff, didn't know who "Jerry Pournelle" was.    So, the fellow student explained it to me.
Cut to about 1983, when my small company, SemiDisk Systems, was at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco, manning the booth.  A man came up to the booth, and he said "I'm Jerry Pournelle".  I responded, "Hey, I know who you are, but it's not the way you might think!".  

  
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