In Which The Telegraph Smears Tor

Been a long time since I talked about the Telegraph here.  But yesterday, I came across this particular piece of bullshit reporting from that 'journalistic' organisation, and felt compelled to say something.

That headline above, is frankly...a lie.  First off, Tor is a network, or a technology, not a browser, even if the browser download is the way in which most users will experience Tor these days.  The browser download, being a simplified bundle of the core Tor & proxying software with a modified version of Firefox.  Secondly, the study in question doesn't in any way speak to to the 'overwhelming use' of the Tor browser, but specifically to the use of the so-called Dark Web.  Back to the Telegraph...

There is an "overwhelming" amount of illicit and illegal content on the dark web, a new study shows.

That statement might seem self-evident. But the Tor browser - also known as the dark web or deep web - was created to protect the anonymity of vulnerable people online. It is a web browser just like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, but it masks the identity of who is browsing and what they're looking at.

The Tor browser is perhaps known as 'the dark web or deep web' -- by fucking idiots !  The so-called 'dark web' is a fear-mongering slur utilised by the government for any services over the internet that in any way bypass conventional IP/HTTP routing, and thus implicitly threaten governmental control and surveillance thereof.  Tor is one of many services that can be used for such means, in this case, via the use of .onion addresses, that are only routeable via the Tor network.  It is not the only technology providing such hidden services, the hidden services are not the primary purpose of the Tor network, and in fact, the hidden services component was a much later addition to Tor.

Don't believe me, that the hidden services, the 'dark web' are not the primary purpose of the Tor network ?  Well, let's look at the study in question, shall we ?

The Tor architecture provides two services – anonymous browsing (property 3), and hosting of anonymous information exchanges (property 5) – through one piece of software, the so-called ‘Tor Browser’. Although distinct, both services employ roughly the same protocols and rely on the same distributed infrastructure. But that is where their mutual dependency ends. There is no technical requirement for anonymous browsing and anonymous hosting to be bundled. Indeed, browsing is overwhelmingly more popular than hosting. Most Tor users have never visited any hidden website at a *.onion address; hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.²⁷ Most users instead use the software merely to browse the internet's conventional address space more securely or anonymously. An analogy illustrates the significance of anonymous browsing. Alice, who lives in a small town, wants to buy a pregnancy test, but doesn't want to be seen doing so by the shop owner, Bob, a friend of Alice's father. Rather than simply going to the store, Alice wears a mask, walks a detour, and pays in cash. Bob will not be able to identify her or trace her. Alice's privacy and anonymity are assured. Anonymous browsing is not part of the ‘dark web’; it is a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides.

This is from the very study upon which the Telegraph's scary misleading headline is based.  It says right there that most users have never visited any .onion 'dark web' sites at all, and that hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.  Three to fucking six percent !  Hell, I've been familiar with Tor since long before there was such a thing as a 'Tor Browser', and I don't think I've ever visited or had reason to visit any hidden 'dark web' sites via Tor myself.  Because...why the fuck would I ?  Tor's primary purpose is, and always has been, simply to provide a modicum of anonymity in browsing the Internet, and the vast majority of users are most likely using Tor in entirely legitimate ways, in entirely legitimate pursuits.

In fact, the US government has repeatedly promoted the use of Tor for such purposes as enabling dissidents and human rights-activists living in authoritarian regimes, to communicate freely, bypassing restrictive governmental policies and controls, to promote liberal Western-style values.  The US government continues to this very day to provide a vast amount of the funding for the Tor project, and to utilise the network itself, and the Tor software was originally in fact invented by the United States Naval Research Laboratory & DARPA.

That's right, this evil evil 'dark web' software, the users of which the Telegraph apparently wishes to smear, was created by, and continues to be funded by the government of the United States of America.

So, in case you're not familiar with how Tor works, and is used by, as noted above, the vast vast majority of its users, here are some illustrations from the EFF.

Tor doesn't provide uncrackable security, certainly not for the likes of the NSA or other US govt. security agencies, and that much more certainly not when they have been involved in its creation and funding of its development from day one.  It simply obfuscates the path of traffic through a random series of nodes, making it difficult for a would-be adversary to monitor the traffic, without control of, and therefore the ability to monitor traffic through, all the nodes in question.  It isn't that inherently secure, even if you trust that the US government hasn't inserted its own backdoors into the system, and any one relying solely on Tor to run, say an international drug-smuggling operation, without detection, would be very stupid indeed.  Of course, the vast majority of users aren't doing anything of the sort.

Back to the Telegraph...

In the first study of its kind, researchers at King's College London found that 57 per cent of sites on Tor facilitate criminal activity, including drugs, illicit finance, and extreme pornography.

The findings are not unexpected - if anything that figure is lower than expected. Tor has been associated with child pornography, gun trading and murder long before now. 

"We expected something along these lines," said Thomas Rid, professor of Security Studies at King's College London and co-author of the study. "Previous studies have established that it's a pretty nasty place."  

Scary, scary fucking stuff indeed !  Child pornography, murder, drugs, extreme pornography !  Sounds pretty nasty huh ?

Did we mention that the 'dark web' sites in question were a product of a secondary (and not inherently illegitimate*) function of Tor, not even utilised by the vast majority of Tor users ?

Tor offers anonymous browsing to people across the world. Users in countries with strict censorship laws, like China or Iran, can use it to access mainstream sites - like Facebook - securely. Rid and Moore found that the vast majority of material on Tor was not just illegal in places like China or Iran, but in more liberal jurisdictions too.

Here, in the same fucking paragraph, the Telegraph conflates the anonymous browsing (such as use of fucking Facebook), which is the sole usage of the vast majority of users with the hosting of illegal materials on so-called 'dark web' sites.

The sites included marketplaces for drugs, fire arms and weapons, and explicit, illegal pornography. The study found a "near-absence" of Islamic extremist sites on Tor.

"Militants and extremists don't seem to find the Tor hidden services infrastructure very useful. So there are few jihadis and militants in the darknet," said Rid. "It's used for criminal services, fraud, extreme, illegal pornography, cyber attacks and computer crime."

Know why that is ?  Because, they're not fucking stupid !  Because they know full well, that if the US government wants to find them on an US-govt-designed and funded network of mild anonymity, it can, and will.  The US government could crush the Tor network any time it wanted to, but insofar as a) Tor isn't any meaningful threat to security-services, b) Dissidents in foreign competitor states utilise Tor, and c) Agents of the US govt. itself utilise Tor, it has no compelling reason to do so.

What the US government, and its proxy poodle in Westminster, would like to do, is utilise fearmongering rhetoric about 'terror' attacks, to convince the public, and technology-companies, that it is in the public interest that the privacy of Western citizens be intentionally compromised, via the dilution of encryption technology, and the building of government-accessible backdoors into common security software.  The sort of breathless hyperbole in which right-wing publications such as the Telegraph specialise is perfect for such a purpose.

Rid and Moore commend Tor for offering vulnerable people access to anonymous browsing. But they said Tor needs to work harder to encourage its community to build a safe and legitimate browsing experience.

Did they say that ?  I must have missed it...

"The developers made Tor for a different purpose - they wanted security, not crime. It's up to them to change the direction," said Rid. "It's up to them to have a sensible discussion about ways to reduce crime, to get more legitimate users in." 

Now here, I can only assume the quotation is the result of an interview (what, the Telegraph doing actual reporting...like actual journalists ?), as I don't see such language in the report.  Regardless, this is shit.  We've already established that the vast majority of usage is merely anonymous browsing (which is, in the authors' words, 'a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides'), and how the hell can Tor's developers be held responsible for the content provided by the 'hidden services' on their network, without fundamentally compromising the relative anonymity that is the whole raison d'etre of the Tor network to begin with ?

Is the argument that as the functionality of hidden services could theoretically be used for ill purposes, that it should be removed ?  The same is true of the anonymous browsing functionality, innocent as the vast majority of usage may be/probably is.  The same is true of all technology.  Hell, in the US, special constitutional protections are given to the ownership of tools (i.e. guns, firearms), whose primary if not sole purpose is to murder living beings.  But the fact that a subset of the functionality of a mildly anonymising technology might be used for illicit purposes, that...that is a reason for ripping apart what little guarantee of privacy is currently available to us on the internet ?

Tor's example will no doubt be used in the encryption debate that is circulating around the snoopers' charter, according to Rid and Moore. 

"Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates," Rid and Moore conclude. "The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin."

This is just...WTF ?  Wait, why am I still quoting the fucking Telegraph ?

The other quandary is how to deal with darknets. Hidden services have already damaged Tor, and trust in the internet as a whole. To save Tor – and certainly to save Tor's reputation – it may be necessary to kill hidden services, at least in their present form. Were the Tor Project to discontinue hidden services voluntarily, perhaps to improve the reputation of Tor browsing, other darknets would become more popular. But these Tor alternatives would lack something precious: a large user base. In today's anonymisation networks, the security of a single user is a direct function of the number of overall users. Small darknets are easier to attack, and easier to de-anonymise. The Tor founders, though exceedingly idealistic in other ways, clearly appreciate this reality: a better reputation leads to better security.⁸⁵ They therefore understand that the popularity of Tor browsing is making the bundled-in, and predominantly illicit, hidden services more secure than they could be on their own. Darknets are not illegal in free countries and they probably should not be. Yet these widely abused platforms – in sharp contrast to the wider public-key infrastructure – are and should be fair game for the most aggressive intelligence and law-enforcement techniques, as well as for invasive academic research. Indeed, having such clearly cordoned-off, free-fire zones is perhaps even useful for the state, because, conversely, a bad reputation leads to bad security. Either way, Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates. Refusing to confront tough, inevitable political choices is simply irresponsible. The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin.

Less oblique, less misleading, less blatantly crass government-propaganda.  Still crap.

But, now I'm getting into the realm of disputing the report's findings & conclusions, which wasn't where I started, with the Telegraph's blatantly misleading headline.  So, let's step back a bit...

See those results above, from Google News ?  The bottom three accurately characterise the report's findings, and the subject thereof.  Only the one at the top from the Telegraph manages, unintentionally or not, to completely conflate the lesser functionality of 'hidden services' with the wholly legitimate purpose of 'anonymous browsing', and to smear the vast majority of Tor users as a result.  Fuck, I hate the Telegraph...


* Imagine say Iranian or Chinese dissidents, wanting to not merely communicate freely over Tor, without detection of government authorities, but also wanting to provide a stable hosting source of shared documentation within their groups.

AJ+: Young Swedes React To U.S. Democratic Presidential Debate

C'mon AJ+, surely you could have found a few fascists even in Sverige ?

Wonders...What reason might Al Jazeera's backers have to encourage a Sanders presidency ?...Feel the Bern !

No More Ferry 'Cross the Kerch ?

Russia will be handing back Nikita's gift to the Ukrainians...any...moment now....right, Vicky ?


Honestly, I'd almost forgotten about the bridge, and am suprised they've made as much progress as this video suggests.  Wonder if the Chinese are providing advice on those artificial islands between the individual spans ?

Your Completely Insane Baseless Headline of the Day

Courtesy, of the Independent no less...

The changing nature of the British jobs market has broken the link between unemployment and crime, according to new research.

The phenomenon – which saw rising joblessness matched by increased burglaries, thefts and robberies during the Thatcher years – ended in 2005, according to an analysis of crime and employment statistics.

The latest research suggests that growing trend of employers to adopt part-time working and zero-hours contracts has meant that communities are less blighted by mass unemployment and less likely to resort to crime.

The findings explain in part why Britain was not hit by a crime epidemic following the 2007-8 financial crisis which led to unemployment rising above eight per cent for the first time in more than a decade but saw a continuing long-term decline in crime.

Here's the link to the full story.  See if you can find anything there to support that supposition.

The story does mention the likely role in preventitive technology in reducing crime, though that only addresses the question of means.

Here's a hint from the other side of the Atlantic at a more likely causative factor:

But no-one seems to want to take that line of enquiry seriously, and we're going to be still debating this shit for decades to come, and still pushing Dirty Harry-style get-tough rhetoric on crime even as London sinks into the Thames and DC & NYC into the Atlantic.


Quick Update: Oh yeah, here's this from the Independent in 2007: Ban on leaded petrol 'has cut crime rates around the world'

Banning lead in petrol is responsible for declining crime rates in Britain, the United States and other countries, startling new research suggests.

The astonishing conclusion threatens to overturn current thinking on crime and punishment....

Published in the peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Research, the study reports a "very strong association" over more than 50 years between the exposure of young children to the toxic metal and crime rates 20 years later when they are young adults.

And it says the association holds true for a wide variety of countries with differing social conditions, law and order policies...

Britain – one of the last to get rid of the toxic metal – is one of the latest to enjoy a decline in crime.

But, someone seems to want to tell a very different story today, and link falling crime-rates to zero-hours contracts of all things.  Ladies & Gentleman, your Independent newspaper.

Well, Now the Political Cartoonists Have All Had Their Say

Nice.  The foto of that dead kid face-down in the surf is so shocking, we're going to build a sandcastle-version of it...and force our own kids to pose by the same...*

Our culture being what it is, how long till someone comes up with a way to make a halloween-costume out of this dead kid's fucking corpse ?


* I know, Gaza...Open-air prison...Those monstrous Israeli's...  Wonder what direction the two younger kids are listening to off-camera as the older child looks dutifully at the lens.  How old are they, and already being used as political props ?

** Intentionally looked for the largest version of the pic. I could find.  In this case, judging by the resolution, it could well be the original dimensions from a DSLR or the like.  But, since Blogger appears to restrict the max. width, you'll have to click here for the original.

Donald Trump's Brilliant Willie Horton Ad.

See, this is why we need Donald Trump to Make America Great Again! Because only he can save us from the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants (not all of them, but most...probably, because that's all Mexico sends), murdering people left right and center. Your gardener, the woman at Taco Bell, the assistant at the dry cleaners, your taxi driver, all of them part of the massive crime wave sweeping America!

And Jeb! wants us to have compassion, nay love, for the ravenous murdering scum! Vote Donald Trump 2016!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* Bonus fun fact regarding that first graph above: Fox News launched in 1996.

No Taxpayer-funded Campaigning Under M. Harper, Non

In accordance with our commitment to a fixed election-date, the next general election will be held as prescribed by law.  As it is my intention to begin campaign-related activities, and it's also the case for the other party-leaders, it's important that these campaigns be funded by the parties themselves, rather than taxpayers.

My fucking jaw dropped when I heard this on the CBC.  The balls on this man...

And how about deceptive robocalling-campaigns ?  Is it okay for them to be funded by the taxpayer, Mister 'Message from the Government of Canada' ?


Meanwhile, that economic downturn I'm currently overseeing ?: More reason you be very very afraid of the opposition and keep me in power even longer.  And also, ISIS: VERY, VERY AFRAID !  Liberals & NDP weak !  Justin inexperienced !  Me protect you from Scary Vladimir Putin ! BE AFRAID !

Oh, and in case I don't sound enough like an American Republican: 'Best country in the world !'  But only so long as you keep us in power.  BE AFRAID !!!

Wishful Thinking at its Best

Report: Russia's right wing is egging on Texas' secessionist movement

By John-Henry Perera | June 23, 2015 | Updated: June 23, 2015 11:46am

A Russian newspaper conducted an interview with Nathan Smith, a representative of the Texas Nationalist Movement, who just happened to be in St. Petersburg for a right-wing convention in Spring 2015.

Google Translate is a little rusty when it comes to the Cyrillic alphabet, but Smith's interview is more or less a repeat of everything we've heard before from pro-secessionists: Why should we be part of a union that takes but never gives back? U.S. policy is bad for Texas. We can do better on our own.

Politico writer Casey Michel notes that Texas' homegrown movement is delicious for Russian right wingers who blame much of the country's ills on the U.S., particularly after the recent sanctions on the country following the Crimean invasion in 2014. It also plays well with the country's long-term strategy of destabilizing the west.

"Cheered primarily by Igor Panarin, a former KGB agent and head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's diplomatic academy, the theory posits that a fractured United States, akin to the Soviet Union's demise, would disintegrate entirely, with nearby nations hoovering the assorted states."

The Russians cannot possibly be this stupid...can they ?


Although I see where the Russian's are coming from in the current tensions with the West, although I understand their point of view regarding maintaining influence in their backyard, and although I agree with much of their criticism of NATO, I think there's one thing they maybe misunderstand: Much as people throughout the world may harbour some distrust of the United States and its motives, including many in the West, and even in the United States itself, they don't necessarily hate the US.  And many of them share that distrust of America with a desire to be American themselves.

Russia, on the other hand, isn't exactly beloved by many of its neighbours, to say the least (never mind how the rest of the world sees the country, fairly or not), and for the many states that left the Warsaw pact and/or the Soviet Union after the latter's collapse it was very explicitly a question of liberation from what they saw as a decades-long* oppressive foreign influence.  An opinion that would be held in many of those countries by a clear majority.


The occasional mutterings of discontent in states like Texas, Alaska, Arizona, or wherever in the US, are little more than a temporal political protest, usually against the particular policies at one point in time of one ruling party.  The Texans aren't going to secede today any more than the so-called 'blue-states' were after the Bush-Gore decision in 2000, however much gnashing of teeth there may have been at the time.


And yet, even if the Russians aren't stupid enough to think that a secession of Texas or any other American state is remotely likely, they sure do put an awful amount of money and effort into their anti-Western  and Western-targeted propaganda outfits, possibly the jewel in the crown of which is RT (formerly Russia Today).  RT is a well-financed, slick media outfit, staffed with many Western presenters, that just so happens to specialise day after day after day in reporting on stories that make the West (The US & UK especially) look bad (some more justifiably, some less)

And there's an audience for the type of thing they cover.  An audience that occasionally includes me for that matter, well aware of the propagandistic agenda as I may be.  And there's a fair number of mid-level media-personalities in the West (usually either of the more slightly radical lefty or the more libertarian political persuasion) that flock to work with RT, eager as they are to get any coverage of opinions that they know are increasingly locked out from the mainstream corporate-media in the West.

But the vast majority of people in the West don't care what those individuals say, don't watch RT, don't read Sputnik or the Moscow Times, and won't be touched by the comments of Putin's keyboard-armies on the pages of the Telegraph or the Indy or on CiF on the Guardian.  The criticism of the West (some of it justified) never quite reaches them, whilst daily they absorb the news & the jokes from the mainstream media that reinforce their inherited view of Russians as inherently evil two-dimensional cartoon-villains.

I suspect that the Russian government just fundamentally hasn't come to terms with how to either successfully manipulate or to interpret public opinion in the age of social media.  And I don't really know why, other to assume that it's that age-old question of no-one wanting to tell the emperor that he may have ever-so slightly imagined his own attire.

Whatever.  We're all be dead soon if we keep the idiotic wargames up at the current rate.


* Or more.

Survey on Europeans' Views of Ukraine

War, Russia, Poverty: Europeans ‘negative’ view of Ukraine

It was French writer Gustave Flaubert who said there is no truth, only perception. According to the Institute of World Policy in Kyiv, Europeans have a rather negative image of Ukraine.

In a recently released report war, Russia and poverty appear to be the three key words that average citizens of Europe’s most populous countries associate with the country.

The Orange revolution appears to be better known by the respondents than the Maidan protests which spun Ukraine towards Brussels, but European perceptions of Ukraine are beginning to change, if slowly, according to Olena Hetmanchuk, head of the Institute of World Policy.

“I don’t think that they (the Europeans) associate or consider Ukraine to be a part of Russia as they perceived some time ago. In my opinion, the association with Russia is primarily related to Russia’s aggression. That’s a logical association as this issue has been one of the main topics of European media for the last year.”

On the subject of Ukraine eventually joining the EU, the French are the most skeptical while, the British are largely indifferent.

In order for Ukraine to create a better image in these countries, political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko told euronews the country “needs to compensate for this with the successful implementation of reforms in the country; the promotion of Ukraine’s history that should be considered as a part of European history. That will increase the percentage of people who will perceive Ukraine as a part of Europe, not only geographically, but also politically and historically.” * **

It's actually somewhat surprising to me that they chose to headline this survey the way they did, given that the results they report overall paint a picture of a European populace very open to Ukraine joining the EU in the future, Russia be damned.  Of course, this is a report from an organisation whose 'vision is that Ukraine should be integrated into the EU and NATO', and the report itself was funded by the US government (USAID), so take it with a grain of salt if you will.

Oh, and as for this:

The survey will help to identify problems in the EU-Ukraine relations and to bring to light concerns of ordinary Europeans. These findings are strikingly important in terms of Russia's powerful efforts to sow division among European nations fracturing their unity with respect to Ukraine.

Europeans can make up their own minds thank you very much.  Kremlin propaganda be damned.  American propaganda be damned.  And what the fuck is this 'unity with respect to Ukraine' of which you speak ?  What unity ?  Since when ?


Anyways, it's an interesting survey, propaganda or not, and I do love me a nice word-cloud:

Almost thought they'd forgotten Yulia, but no, there she is.  They're still missing one important word though: IMF.


* In other words, erase the long history with Russia going all the way back to the Rus' ?

** Bolding mine.  Text from the EuroNews site is almost, but not exactly a transcript of the video.

(Yet) A(nother) Message from the Government of Canada

OTTAWA – Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre is making no apologies for using taxpayer dollars to produce videos of himself promoting the universal child care benefit.

Opposition MPs call them “vanity videos” that mark a new low for a government that has a penchant for producing partisan advertising on the public dime.

But Poilievre says he’s simply informing Canadians about the newly enriched and expanded child benefit.

And he says he’ll continue to work “aggressively” to promote the benefit despite the uproar, even coyly addressing his critics by tweeting out “the video everyone’s been talking about” Friday.

And indeed, why would he ?  Using the resources of the state for continuous political propaganda is perfectly normal behaviour in a one-party dictatorshipparliamentary democracy, as is using bribery to try to maintain one's position of power.

Also, It's a Lie...

Strong. Proud. Free. And a state secret.

The genesis of the Harper government's "Strong Proud Free" slogan that is currently bombarding Canadian television viewers is considered a cabinet confidence and will be sealed from public scrutiny for 20 years.

...

A spokesman for the Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy that supports the Prime Minister's Office, would only say that the slogan is "drawn from the thematics" of the government's 2013 throne speech.

Opposition critics point out the language is also drawn from the 2011 Conservative party platform and mirrors the themes promoted as Conservative values on the party website and in fundraising pitches.

...

The Conservatives have come under repeated criticism for spending tens of millions of dollars annually on government advertising that is often indistinguishable from the partisan branding of the party. The marketing exercise extends to departmental web design (now a uniform Tory blue, with cross-pollinating links to popular Conservative initiatives such as family tax cuts) and even departmental press releases, often heralding local "Harper government" expenditures.

"There have been some ambiguous government ads where a plausible defence could be made that they are not partisan or that they provide some modicum of information, but the 'Strong Proud Free' tagline makes no such pretence," said Jonathan Rose, a specialist in political communication at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"It's almost verbatim from the Conservative party website."

Economic Action Plan (those were just straight up blatant partisan ideological propaganda), War of 1812, 150th Birthday of Canada...  My prediction is, if Stephen Harper & Co. are still in power after 2017, no matter what, they'll still find...something...requiring a constant taxpayer-funded barrage of 'A Message from the Toriesthe Government of Canada' ads.  Why not just drop the pretense already ?  Assholes.

Israel in Colour by British Pathé

Interesting time-capsules in these videos, including in the way Israel was portrayed by British Pathé back in the 'fifties & 'sixties.  Keeping in mind that Israel during much of this period was more political ally of the UK & France than of the United States.  There's a more than somewhat touristy if not propagandistic tone to many of the videos, but always cool to see a window into the past.  And in colour no-less.  Hell, most British teevee was still in black-and-white till the seventies.

Last line of the last video, from '69: 'They hope for peace.  The tragedy is, can it be achieved ?'  Well...