[liberationtech] [SPAM:###] Re: [SPAM:###] Re: [SPAM:###] Re: Google Unveils Tools to Access Web From Repressive Countries | TIME.com

[Micah Sifry]

Speaking of Lantern, see this fresh report on its development:
http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/24444/state-department-funded-lantern-next-bigger-better-tor

Micah


On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Sacha van Geffen <sacha at greenhost.nl>wrote:

> On 22-10-13 09:02, Shava Nerad wrote:
> > uproxy.org <http://uproxy.org> -- it looks phenomenally like psiphon,
> > actually. I got referred to this page through Amanda Walker from Google
> > who says (carefully not speaking for anyone at Google) it's open source
> > (eventually) developed by U Washington.
> >
> > Has anyone heard of this at all?  I pointed Ron Deibert at it -- I
> > thought he'd find it fascinating if he hadn't heard about it. ;]
> >
>
> It sounds more like Lantern to me... seeing the involvement of brave new
> software and use of the google social graph.
>
>
> > quoth Amanda:
> >
> >     So, Google isn't "rolling out a proxy network".  uProxy was
> >     developed at the University of Washington; they plan to release
> >     source under the Apache 2 license (so you don't *have* to trust
> >     anyone).  It's a peer to peer proxy system, not a centralized one
> >     that goes through Google (or anyone else).
> >
> >
> >     http://uproxy.org/
> >
> >
> > Except of course, it goes through whomever your penpal is.
> >
> > Here's a summary of the early rollout of Psiphon:
> >
> http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2007/01/31/ron-deibert-on-the-history-and-future-of-psiphon/
> > (I was at this talk ;)
> >
> > Hugely popular was 80,000 users, and there were growing pains then and
> > thereafter (this is not a criticism -- it's expected).  Will Google be
> > happy with their announcement when users freak at people proxying KP
> > through their penpal invites?  Because inevitably, people will want to
> > adopt activists from overseas and some will be not quite what they
> expect.
> >
> > Will League of Legends-like matchmaking lobbies emerge to broker
> > connections, rather much defeating the personal friend aspect for the
> > less clueful?  And who will um take advantage?  Will penpals in the US
> > report back to Teheran for example?  I mean, I'm likely preaching to the
> > crowd, right?
> >
> > But Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt's book reads like a post ironic
> > Innocents Abroad.  It opens with the bald statement that the Internet is
> > one of the few things humans have created that they do not fully
> > understand.
> >
> > If you reduce "things" to generalizations such as "religion,"
> > "government," "community," "war," and so on, I suppose they may be
> > right.  We have not fully come to grips with the Internet as a special
> > case of "mass media," and we can not possibly come to a comprehensive
> > consensus on that.  The subject matter changes faster than any consensus
> > could be expressed/reached -- to the universal relief of bloggers, and
> > of academics seeking publication and junkets to conferences.
> >
> > These are the people who are, with great sanguine big-dog enthusiasm,
> > pushing this out.  I wish I felt confident we could keep the tail
> > wagging from breaking the tea service.  Could be fine.  Makes me
> > nervous.  Just sayin...
> >
> > You don't have to distrust Google per se to wonder if they are wise, or
> > have domain expertise in all things.
> >
> > Being big and rich does not buy you wisdom to know what you don't know.
> >  This is a lesson of empire/monarchy, even benevolent empire, even
> > benevolent monarchy -- it relies on the discretion of one entity, one
> > ego and often the people around that entity will not or can not get a
> > word in to say, "No. Just no."
> >
> > Carnegie knew all about libraries, but he didn't know so much about
> > maintaining earthen dams
> > (http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/clubanddam.html)  You can't know
> > everything.  People can still die.
> >
> > So there are my late night ponderings...
> >
> > yrs,
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 1:36 AM, Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu
> > <mailto:arma at mit.edu>> wrote:
> >
> >     On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:25:48AM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
> >     > The most ambitious product launch is uProxy, a new Web browser
> >     > extension that uses peer-to-peer technology to let people around
> the
> >     > world provide each other with a trusted Internet connection.
> >
> >     It's a shame that designs like this still blur the line so much
> between
> >     "censorship-resistant transport" and "proxy back-end."
> >
> >     If these folks have a cool "we use xmpp through google's servers to
> >     reach the proxy" transport, wouldn't it be even better if they
> publish
> >     that part, in a modular way, so other tools (like vpn providers, or
> Tor)
> >     can reuse that transport if they want to get its properties?
> >
> >     And in the other direction, if their users want some more security
> >     properties on the proxy side, wouldn't it be better if their
> volunteers
> >     could choose to glue this transport onto some other back-end (like
> vpn
> >     providers, or Tor)?
> >
> >     We've been making great progress lately in the academic world at
> having
> >     researchers split the problem so the transport can focus on being
> >     hard to
> >     block and then the proxy side can focus on providing whatever
> security
> >     properties it wants. In the Tor world we call it pluggable
> transports,
> >     but the engineers here will recognize the term 'modularity'.
> >
> >     > ?It?s completely encrypted and there?s
> >     > no way for the government to detect what?s happening because it
> just
> >     > looks like voice traffic or chat traffic.
> >
> >     Can somebody remind me of the State Dept quote, long ago, about
> >     Haystack? That was a different guy though right? And surely this time
> >     they're doing it right, with a comprehensive design document and
> threat
> >     model, open source, etc before the publicity splash?
> >
> >     To aim for a more productive tone, I'd like to echo what Eric said
> >     but with a crucially different slant: the more *reuable and testable
> >     components*, the merrier. The key is to grow the space in terms of
> >     how we
> >     understand what works, what doesn't work anymore (or never did), and
> >     what
> >     options we have for making mash-ups of these components. Otherwise
> it's
> >     just yet another brief flame with its big publicity push, no
> >     well-written
> >     code behind it, no change to our understanding of how to solve the
> >     problem / what problems to solve, and no re-usable parts left behind.
> >
> >     --Roger
> >
> >     --
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Shava Nerad
> > shava23 at gmail.com <mailto:shava23 at gmail.com>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
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