He makes some good points. But some are just silly:
> Noting that, "Tor works only if people are dedicated to maintaining a strict anonymous Internet routine," one consisting of dummy e-mail accounts and all transactions carried out in Bitcoin, Levine suggests that what Tor offers is "a false sense of privacy" (213).
That's like saying that you'll be killed if you run across a freeway. I do agree that Tor Project ought to teach better OPSEC, however.
And this is just plain wrong:
> Yet, as the case of Ross Ulbricht (the "Dread Pirate Roberts" of Silk Road notoriety) demonstrated, Tor may not be as impervious as it seems – researchers at Carnegie Mellon University "had figured out a cheap and easy way to crack Tor’s super-secure network" (263).
Ross outed himself. In a post on bitcointalk.org, he announced SR in a thread about "heroin stores", using an account created using his real name.[0] In a later post, using the same account, he advertised for a coder, and included his real-name Gmail address.[1] And he got a visit from the FBI, after ordering a bunch of fake ID from SR.[2] So he was a person of interest in their SF office. Also, the SR server was misconfigured, such that Apache error messages bypassed Tor.[3] And oh yeah, also the infamous Stack Overflow post, looking for PHP help.[4]
And all that went down before the CMU attack. There were many prosecutions after CMP "researchers" turned over data to the FBI. But SR wasn't one of them.
> Surveillance Valley is a troubling book, but it is an important book... What it demonstrates in stark relief is that surveillance and unnerving links to the military-industrial complex are not signs that the Internet has gone awry, but signs that the Internet is functioning as intended.
The five eyes IC apparatus has invested in Tor relays and mitm attacks of Tor exit traffic so much so that I personally think using Tor endangers you [1]. They were doing this ~10 years ago (public info - [2]).
As for the surveillance state,I keep pondering other aspects of society. Like how public restrooms are intentionally designed to lack privacy,how in the military and prison you're expected to be comfortable with being completely naked around others and how it is completely acceptable for an arrested citizen to be forced to undress in front of other prisoners and possibly undergo a full on body cavity search all without the chance to defend his accusation in court. I could go on,but you get the point.
I am not so sure the people want privacy. Or maybe they think so lowly of their freedoms,short term safety is always more preferable.
From the intelligence community's perspective, it's all about information control. They do this in other countries. They topple regimes and adjust public opinion in the inteterests of western security and economical goals. If I was in their shoes, I can see myself using fear of other countries doing the same thing against us and use that as an excuse to "beat them to the punch" and take control of information flow in the west.
They simply don't have the clear consent of the people to use the means they use by which they justify the end goal: national security. Regardless of how oblivious and clueless the people may be, the very foundation of a democratic republic is consent. An agent or officer of any democratic republic who persistently acts in subversion of the people's consent is a traitor even if no particular law is broken.
> many people have their hopes invested in the belief that these companies are building a better brighter future
OT, but I'm reminded of how many times in recent history that we (as humans) have hitched hope for a better future on some tangential circumstance:
- the socialist notion that industrialization would bring about peace, equality and well-being for all
- the liberal notion that freedom from tyranny would bring about peace, equality and well-being for all (through trade)
- the general notion that airplanes would bring about peace since no-one would be so demonic as to drop bombs on people from the air.
Those dreams are now in shambles. I find it prudent to be highly skeptical of similar claims that have not yet been similarly disproved, i.e.
- the feminist notion that freedom from patriarchy will bring about peace and equality for all
- the popular notion that atomic weapons will end all wars since no-one would be so crazy as to start an nuclear war.
I think it's time to hitch our hopes on simply not starting wars, and simply divert our productivity towards environmental sustainability and general well-being for all, instead of waiting for some tangential causations like those mentioned to do the trick, which in hindsight doesn't amount to much more than marketing fluff.
You are heavily oversimplifying (to the point of incorrectness) every concept you outline, reducing them all down to various flavors of utopianism. On top of that, your final call to action is a mirror reflection of what you just criticized. The truth of the matter is these concepts and many others are all weaving together in a complicated and nuanced way.
Simplifying - guilty as charged. Please show me a statement that is not. But agreed there are limits to how oversimplified things may be portrayed. I sometimes grant myself some leeway in search of a larger picture however, when I assess that someone applying some philosophers charity might find value in it [0]
The main difference between those "Utopian dreams" I refer to and my own suggestion is that they hitch hopes on some technology or extraneous happening (the extent to which certainly is debatable), I just wish we would put ourselves and our own moral agency in the drivers seat more.
> Noting that, "Tor works only if people are dedicated to maintaining a strict anonymous Internet routine," one consisting of dummy e-mail accounts and all transactions carried out in Bitcoin, Levine suggests that what Tor offers is "a false sense of privacy" (213).
That's like saying that you'll be killed if you run across a freeway. I do agree that Tor Project ought to teach better OPSEC, however.
And this is just plain wrong:
> Yet, as the case of Ross Ulbricht (the "Dread Pirate Roberts" of Silk Road notoriety) demonstrated, Tor may not be as impervious as it seems – researchers at Carnegie Mellon University "had figured out a cheap and easy way to crack Tor’s super-secure network" (263).
Ross outed himself. In a post on bitcointalk.org, he announced SR in a thread about "heroin stores", using an account created using his real name.[0] In a later post, using the same account, he advertised for a coder, and included his real-name Gmail address.[1] And he got a visit from the FBI, after ordering a bunch of fake ID from SR.[2] So he was a person of interest in their SF office. Also, the SR server was misconfigured, such that Apache error messages bypassed Tor.[3] And oh yeah, also the infamous Stack Overflow post, looking for PHP help.[4]
And all that went down before the CMU attack. There were many prosecutions after CMP "researchers" turned over data to the FBI. But SR wasn't one of them.
Overall, it's just polemical and agenda-driven.
0) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.msg42670#msg4267...
1) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg5...
2) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-too...
3) https://www.wired.com/2014/09/the-fbi-finally-says-how-it-le...
4) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15445285/how-can-i-conne...