Proxy Host

As most informed citizens of the world now now, Iran is having a lot of turmoil over its recent elections. The most interesting part about it (ok perhaps second most interesting after the chance of a potential revolution in Iran) is the power of the internet and how news and information has traveled. The story was largely ignored by major news networks (looking at you CNN) but it gained life on Twitter (@ProxyHost now on twitter). They re-scheduled maintenance around the event and news from Iran has been all but cut off with the exception of Twitter.

Why is Twitter the exception?
*Open network - Anyone can join
*Open API - Tons of applications, services and proxies can access and post information

I think those are the two main reasons. The first gave rise to a service and the second cemented it's power for the users. With a completely open API anyone around the world can access it, build apps and allow other services to interact on their behalf. So let's say government Y blocks access to twitter.com, they still have to block every proxy (web service that allows you to interact with the service/post information to it/etc) to effectively shut the service down. Now that Twitter has grown and developers have taken the challenge of building applications for it on, it simply can't be stopped. News, leaks and videos pop up onto the service constantly no matter how hard a government tries to stop it.

The US government has dropped - for now - a plan to classify the use of 'proxy' servers as evidence of sophistication in committing a crime.

Proxy servers are computers that disguise the source of Internet traffic. They are commonly used for legitimate purposes, like evading Internet censors and working from home. But they can also be used to hide from law enforcement.

Just like I could use a kitchen knife to cut veggies or kill someone. Should we ban kitchen knives? Proxies are important today. Even western governments have begun censoring content (see wikileaks about these lists). While I don't promote or condone the content listed at many of the censored sites I think it is a step in the wrong direction and the wrong way to handle such things. We have law enforcement which should investigate crimes, not block all uses of technology/create arcane laws to 'protect' citizens from the potential harm. We might as well all jump into bubbles and never experience life because that is where the ultra strong paternalistic state seems to want to push us.

For every noble human desire, in this case, the strong protective feelings most adults have towards children, opportunists such as Senator Conroy and his German equivalent, CDU Minister Ursula von der Leyen, stand ready to exploit these feelings for their own power and position.

Von der Leyen apparently hopes to raise her profile before a national election by promoting a national censorship "solution" to child pornography.

But forcibly preventing the average parent from seeing evidence of what may be an abuse against a child is not the same as stopping abuses against children. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Censoring the evidence promotes abuses by driving them underground, where they are difficult to track. Such schemes divert resources and political will away from proven policing solutions which target producers and consumers.

Children depend, even more than their parents, on the quality and viability of government. An assault against those systems and ideals which keep government honest and accountable - public oversight, natural justice, and protection from state censorship - is not just an affront to Enlightment ideals, but an assult on the long term interests of children and adults alike.

Based on my Tripod experience, I’d offer the hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism. Porn is a weak test for the success of participatory media - it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work. Activism is a stronger test - if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.

In late 1996, we noticed that Tripod was receiving a great deal of traffic from Malaysia. Searching through the server logs, we found lots of pages in Bahasa Malay talking about “Reformasi” and “Anwar Ibrahim”. I had to visit the Political Science department at Williams College to figure out that we were apparently hosting much of the Malaysian opposition political movement, dedicated to helping deposed and imprisoned deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim return to power. Malaysian media was largely closed to opposition voices, but investment in internet infrastructure meant that the opposition was able to access the internet and publish material that couldn’t be disseminated any other way. (Several of these pages still exist on Tripod.)

SHOULD we modify our conception of privacy thanks to the seemingly unstoppable spread of CCTV surveillance networks? Jack Brassil thinks so. He's a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard's laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who is testing a technology called Cloak that aims to limit the extent of privacy invasions. "Rather than prohibit surveillance, our system seeks to discourage surveillers distributing video without the authorisation of the surveilled," he says.

Sounds science-fictionesque. The requirements for such a system is merely tracking the location of every single person, all the time. What a great idea... not. How about we accept that a right to privacy is a basic human right and not become a big brother state that would put Orwell to shame? Thanks.

A Teenage pupil has been withdrawn from her school after CCTV cameras were installed in the pupils' toilets.

Anthony White, from Llandysul said the cameras at Ysgol Dyffryn Teifi in Ceredigion were an "outrageous invasion" of his daughter Jade's privacy. Jade, 14, said: "I am not going back while the cameras are there. It must be against the law to have them there."

Ok. Not an internet privacy issue, but a more general one. CCTV in the girls bathroom at school? I can't imagine ever looking at a parent in the eye and being able to justify this. I would fear for my physical safety if I did that to them. I don't care what reasoning, no reasoning can logically justify this. Public, private, religious, don't care what kind of school. There HAS TO BE SOME PLACES YOU CANNOT BE WATCHING. Privacy is a fundamental human need and the bathroom should be one of the most sacred places and is in virtually every culture I am familiar with.

The Home Office claims the new database, which can track phone calls and emails, is necessary in an advancing digital world to allow it to tackle terrorism and serious crime.

I sometimes feel like the government watches hollywood movies and takes them under advisement. Are you fucking serious? The very symbols of modern democracy are being taken away to fight terrorism which is against those principals. I know saying this isn't anything new, but my god, think about that just one more time. We lose. At least our governments do unless/until we force them to behave properly. There is always dangers everywhere, that is life, there are risks, we need to stop cowering around and give up everything that makes life worth living for an extra measure of 'security' which can never be proven effective. If technology were our savior from all evil, then we wouldn't see all sorts of malware, spyware and viruses succeed so wildly. Technology is a tool not a complete solution. Life has ambiguity and risks, by waking up you are dealing with them and taking them: that is what makes us, us.

On a similar note, since technology isn't some all supreme power and people have the right to privacy, that's what this site is here for: providing you with info and tools to protect your privacy namely through use of proxies.

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

The online behavior of a small but growing number of computer users in the United States is monitored by their Internet service providers, who have access to every click and keystroke that comes down the line.

The companies harvest the stream of data for clues to a person's interests, making money from advertisers who use the information to target their online pitches.

The practice represents a significant expansion in the ability to track a household's Web use because it taps into Internet connections, and critics liken it to a phone company listening in on conversations. But the companies involved say customers' privacy is protected because no personally identifying details are released.

The extent of the practice is difficult to gauge because some service providers involved have declined to discuss their practices. Many Web surfers, moreover, probably have little idea they are being monitored.
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