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Censorship Your Rights Online

Triangle Boy Lives 209

Posted by timothy from the antimissile-missile dept.
mlinksva writes: "Safeweb cancelled their free service late last year, but their P2P anonymizing proxy, Triangle Boy, has been spotted in the wild (south of Fort Worth, Texas). 'Because of its stealth nature, the P2P software does not show up in reports from many filtering products and the administrator doesn't even know the problem exists and has no way to check it.'(via UniteTheCows)."
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Triangle Boy Lives More

Triangle Boy Lives

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  • Yeah. Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:20AM (#3929053)
    Orange, Calif.-based 8e6 Technologies helped conduct the tests.

    "The results were startling," said Chad Ingram, network technician at Crowley. "The only filter we tested that stopped Triangle Boy use was the 8e6 Technologies R2000. Then, using the 8e6 Enterprise Reporter, we took a look at the logs to see if we actually had users trying to contact the Triangle Boy network. We found that in the first 48 hours, users had gone to the primary Triangle Boy Website over 30 separate times."

    Fucking fancy that! The only way to detect this evil P2P software is to use this peice of software. Of course is just so happens that the people who discovered the shocking truth also sell that product.

    It must be the wildest fucking coincedence in the history of computing.
    • No, the wildest "coincidence" is that said software firm put out the press release that the article in siliconvalley.internet.com is surely a rewrite of...

      A Calif.-based software company Friday issued a warning for network administrators who think they have total control of content flowing in and out of their systems: Triangle Boy is alive and well...

      • Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:36AM (#3929103)
        Sya, which company was it again? This Triangle Boy is surely a threat to my network security! I must go and by the only firewall product that can block this terrorist menace!

        Not only do they get their press release on siliconvalley.internet.com, they get a free ad on Slashdot too!

  • So? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neksys ( 87486 ) <grphillips AT gmail DOT com> on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:22AM (#3929066)
    I can understand the concern that people have over Triangle Boy, but one must consider something important (in terms of the school in the article, anyway): Filters in schools are put in place primarily to prevent students from accidentally accessing some content that the parents may sue over. That, and to prevent kids from wasting their schooltime sending emails. However, to make use of the Triangle Boy, one must a) know how to use it, and b) have a specific reason for accessing blocked material. I don't see the liability issue there - its a piece of "stealth" software that the student, of his own free will, has used - despite acceptable measures to prevent he or she from doing so.
    *shrug* Just a thought.

    • Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @06:02AM (#3929150) Homepage
      I don't see the liability issue there - its a piece of "stealth" software that the student, of his own free will, has used - despite acceptable measures to prevent he or she from doing so.
      since when has anything like that stopped people from sueing?

    • Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Erasmus Darwin ( 183180 )
      "Filters in schools are put in place primarily to prevent students from accidentally accessing some content that the parents may sue over."

      Accidentally? Bull. If that were the case, then the filtering software would allow the student the option of immediately overriding it. If, say, a student were surfing Slashdot and accidentally clicked on a hidden porn link, they'd get a window explaining that the site is blocked for sexual content. Then they'd click a confirmation button (or even have to type out "allow site" to prevent accidental clicks), and they'd be able to surf the site. But that's not how it works.

  • Triangle wins. (Score:5, Funny)

    by scamcdan ( 300729 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:22AM (#3929067)
    Triangle Boy, Triangle Boy,
    Triangle Boy hates Filtering Boy,
    They have a fight, Triangle wins.
    Triangle Boy.

  • What's to keep.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blazen1 ( 583950 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:29AM (#3929085)
    "The school said it is now adjusting its network to detect Triangle Boy and other similar applications." What if anything about this software will keep it from being filtered in the next revisions of filtering software?

  • P2P (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wanker ( 17907 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:29AM (#3929086)
    Dave Salch, CTO of 8e6 Technologies, said because of its stealth nature, the P2P software does not show up in reports from many filtering products and the administrator doesn't even know the problem exists and has no way to check it.
    Since when is a web proxy P2P software?

    The same function as Triangle Boy can easily be duplicated by anyone with a linux box on a permanent Internet connection. Just set up an HTTPS squid proxy.

    Clever users will also note that you can tunnel this over just about any port you want. Make this an encrypted tunnel and no filter in the world will detect it. If your school/network allows even a single TCP port out to the Internet you can do this. (Some places allow arbitrary TCP ports to be forwarded via the HTTP proxy. Other places may have a SOCKS or similar proxy available. Those would both work for this in the event all direct connections are blocked.)

    I do miss Safeweb. That open proxy was very helpful for casual browsing. The closest non-open substitute I've found is http://www.anonymizer.com.
    • ...this one is. It just bounces requests off of other triangle boy users, as opposed to a server you've set up at home.

    • The same function as Triangle Boy can easily be duplicated by anyone with a linux box on a permanent Internet connection. Just set up an HTTPS squid proxy.

      You can do this with SSH too:

      ssh -L8080:localhost:8080 yourhomeproxy.org and set http_proxy=http://localhost:8080/

      • Re:...or SSH (Score:2, Informative)

        by drsoran ( 979 )
        It's even easier if you're using OpenSSH:

        ssh -D 1080 yourhomemachine.org

        Point Nutscrape or Mozilla to localhost port 1080 for the Socks4 proxy. Everything will go over the SSH connection and be proxied by your remote machine without a need for Squid or an explicit web proxy. Don't forget to ask your local security team if this is permissible before doing it though! It may be a big violation to circumvent the access controls in place to support a local security policy. You can, may, and will lose your job over it. Make sure it's worth it.

    • Re:P2P (Score:3, Interesting)

      by God! Awful ( 181117 )

      Clever users will also note that you can tunnel this over just about any port you want. Make this an encrypted tunnel and no filter in the world will detect it.
      Unless the filter just blocks all encrypted connections to unknown sites.

      -a
      • While this will seem like a good solution to school boards and parents, most net admins will see two big problems.

        1. What does an encrypted connection look like? It's not like a software designed to get around filters will advertise what it is doing. I supposse you could look at the data and only let it by if it looks like text, maybe by word frequency, but what happens when the Spanish class goes to look at spanish language sites? Filter freaks and thinks it's encrypted. Yes, you could add language detection and have patterns for all languages, but how many companies do expect will provide these for free, and how many schools will pay for the upgrades.

        I'm sure there are other ways to try and guesss if somehting is encrypted, but there are just as many was to fool those things as well.

        2. Who gets to develop this list of known sites? And how often will it get updated? Does it include just the domain name, or the whole url? Is the Google cache on the list?

        IMHO filtering is not the solution. Everytime a filter gets tighter, its likely to restrict some content that isn't intended, and two weeks later, there is a new way around it. The only one who makes out is the company writing the filter software. I'd rather that school budgets be spent teaching children, instead of trying to hide the real world, no matter how unseemly, from them.

      • Unless the filter just blocks all encrypted connections to unknown sites.

        Unless the proxy steganographically hides its encrypted data inside what appears to be normal text.

  • Anyone know anything more about this? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joto ( 134244 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:36AM (#3929105)
    How does it work? What does "stealth" mean in this context? Why wouldn't it be blocked by people having firewalls explicitly for the purpose of locking someone in?

    According to this article [newsfactor.com] it works by spoofing the the source address. I know at least my firewall would block that.

    And furthermore, it needs to contact a server somewhere (that is, another PC running triangle boy). Now, unless they rely on word-of-mouth to tell people where those servers are, they would have to have one or more (easily blockable) servers to hand out IP-addresses and port numbers to connect to.

    I don't know what's the most frightening part. That administrators think they must block users instead of simply having strict but reasonable rules that people will understand and follow? That windows let users install programs like triangle-boy without administrator privileges (or that administrators regularly give users administrator privileges). That most commercial firewalls don't block spoofed addresses? That administrators who for some reason want to lock users in don't know about Triangle boy?

    • That windows let users install programs like triangle-boy without administrator privileges (or that administrators regularly give users administrator privileges).

      The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system allows unprivileged users to install programs that don't 1. write to the registry outside of HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or 2. write to the filesystem outside of /home (called "/Documents and Settings" in English versions). So do most UNIX systems.

      • >The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system allows unprivileged users to install programs that don't 1. write to the registry outside of HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or 2. write to the filesystem outside of /home (called "/Documents and Settings" in English versions).

        Only if the ACLs are set up poorly.
    • How does it work? What does "stealth" mean in this context? Why wouldn't it be blocked by people having firewalls explicitly for the purpose of locking someone in?

      IIRC, the data is sent to your machine via forged UDP packets. The client on your machine (which is also the proxy for your machine) then reassembles the packets and forwards them to your browser.

      Checkout the TriangleBoy Whitepaper [safeweb.com]

    • Quoting the article: ... returns the requested page directly to the client browser, "spoofing" the origin address so that it appears to come from the Triangle Boy host.
      Unless I'm reading this wrong, or the author of the article doesn't know what they're talking about, the spoofing occurs outside of your network. Apparently, Triangle Boy knows that Safeweb IP addresses will be blocked by some firewalls or filtering software, so the return traffic from Safeweb (e.g. viewing web pages) is spoofed to the IP address of the Triangle Boy host. It's not like clients inside your network are spoofing their source addresses. If that were the case, you would be right and any decent firewall ruleset would block such activity.
      I know at least my firewall would block that
      Your firewall would block address spoofing from the inside, but not from the outside like in this case. I don't know the details, but I would think that the spoofing on Triangle Boy's part would have to take into account issues like TCP state and TCP sequence numbers to work properly, and IF these issues are taken care of, nothing would look suspicious to your firewall.

  • Filters are in danger... Oh no. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FuegoFuerte ( 247200 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:41AM (#3929115)
    I personally have been in a University which performed heavy filtering, and even worked in the IT department of the school. I do not have a problem with blocking or lowering priority for certain p2p apps such as Napster (back in the day), kazaa, etc. I do however have a major problem with filtering web access. While p2p is a major problem in terms of bandwidth and is clearly not for academic purposes (the vast majority of the time), many blocked websites are quite useful for academic purposes. As an example, my school blocked the Google cache and pretty much all translation sites, because they could be "used to access pornographic content" (not neccessarily images). It seems that the possible benefits of said cache (which include pdf -> html and .doc -> html converters) and benefits of all the translation software massively outweigh the possible use for reading pornographic content. I must say, I welcome all such apps as triangle boy and hope to see them spread more widely, as it appears that is the only way we will keep the internet a place where information flows freely, without restrictions from those who would love to brainwash the masses. May Triangle Boy, Peekabooty, and any other similar projects flourish.
    • I personally have been in a University which performed heavy filtering

      Did everybody on campus go to chapel together?

      Did they also have lights-out in the dorms at 11pm, after the "Dorm Mother" made sure that all members of the opposite sex had signed out and left?

      Did they hold seminars explaining that "self-abuse" could lead to blindness and hairy palms?

      Did they ban Elvis for swiveling his hips, and look askance at all the "groovy" kids who went to the campus rally for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign?

      Policies like your uni's scare me a lot more than the thought that some geek might be pullin' his pud to pictures of Paulina Porizkova.

  • Need Link to Source Code and or Binary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, 2002 @05:59AM (#3929143)
    I google searched for Triangle Boy... and found articles about it... and some stuff saying that the source code was released...

    But I gave up trying to find it.
    Anybody wanna post where to get it?

    Also looking for it on p2p networks...
    haven't found it yet
  • Great, now Jack Valenti is going to be scouring Texas for an adolescent cowboy jew.

  • TMBG (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by reduced ( 589510 )
    Triangle man, Triangle man Triangle man hates particle man They have a fight, Triangle wins Triangle man

  • Public Schools (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @06:31AM (#3929185)
    A public school system in a country that values democracy and free speech filters its web access, most likely for not only pornography but also for hate speech, breast cancer information, and 2600.com, and is now desperately trying to get rid of a stealthy program that is meant to circumvent the oppression of free speech in repressive dictatorships.

    From what I saw in my time in the US school system, this sad, ironic situation pretty well sums up how the school system here works.
    • well, you have to understand where they are coming from. they have to be repressive in schools because that's what school is all about: getting you in a building to 'learn' and basically become a better person for it.

      they have to have control over the people in the school to accomplish their goals of structuring the environment in the school, and anything that detracts from the percieved goal of the syllabus in classes is undesirable.

      now, i don't like it, but i accept it, even if it SHOULD be changed

      • Re:Public Schools (Score:2, Insightful)

        by drsoran ( 979 )
        they have to have control over the people in the school to accomplish their goals of structuring the environment in the school, and anything that detracts from the percieved goal of the syllabus in classes is undesirable.

        Schools need to wake up and realize, if they haven't already, that they need to just deny everything and have a whitelist of acceptable sites. That's the only way they'll ever make sure the kids aren't accessing porn and inappropriate content. There need to be all-inclusive sites for educational institutions to subscribe to that include all the tools a student would usually need to do research.. encyclopedias, dictionaries, filtered access to periodicals online, etc.
        • You mean like they were before the internet was introduced into schools - at least over here(Uk). Where CD-Rom encyclopepias and Digests are used. Why bother with internet access at all?

          I'm sorry but I really dont think such an oppresive level of control will help at all. ou have to remember certain pertinent areas of psychology to know that the harder and stricter you are, the harder someone will push back. In such an environment - a few kids WILL HACK - and some will probably be succesful - even if there method is getting the librarian to retype their password and nicking it(a common one even in the school I went to - we had a small LAN). A blanket ban on anything the school might not agree with is more likely to teach the children that all authority is oppresive (and should be rebelled against) than that pron viewing is not acceptable.

          I remember we used to have beebs- which were all replaced by PC's. All the coder types(okay H4x0rs) were dissappointed because we had no access to programming tools - not even a command prompt at first. Although VBasic was clearly on the network -access was denied. We quickly got access to that, and found (having never hacked LANS before) that the security was incredibly poor. The funniest thing was when they disabled my personal user account I wasnt using because I hacked a teachers account which I continued to use - DUH.. And the teacher didnt even attempt to change the password we all new(not really hacking - just stealing a bimbo's password). We originally had just used her account to change our own accounts so they had access to all the software - but following the accounts being locked we just used hers for everything. Although to this day I still VBasic will never live up to BBC basic - ah back in the day...
      • now, i don't like it, but i accept it, even if it SHOULD be changed

        How long before you start supporting it and enforcing it?
      • well, you have to understand where they are coming from. they have to be repressive in schools because that's what school is all about: getting you in a building to 'learn' and basically become a better person for it.

        If a kid wants to learn about technology, hacking, breast cancer, sex, or unpopular politics during the time when they're forced to be in school but aren't being instructed (from what I saw, the computers get 90% of their use during the lunch hours, with every computer in the school being taken up by students during that time), I don't see what's so wrong with that. The schools, on the other hand, want to make sure that the kids only learn what they want them to learn. That's a way to keep kids stupid and docile, not make them smarter and more worldly. It goes against every reason and principle behind education.
    • "A public school system in a country that values democracy and free speech filters its web access,"

      Not only that, but the school library doesn't carry back issues of Playboy. Someone should write to Congress and protest this egregious oversight. It's clear that their failure to carry this fine literary magazine is part of a draconian effort to silence its political messages.

      • Um, why shouldn't it carry issues of playboy? Do you really think anything but the most draconian of upbringings would prevent any child from accessing porn. Sexual quandries like this need to be sorted out. People are taught to have shame for their bodies as if we were religious in public schools.
    • From what I saw in my time in the US school system, this sad, ironic situation pretty well sums up how the school system here works.
      I read an article once in the disinfo.com book You Are Being Lied To that explained that the modern school system was more productive in producing factory workers than educating people.

      Nowadays the schools are being used to develop consumers instead of teaching.

      LV

  • Overlooking Elementary Security (Score:5, Insightful)

    by new500 ( 128819 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @06:52AM (#3929213) Journal

    . . .

    Boy does this sort of advisory wind me up. FUD about users downloading applications, I've seen this on almost every pitch for expensive firwalls and security consultancy recently.

    This ought to be so simple - do not allow users to have sufficient priviledges to install software!

    Problem solved.

    Okay, before I get flamed, this won't work for developer teams or your admins - for whom I merely suggest you can implement a draconian contract - i.e. fire anyone using any software not explicitly authorised (a minimum policy imo) and have a regular *external* audit.

    Neither will this work for networks of Win9x clients, because you can't set appropriate secuirity policies. However you could always get SMS from M$$$$ or write your own scripts to call registry entries and check them against a permitted template so as to flag suspicious installations. At the end of the day it may even be worth upgrading your clients. Or just installing Linux and StarOffice, if you can, he he :). But with respect to upgrading even say from Win9x to Win2k, which ain't cheap, it's still probably less expensive than all the FUD claims - even the reality - of lost security and lost productivity from unauthorised use of your network resources and manpower.

    Oh yeah, and you *do* only open ports explicitly at your firewall, not close off ports in response to the latest "advisory" don't you :-)

    • My current company has this policy.
      It is a very stable NT network, it works well.
      The only real issue is that you have to jump through hoops to get anything non standard installed.

      Most users do not need to install applications on their computer.
    • I could work just fine in that environment, so long as VMware was on the list of authorised applications :).

    • do not allow users to have sufficient priviledges to install software!

      write your own scripts to call registry entries

      Some programs' installers do NOT write to the registry and do NOT write outside of the user's home directory. How will the Windows operating system detect such an installation?

      fire anyone using any software not explicitly authorised

      So somebody who in the course of his or her employment happens upon a site with a Java applet (applets are programs) should be fired?

      • First of all, the point is about not allowing users to install software is a moot. You just you're pc to the network, and nobody can do anything about what sort of softwares you install.

        If you don't want people to install software on a machine you control, well, control it. Make it impossible to execute software for your home dir or write to any other part of the hard disk, and you don't care if the program uses the registry.

  • Blocking Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @07:12AM (#3929235) Journal
    SafeWeb developed the Triangle Boy software for use with its project with Voice of America in an effort to circumvent foreign governments [...] that block free speech.
    It says a great deal that software, which was designed to circumvent opressive foreign government, is put into use in public schools, libraries, etc.
    • It says a great deal that software, which was designed to circumvent opressive foreign government, is put into use in public schools, libraries, etc.

      Excellent statement.

      It won't be long before our ISPs consolodate into one company, and we'll have to do the same type of software on our dial-up and broadband connections at home to let us access news and information that wasn't spoon-fed to us by Disney/AOL/TW/MSN.

      And if you're a sociologist doing online research of, for example, the impact of evolving internet connectivity in middle-eastern countries, you might want some encryption as well, to avoid that visit from your friendly local FBI agents.

      • " And if you're a sociologist doing online research of, for example, the impact of evolving internet connectivity in middle-eastern countries, you might want some encryption as well, to avoid that visit from your friendly local FBI agents. "

        or else you'll make them even more suspicious and they will closely monitor all of your telephone calls, financial transactions, email correspondence and web traffic for the next few years....

  • How much of "a problem" is it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @07:17AM (#3929242)
    "Dave Salch, CTO of 8e6 Technologies, said because of its stealth nature, the P2P software does not show up in reports from many filtering products and the administrator doesn't even know the problem exists and has no way to check it."

    It seems to me that if the Administrator isn't even aware that it's happening, it must not be too much of "a problem", at least not yet. It's obviously not bringing the network down. Of course as the P2P network grows it might become a problem if users do not act responsibly.

    Of course network usage is only part of the equation. Using the network to steal intellectual property is already being used as justification by the entertainment industries to ram digital rights management enabled hardware down out throats.

    Yeah, we all know it is really about profits, being able to prevent people from exercising their fair use rights and thus artificially create a market where the music and video industries can charge us for every piece of music we listen to or video that we watch. Eventually we'll all have to pay EVERYTIME we listen to music or view video because it will all be a service. We will pay each month a little for this service and a little for that service.

    We won't own CDs and DVDs any more. In their infinite corporate wisdom, the remaining few largest corporations that haven't been gobbled up by other mega-corporations, will simplify our lives by removing the burden of actually owning anything. Won't that be wonderful! Just like John Lennon said "no possestions. . ." I seem to have gone off on a rant....

    I think my original point was that the
    • The last part of my rant:

      I think my original point was that the bandwidth usage apparently isn't a real problem yet. Sharing information is what the internet is all about. P2P computing IS a big part of the future however don't steal IP because there are people out there that will use any excuse they can to try to take away our right. Let's not give them any extra ammunition.
    • We won't own CDs and DVDs any more.

      This of course, is the solution to the whole mess: stop buying CDs and DVDs. Problem solved.

      Music will not die for lack of corporate sponsorship. Only corporate-sponsored music will die.
    • Ya know, the guy wasn't talking about all P2P software, but rather Triangle Boy in particular. TB has nothing to do with stealing IP -- it isn't a file sharing network in the sense of Gnutella or KaZaa; its sole purpose is providing anonymity.

      In short: You've ranted quite far off-topic.
      • Of Course TB is used to share files. It also provides anonymiy but what else would P2P software be used for execpt gaming and file sharing?

        My post was dead center topic.
        • It also provides anonymiy but what else would P2P software be used for execpt gaming and file sharing?

          Anonymous web access. That's what TB does. That's all TB does. It does not do gaming, and it does not do file sharing (except in the sense that forwarding HTTP requests and responses is file sharing).

  • still alive..... yes (Score:4, Informative)

    by amithv ( 233062 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @07:46AM (#3929301)
    I had downloaded Triangle Boy and put it on my Linux machine when it was released so I get around various blocks at different places where I used the Internet. When SafeWeb called it quits, my Triangle Boy client continued to work which I found interesting. But I didn't complain.

    That is until someone in Taiwan spammed a whole bunch of people with my IP address advertising it as a way to get around Chinese Internet censorship (my friend translated the Simplified Chinese in the e-mail). My ISP found out that my IP address was in the e-mail and was pissed and suspended my account (Ironically not because I was running Triangle Boy, but because my IP address was in the e-mail. They though *I* sent out the spam!) I just shut down the program, but lesson learned I guess.

    • Forgive me, I'm having a little trouble following you -- were the e-mails explicitly from your box? i.e. you had a mail forwarder running, wide open to the world? Or were they somehow sending e-mail through "triangle boy"?

      I'm gonna go read the white paper now....

  • Is this a problem? I've never thought I'd read that free speach and access to it is a "problem". We live in a pretty fucked up time!

  • I have a big problem with filtering. Especially in public schools and universities. First of all, what do you want to filter? Porn? Hate sites? Please, give me a break. If somebody wants to find porn, they will find it anyway. My high school spend a lot of money on filtering software only to find out that I could simply look up a free proxy [google.com] put the it in my preferences and browse what ever I wanted. With filtering software I found out that I could not do any reseach on the topics of breast cancer, sex education and related stuff. All because they had words like "sex", "breast" and "vagina" in them. I really think that our public schools and universities should not implement cheesy filtering systems that waste our taxpayer's money. Afterall, kids will learn about sex from different sources that are widely available. Just take a look at Cosmopolitan [www.cosmopolitan] or Maxim [slashdot.org] these magazines can be seen at any grocery store and anybody who can read can pick it up and read an article on sex and orgasms.
    • When I was at school we needed to use the proxy to be able to gain access to external networks, but I still managed to browse naughty websites by just using Altavista's Translator [altavista.com], and translating pages from Korean (or some other language) to English.

      The translator couldn't find any Korean words, so the web page was just served in unspoilt English. :)

      TIP: This works well on RM networks in the UK, if anyone is using one. :)

  • Before you think tboy is safe in US, read this: (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.der-keiler.de/Mailing-Lists/securityfoc us/security-basics/2001-11/0344.html

    If your speech or desired access is offensive to the Chinese government only, you will be safe, but if it is offensive to the US, think again.

  • That old Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thales ( 32660 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @09:34AM (#3929656) Homepage Journal
    Spam and Filters.

    When the subject is Spam, I see lots of people insisting that they have the right to control what is on their computers. (True)

    When the subject changes to filters, suddenly the people who own the computer suddenly lose the right to control the content? The Company you work or or the school that you attend owns that computer that they installed the internet filtering software on, and they have as much right to "censor" internet access on their computer as you have to "censor" email from spammers on your computer.

    I'll admit that the commerical filtering software is garbage that often blocks the wrong sites and allows access to some sites that they should have picked up, but that dosen't change the fact that the owners of the computers have the right to install the software.

    Don't like the poor software availble? Then start developing an open source filtering software that works better and offer that as an alternitive to the junk that is currently used.

    Want full unrestricted access? Use your computer instead of one that was provided to you to do a job or for educational access.

    • I guess the biggest objection some people will have is that when you make political rights dependent on ownership of property, a lot of people who don't own property lose their rights.

      A lot of people say that mass ownership of property guarantees political rights, since the control of ownership limits the power base of the government or other property owners.

      I think our world is turning in a scary world of property being concentrated into the hands of a few who tout the rights granted by their property ownership, which is really is an end run around the implied political rights of others.
      • " I guess the biggest objection some people will have is that when you make political rights dependent on ownership of property, a lot of people who don't own property lose their rights."

        Control of properity that you own is a political right.

        "A lot of people say that mass ownership of property guarantees political rights, since the control of ownership limits the power base of the government or other property owners."

        Yep, it proteted people in that bastion of civil rights, the Soviet Union.

        "I think our world is turning in a scary world of property being concentrated into the hands of a few who tout the rights granted by their property ownership, which is really is an end run around the implied political rights of others."

        There is no "right" to control other people's properity.

        • Control of properity that you own is a political right.

          But that's what the Soviets said. The theorists behind democracy reasoned that political rights *came* from ownership of private property; rights over something you own are absolute, they aren't given to you by someone else. If the people as a whole own all the land and means of production they are less subject to the tyranny of government.

          Yep, it proteted people in that bastion of civil rights, the Soviet Union.

          There was no private property in the Soviet Union, which is why there was no freedom.

          There is no "right" to control other people's properity.

          Which is why private property is the basis for freedom, according to classical Liberal political thought.

          It gets scary when most of the private property is controlled by a small group of people who use the rhetoric of liberty and property to advance an agenda that denies rights like freedom of speech to non-property holders.
          • 30 years ago a lot of people were scared of the implications that computers had for personal freedom. At that time computers were very expensive, and allmost entirely owned by "a small group of people".

            The micro computer opened ownership up to millions of people, and that ownership has vastly increased the value of freedom of speech. 30 years ago if you didn't own a TV station, a Radio station or a printing press, your chances of reaching a large audiance were close to nil. Ownership of computers has changed that so that I can reach a fairly large audiance with this post (Hi Folks!) something that I could not have done in 1972.

            If restrictions had been placed on media outlets in 1972 to protect me from the few who owned them then, there is no reason to think that those same restrictions wouldn't have been applied to the micro computer when it was developed a few years later, which in the long run would have a negative effect on my freedom of speech.

            We have reached the point that used computers capable of handling most people's computing needs can be bought for less than a TV. Budget dial-up internet access is under 10 bucks a month. There are damn few people in the industrilized world who can't afford a computer if they are willing to make a minor adjustment to their lifestyle.

  • CIA sponsored software - prior to 9/11... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lawmeister ( 201552 ) on Monday July 22, 2002 @11:34AM (#3930370) Homepage
    The CIA had their fingers into this software prior to 9/11 - I wonder what logs they are looking at nowdays...:(

    "Software that promises users anonymity on the Web has caught the eye of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's nonprofit venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, which says the technology can help the spy agency fulfill its mission."

    From http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,41462,00 .asp [pcworld.com] Feb 13, 2001.

    If you are wondering what 'mission' they are referring to:

    "Internet May Threaten National Security:

    Wars of the future may be fought with viruses and hack attacks, not with guns and bombs, studies say. During the next 15 years, the U.S. will face a new breed of Internet-enabled terrorists, criminals, and nation/state adversaries that will launch attacks not with planes and tanks, but with computer viruses and logic bombs, according to two reports released last month."

    That from http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,37483,00 .asp [pcworld.com]. January 4, 2001.

    Open source or not, I wouldn't choose to use this software...


    • Well, this could VERY LEGITIMATELY be used to further their mission as well. For example, a US spy in China can report back to a website or perform some other "trigger action" like posting a code word to a public forum, without the Great (Fire)Wall of China knowing about it.

      It can help dissidents in (insert country threating to blow us up here) maintain communication links.

      And also.. this is OPEN SOURCE. If you're so paranoid about the CIA putting a back door in, check the source yourself!

      (Frankly, putting a back door in would be a pretty stupid thing to do.. it could easily be found in an open source project -- and then who would trust the CIA again?)

      ((HA))

    • This is interesting...how will they prove something in court that would seem to have no audit trail?
    • The CIA had their fingers into this software prior to 9/11 - I wonder what logs they are looking at nowdays...:(
      I think you've got it backwards. To me that quote infers that the CIA is going to use anonymizing proxies, not monitor them, log them, or take them down... And indeed, the secondary headline for that article is: "Triangle Boy will let agents surf Web anonymously." The article goes on to mention that "the CIA will use the technology primarily to protect the anonymity of its own employees as they go about their jobs."

      The only thing that bothers me is the idea that the CIA is just now learning about and considering open proxies :)

      Shaun
  • How long before those who use this are labelled "terrorist" in the new USA?

    I suggest everyone chips in and runs a copy on a dedicated server with broadband internet access.

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