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Am I wrong in stating that onion traffic is watched more heavily than non onion traffic? And honestly it's never the message itself that is watched but the meta

Am I wrong in stating that onion traffic is watched more heavily than non onion traffic? And honestly it's never the message itself that is watched but the metadata, or so they say. So as long as they get your metadata, and it still seems reasonably possible, nothing has really changed.

roywiggins 7y ago
If you're not worried that someone has hacked your device to get your plaintext, then this probably isn't useful. This seems to be specifically designed for people who are worried that their communications device has been pwned over the internet. So, people who are under fairly targeted, active surveillance. Hence requiring three physically separate computers and data diodes at each end, to try and physically prevent attacks over the network.
- maqp 7y ago
  It's not just individual targets. The big concern is economics of automating remote exploitation, as explained by ACLU's Christopher Soghoian here: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8136-stopping_law_enforcement_hacking#t=1440 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8136-stopping_law_enforcement_ha...
woah 7y ago
Isn’t metadata exactly what onion hides? Unless you’re talking about cleartext over onion which seems like a strange choice.
kevin_nisbet 7y ago
Just to jump in on the part about metadata vs the message itself. I saw a very interesting talk a couple years ago by an EFF lawyer, who explained this well. The way I remember it being explained, is in the US metadata had particularly poor legal protections compared to the message content. This is what gave the government any sort of legal basis to claim mass surveillance was legal, compared to say recording and indexing every message from every american. The context of the talk was about cloud and data sovereignty, and making the case that it isn't unsafe to store data in the US with the revelations at the time. I don't think the talk was recorded, I wish it was, because I think that was the best description I've seen from a legal perspective on why the surveillance programs were targeting metadata and not contents.
jammygit 7y ago
It sort of is a reason to use it more often though, no? If ordinary people start using the protocol, it helps to obscure the activity of journalists or other targeted groups.

roywiggins 7y ago

If you're not worried that someone has hacked your device to get your plaintext, then this probably isn't useful. This seems to be specifically designed for people who are worried that their communications device has been pwned over the internet. So, people who are under fairly targeted, active surveillance. Hence requiring three physically separate computers and data diodes at each end, to try and physically prevent attacks over the network.

maqp 7y ago
It's not just individual targets. The big concern is economics of automating remote exploitation, as explained by ACLU's Christopher Soghoian here: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8136-stopping_law_enforcement_hacking#t=1440 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8136-stopping_law_enforcement_ha...

woah 7y ago

Isn’t metadata exactly what onion hides? Unless you’re talking about cleartext over onion which seems like a strange choice.

kevin_nisbet 7y ago

Just to jump in on the part about metadata vs the message itself. I saw a very interesting talk a couple years ago by an EFF lawyer, who explained this well. The way I remember it being explained, is in the US metadata had particularly poor legal protections compared to the message content. This is what gave the government any sort of legal basis to claim mass surveillance was legal, compared to say recording and indexing every message from every american. The context of the talk was about cloud and data sovereignty, and making the case that it isn't unsafe to store data in the US with the revelations at the time. I don't think the talk was recorded, I wish it was, because I think that was the best description I've seen from a legal perspective on why the surveillance programs were targeting metadata and not contents.

jammygit 7y ago

It sort of is a reason to use it more often though, no? If ordinary people start using the protocol, it helps to obscure the activity of journalists or other targeted groups.