Hello all, I was talking to one of the tor developers at the Wauholland place the last day @32C3 about his opinion on transparent tor wlan boxes like anonabox or invinzbox and others. (Roger or Sam probably I'm terribly sorry, I forgot to write down the name)
I'm not trying to run in their footsteps claiming anonymity for the uneducated user, but think there are other interesting prospects. The question was whether the tor project would be interested in gaining these new users or not and also about the impact of an increase e.g. 1000 or more of these boxes (users) would have on the tor network. The response was that more users will generate more noise in the tor network and that this is definitely wanted. Also supply will meet demand and that the tor network will handle the user growth. Here goes the idea: I can provide transparent tor wifi routers or facilitate a manufacturing contact for a router. The torbox would simply keep the data plan subscriber (his public ip) out of sight, thus keeping the wlan provider from liability issues caused by the internet users. This will enable lots of places to provide free internet to the community. In my opinion this box should ideally originate out of the tor project / the tor community. Also I could offer building a Tor branded box (torbox) if that is in the interest of the project . Again - the focus is not to provide the user with anonymity - which we know can't be gained trough a transparent tor proxy whilst not educating / radically changing your internet behavior at the same time. There are some challenges - e.g. verifying the authenticity of the running firmware (who flashes it, trust issues). I can imagine building a tor hidden service for updating the box or maybe even an OpenWRT build system to generate the transparent tor enabled firmware can be setup on an official tor site. We already have a build system and update URL running and are working on further advancing the project. Feel free to respond with ideas, concerns, people to get in touch with, ... Best Regards, Christian connector.one -- tor-talk mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
