Protect your privacy on the web

Tor, a barrier to internet snoops

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

What with surveillance cameras everywhere,your grocery chain central computers knowing everything you buy and your gps capable of knowing when you’ve broken the speed limit or skipped a stop sign, or even your TV set capable of watching you instead of the other way around, it’s a wonder there’s any privacy left. If you’re worried about someone knowing what web sites you visit, fear no more. The US Navy, the Swedish government and other groups finance the Tor Project and it’s free!.

The original purpose was to aid governments and police agencies in keeping their investigations away from prying eyes, the free software also serves people with nefarious interests. Isn’t that typical? It’s like the old Mad Magazine Spy versus Spy cartoons. Just when a new technology is developed for good purposes, someone turns it to something nasty. When the internet was invented (by Al Gore or someone else) nobody anticipated that 40% of its use would be for international pornography.

It’s not enough to download and install the Tor program. You must use its browser and follow the instructions or your attempts at privacy will be circumvented. There is ample documentation available on the Internet. The idea is to conceal your IP address, so you can’t use flash player and other programs which can trace back to you. So no addons or plugins. Tor encrypts the web sites you visit.

The secret to how the system works is the routing. Your surfing is routed through other computers, and the more there are of them the better. In spy tradecraft this could be described as using cutouts, such as using a dead drop to pass your message onto a courier you never meet who passes it on to another she has never met. It’s like putting your message under a rock in the park to be picked up by someone else who puts it in a hollow tree, etc. In the case of Tor, the chain of communication is through other people’s computers, which may include yours when someone else is using Tor..

The risk there is that your hard drive may inadvertently, unknown to you, be a temporary parking place for some kiddie porn. That happened to a student in Graz, Austria. He volunteered his computer as a link in the Tor network, but when the police found the porn, he was accused of being a child pornographer and has charges pending. It’s a bit like arresting the mail carrier for having incriminating post in his bag.

The Internet overview of the Tor Project and its uses states, “Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

“Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.”

General Allen should have used some sort of secure cutout for his love letters. Of course, his method was to post draft letters to a phony gmail account his girl friend also had access to. The messages were never actually sent. They were opened, read, and never went beyond the draft stage.  A better option would have been to encrypt the messages using  free pgp encryption, but that demands your writing the message, encrypting it, destroying the original, and then sending it. This is tedious and of course if someone can see your’ve got encrypted messages they might be curious.

There’s much more to the Tor Project than can be covered in a single newspaper column. Study it carefully and follow the instructions meticulously or you may inadvertently give away your IP address.  Then all your efforts at internet privacy will be for naught.