Hacker News Reader

Comment by WORMS_EAT_WORMS | Hacker News Reader

> I operate X currently and all are in Asia where they're most needed imho.

Interesting/Awesome. Just curious, what day/event specifically motivated you to get started with this?

To be honest, my impression -- which could be wrong -- is most exit node operators do so for nefarious reasons, Pr0n (hence your username INT-Penis), or are Fed.

(to be clear, appreciate what you are doing regardless)

View on HN

I just think anonymity should be a right. I don't even remember when I was introduced to tor first, probably sometime in the early 2000s.

I'm not stupid, with anonymity comes abuse. But I don't think that's a reason to get rid of the option to be anonymous.

I'd say your impression is wrong about tor operators, I've met a few of them at various events. (Not including the tor operators who try to subvert anonymity of course, whoever they are.)

But the tor network is absolutely mostly used for illegal activity. I can't be dishonest about this, that would mean denying human nature. Give humans a way to be anonymous and they will absolutely abuse that.

But I've also met one reporter in person who thanked me for the tor network, that's enough for me.

I'm curious how you reason about something that you say is used mostly for crime. Especially when there are other options for anonymity? Is there anything which can move the scale the other way, or is the fact that it's a human right in your opinion always going to win?

First of all anything that is widely adopted will be used for crime. That's just human nature. Tor is widely adopted right now but there have been alternatives like Freenet for example.

So the choice is either anonymity and crime, or no anonymity at all. And crime won't go away, it just won't be able to use an anonymous channel for communications.

And it's not like criminals are getting away with it by being anonymous either. If you go on tor to commit crimes then you will be hunted down by the international police. And if you commit heinous crimes against children then you will find no refuge. That's not a good life to live. Odds are you will end up in prison sooner or later.

What are the other options for anonymity that don't provide the same cover for criminal activity?

One option that I have theorized in the past is to simply run the tor network at a very low bandwidth per connection.

As in, 28.8K or 56K or so ...

This would force tor into being a text only communications channel which would obviate many of the most egregious illegal use-cases.

You'd lose nothing with regard to freedom of speech and thought and communication. For instance, you can publish, and consume, a site like HN without any issues on 56K.

I like that idea. It's so simple but it would totally get the job done. Of course this would have to be a throttling per connection so 100 HTTPS API calls don't congest a relay node.

But I don't see it working in reality because there is the argument that you might need to share leaks anonymously and that would take days.

Crime is subjective, hence every country on earth having different laws. I'm guessing but I imagine the vast majority of the crime is just drug sales which is becoming less and less criminal as society awakens to the realities of the underlying problems that cause drug use and the facts about its relative danger.

I think the far more serious crime in tor is child pornography.

Well, thank you. Wish you best of luck and appreciate you taking a stance. Not enough of people do and agree nothing is perfect. My comment was never intended to knock you and enjoyed reading your insight here.

Considering that I see a large number of Tor nodes running from the same addresses as many pool.ntp.org nodes, I think your view is a bit uncharitable. Some people believe in Internet freedom and privacy, and see Tor as a way to help bring that vision to the world. In my opinion, it's just people contributing another piece of infrastructure run as a public service.

I had ran exit node for several years because it, you know, a good thing to do in life. Like donating to charity or publish GPL code. Freedom sometime is underrated, but if you live in authoritarian state you may understand.

Helping people around make me feel better.

> Pr0n (hence your username INT-Penis)

Wait I can't tell if you're joking, do you really think their username is a reliable indication that they run Tor nodes for pornography, and not a stupid internet pun? Because if you're joking I lol'd, but if you're not I ... I'm worried about you, I guess?

As a username with a stupid pun/portmanteau with a dick joke in it I appreciate this.

I wanted to use the name NaturalsticPhallacy, because it's a prevalent fallacy I see people fall for, and humans have found dicks funny since recorded history but it's too long for HN so I had to shorten it to this one.

I do not build or operate any sort of porn or even porn adjacent software or service and never have. Not that I wouldn't if the right job came along, but I never have and currently don't.

But I digress. Usernames are generally best ignored. The content of their writing is what matters.

The username refers probably to INTP-enis, INTP is a personality type (Myers-Briggs).

For the uninitiated, this: https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality

I feel obligated to note that operating a Tor exit node is very much to type.

Meyer-Briggs is bunk.

It's certainly lacking in both rigor and utility, but the "Jungian" cognitive functions that it builds upon are fairly well-established to my knowledge (not a neuroscientist).

Yes, I am wondering why the person with the username containing the word “Penis” runs Tor exit nodes. It is curious and agree could easily be totally unrelated.

It doesn't have to be a reliable indication to be an unsurprising correlation.

> Pr0n (hence your username INT-Penis), or are Fed.

This part of your comment is completely unnecessary and unwarranted.

You already asked your question, just wait for an answer instead of jumping to uncharitable conclusions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com