Privacy: “Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users?” and Guidelines For Ethical Tor Research
“Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users?” is the title of a post on the Tor blog.
From the Post:
The Tor Project has learned more about last year’s attack by Carnegie Mellon researchers on the hidden service subsystem. Apparently these researchers were paid by the FBI to attack hidden services users in a broad sweep, and then sift through their data to find people whom they could accuse of crimes. We publicized the attack last year, along with the steps we took to slow down or stop such an attack in the future:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-security-advisory-relay-early-traffic-confirmation-attack/
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This attack also sets a troubling precedent: Civil liberties are under attack if law enforcement believes it can circumvent the rules of evidence by outsourcing police work to universities.
Read the Complete Tor Blog Post For More
The Tor Project has also posted Version 1.1 of Ethical Tor Research: Guidelines
See Also: Additional Coverage in a Post By Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing
Hat Tip and Thanks: Matt R. Weaver
Filed under: Data Files, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.