http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/03/circumventing_yet_strengthenin.html

Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:38:13 -0500
From: "Ethan Zuckerman" <[email protected]>
To: "Doc Searls" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: quick one...

Psiphon is a great tool if you're someone in a censored nation with a friend in an uncensored nation. It only works if your friend or family member sets up Psiphon on their internet connected computer and gets you a password and IP address. Then you use that Psiphon node the same way you'd use a web proxy like Anonymizer. The user of Psiphon has no software on his computer - the friend helping him in the US/Canada/Germany is running the software.

Psiphon doesn't provide you with any privacy - the friend who's letting you share her connection can see anything you're doing on the web. On the upside, Psiphon is very, very hard for governments to block access to - because you're the only one using a proxy, it's unlikely that ISPs can see the proxy by checking their usage logs.

Tor is a great tool if you need to be anonymous, and if you don't have a trusted contact who can help you get online. It requires software on the computer, which can be tricky, as a government could block the Tor site, or make trouble for you if you had Tor installed. The Tor package includes Privoxy, a privacy and ad-removal proxy, as well as the Tor routing system, which sends all of your packets through three intermediate nodes before sending them to the server you're requesting a page from. This misdirection plus strong encryption gives you very strong assurances that no one knows what page you're requesting via Tor or what data you're posting.

Tor is slow - sometimes very slow - and sometimes doesn't load pages at all. It's blocked by services like Wikipedia, which worry that it's used for anonymous updates. And Tor is susceptible to blocking by blocking the 300+ known, published entrty nodes. On the other hand, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been blocked yet in China or Iran.

Hope that helps. See you next week!

-E

On 2/13/07, Doc Searls <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:

Looking for some Perspective on Tor vs. Psiphon. Just a few words or
sentences on when, where and how one would use one or the other in
settings where either is required.

Thanks!

Doc
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Ethan Zuckerman | <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]
Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
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