VOX: In Pursuit of Mysteries

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.Continuing my previous posts on encrypting e-mail in a useful direction, I thought that I would discuss the use of Tor.

Tor is a tool supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), of which I am a dues paying member. The EFF are amongst those nice people currently suing AT&T for helping the government run a secret "wiretap the Internet" room under an AT&T hub in San Francisco (and likely others around the country as well). This was what prompted me to write about encrypting e-mail earlier this month and to begin doing so when possible.

In any case, the EFF's Overview of Tor describes it and its uses with:

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.

[...]

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.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are supporting Tor's development as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?
What Tor does is create a secondary network on top of the Internet. Individuals or organizations run Tor severs that route Tor traffic from Tor server to Tor server, regardless of where the end users are in the world. Locally, Tor runs as a proxy on your computer. When you use Tor, instead of sending your traffic, such as web requests, directly out to the Internet, you send them to your local Tor proxy. This then routes your traffic from Tor server to Tor server until it sends it out to your destination site. See the diagram from the overview below:

This allows users to not display their home IP address, often associated with your account at your Internet Service Provider, to the end site. This makes access effectively anonymous in that the server accessed only knows the last location in the chain. For example, a few minutes ago, I checked the IP address that I was using through Tor and it showed me as coming out of France even though I'm in Oakland, California. Minute to Minute, the Tor network plots different paths in order to switch servers around.

This can be used for more than just web traffic as well, though that is probably the most common usage. Some individuals run IRC servers within the Tor network or even websites and file storage servers that are only accessible if you are going through the Tor network. These are accessed through addresses ending in a .onion extension for the domain.

An example of that these websites is the primary wiki for Tor discussions. Tor has a public wiki at http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter but the main internal Tor site is at http://eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion. If you click on this link now, you will get an error as it isn't a real domain. If you are going through the Tor network, you will be shown a website that says "Welcome to core.onion." On this site is a truly anonymous wiki and messageboard where people post links to servers and resources. While I can say that not everything is savory there, it is a place of pretty good anonymity on the network.

Tools for Tor Use

If you wish to try Tor out, it is relatively simple to do so. I'll give pointers to a few tools for this.

The primary tools that I use are:

• Vidalia


• Privoxy


• Tor (proper)


• Torbutton

Vidalia is a GUI for controlling Tor that works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It makes it easy to start and stop Tor, monitor traffic, and otherwise eases use. Privoxy is the proxy that you run locally in order to filter your traffic to Tor.  Torbutton is an add-on for Firefox that allows you to easily turn Tor usage on and off when running the browser.

You will only need to install two packages though. The download page at Tor.eff.org has bundled downloads that install Vidalia, Privox, and Tor through a unified installer. You just download the bundle from the site (or through a torrent file), use the installer, and then Vidalia is available in your UI to turn everything on or off.

At that point, if you are running Firefox (which you should be anyway, right?), you can add Torbutton as an add-on within it. Torbutton adds a button in the lower right part of your status bar (or one to your toolbar if you want) which says "Tor Disabled" or "Tor Enabled". This will switch back and forth when you click on it. If you use Vidalia to start Tor up and click on this button in Firefox, all web traffic will be routed through Tor until you click on it again.  Torbutton has a number of options around cookies and your browser history but, by default, does not write Tor traffic to your browser history. Because browser cookies are left by most sites, it is probably a good idea to configure the cookie options in order to avoid revealing your identity.

Once you are using Tor through Firefox, you can then browse the http://eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion site or anonymously access normal websites. It is only once it is turned on that you can access any sites with .onion top level identifiers.

This is a pretty cursory overview but I do encourage people to give Tor a try. It is a good technology to be familiar with, even if you don't feel a need to use it all of the time. I've found that the entire net is available, though often a bit more slowly. The only issues that I've seen is that Google often identifies Tor servers as bots and does not want to serve up searches without proving you are a human first. This is a minor hurdle though.

Good hunting!

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.As a number of people have heard, there was arson last night at Burning Man. Around 3:00 AM, the Man sculpture was lit on fire. Fire crews came from the surrounding area and eventually put the Man out.

Eventually, San Francisco artist Paul Addis was arrested for arson. Details aren't clear right now but a mugshot that has been called "surreal" was made available by the Reno Gazette Journal:

I recognized Paul from the play, Gonzo, that R and I attended earlier this year. Paul played Hunter S. Thompson in this relatively well done play. One of my shots from this can be seen below.

I have no idea why he did it (or proof that he did though I am going to assume he did do it at this point). The grin on his face in the mugshot certainly doesn't give the impression of a remorseful soul or one caught for a crime he didn't commit.

I'm sure more news will be coming out over the next day or two. You can watch the updated article at Laughing Squid on this matter.

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Update: I can't believe I'm actually quoting Valleywag as a source. It makes me cringe. Here is an excerpt from their article on the matter:

The facts as they stand are thus: Addis climbed to the left foot of the man armed with fireworks of some kind, lit them, and set The Man prematurely aflame. Local police now have him in custody, and word is that Burning Man organizers are going to press charges to the fullest.

We speculate that had it been up to Burning Man's Department of Public Works, the notoriously hardcore, grizzled crew that spends months in the desert to construct, tear down, and clean up Black Rock City, the perp would have been hogtied with electroluminescent wire -- a popular art-car decoration -- and torn to shreds by a sunburned, stinky, enraged mob underneath The Man's smoldering embers. But for now, vigilantes do not rule the streets of Burning Man.

Rick Abruzzo, an acquaintance of Addis (and former Valleywag correspondent), mentioned that Addis had been asking for a flare gun or similar object the evening before The Man lit up. Not that anyone obliged. Acquaintances say of Addis, "He has all the ambition to be a Hunter S. Thompson, but without the elegance."

One witness, who also did not wish to be named, said she actually saw Addis setting the blaze, and was told that he had been bragging about it beforehand to some campmates. The campmates were apparently also the ones who turned him in.

Laughing Squid has reported that Addis is now out of jail on bail paid for by friends, who had to convince him to give his name to the police, which he had been refusing to do for some reason.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.As a number of people have heard, there was arson last night at Burning Man. Around 3:00 AM, the Man sculpture was lit on fire. Fire crews came from the surrounding area and eventually put the Man out.

Eventually, San Francisco artist Paul Addis was arrested for arson. Details aren't clear right now but a mugshot that has been called "surreal" was made available by the Reno Gazette Journal:

I recognized Paul from the play, Gonzo, that R and I attended earlier this year. Paul played Hunter S. Thompson in this relatively well done play. One of my shots from this can be seen below.

I have no idea why he did it (or proof that he did though I am going to assume he did do it at this point). The grin on his face in the mugshot certainly doesn't give the impression of a remorseful soul or one caught for a crime he didn't commit.

I'm sure more news will be coming out over the next day or two. You can watch the updated article at Laughing Squid on this matter.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.My thesis mentor wrote to me this morning. He's the head of my three professor committee of readers (as well as being my mentor).

He wrote to me to tell me that he had signed off on my thesis and sent it to the other two readers, recommending that they approve it as well. He wanted to offer his congratulations but thought it was premature until the others signed off.

As a side note, he said that he appreciated the work I'd gone through to reign in the overall length of the thesis since he had seen both the original outline, one of the overly long and problematic chapter drafts, and had gone back and forth with me on it.

So, that's one milestone completed. Once the other two read it and (hopefully) sign off, it then enters the red tape maze (like the mines of Moria) to emerge as an approved thesis on the other side. It has to get past the formatting guidelines Balrog and his MLA orcs though.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.The guys at Woot have made the t-shirt designed by Cory Doctorow around airline travel available again. Free shipping too. :-)

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.This has been making the rounds with a few people but is still worth noting, I think. Patrick has put a guide up for basic zazen practice that is fairly good as well as entertaining.

I happen to be familiar with Patrick because he does a podcast with Gwen Bell from BuddhistGeeks called "Zen is Stupid." This is an occasionally inane but often entertaining podcast on Zen and Buddhism in general.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.I had lunch with Scott yesterday. He's finishing up his PhD at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) and has an MA through the Institute for Buddhist Studies. I've been considering getting an MA through them, there Master of Arts in Buddhist Studies, recently. I have previously considered getting a PhD through GTU.

Part of the barrier with the PhD is that I would not be able to work full time, especially during the first few years of course work, and pursue it. The fact that the program is in a private school combined with a lack of full time work means a lot of financial difficulties.

Scott and I spoke about this quite a bit since he's living in this world right now. He works part of the time at GTU (IBS) and has taught classes but he didn't pull any punches about the financial end of things.

One of the things that keeps coming up is what I would do with a PhD if I got it. Ideally, I'd like to teach but I don't talk about that much because I know quite a few recent PhDs and one of the common things that they all are dealing with is a lack of positions, especially tenure track positions, for Humanities related disciplines. A lot of them are teaching as adjuncts at multiple schools with no job security if they are able to find work at all.

Technically, with my MA, I can teach undergraduate programs, especially in Humanities. Finding work doing such might be quite difficult though.

I love the idea of getting a PhD but I'm not sure I really want to financially "ruin" myself in order to do it. If I knew that I could still pay my bills while working on a PhD, I think I'd do it. There is no reliable funding for doctoral students at GTU and definitely nothing one could make a living doing. I need to decide in the next couple of months if I want to apply for Fall, 2008 for GTU for the PhDs programs.

Scott made it pretty clear that he didn't think that there would be a lot of value in me getting a second Master's degree by going through IBS. His advice seemed to be to go straight into the PhD program, leaving aside the financial issues. At this point, I'm agreeing with this. If I continue in school, it will be in a PhD program.

I am planning on signing up for Japanese courses during this next year. I need to decide if I want to go to a private program in San Francisco or try to take undergraduate Japanese classes if I can work them into my schedule.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.Here are a couple of Star Trek inspirational posters. The rest are over here.

There are pages and pages of these but quality does vary.

I return your non-geek reality to you now.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.Other than my birthday, I had a bit more social activity in the last few days than normal.

On Friday, my friend, Elizabeth, from Portland was visiting the area for yoga training at Yoga Kula in Berkeley. I'm not sure how long it has been since I saw her but I'm sure it has been more than a year. We went out to dinner and coffee in order to chat. She mentioned that Douglas Brooks is associated with Yoga Kula and teaches there occasionally. I'd forgotten them. If you are interested in Hindu Tantricism, he is pretty well regarded.

On Monday, I had the day off because Mozilla makes your birthday an official holiday day. (How cool is that?) Jisho Sensei was in town for the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco. (This is where they discussed whether psychologists can help the CIA create their non-torture that I blogged about recently). Jisho is a clincal psychologist as well as being a priest and teacher in the Buddhist organization with which I am associated. Because he was in town for the conference, it seemed a good chance to get together.
Jisho had only been to the Bay Area once before and normally lives in Ohio. I took him over to the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park and then down to the ocean. Later on, we went to a late lunch and got to spend a fair bit of time together discussing various Buddhist and academic things.

All in all, not an exciting weekend report but I was glad for the chance to see people.

Originally published at In Pursuit of Mysteries. You can comment here or there.My wife, R, just gave me my birthday presents.

One in particular stands out: The Clown Mexican Wrestling Mask.

Isn't it beautiful?

RRRRRRR!!!!

There is a photo set on my Flickr account as well.

Everyone, be sure to thank R for her gift to the world.