[Web4lib] Tor, Web Anonymity tool

[Karen Coyle]

Through various connections I have been having a conversation with the 
developers of Tor, which is basically some open source software that 
sets up onion routing (either as a client or a server) for Net traffic. 
Their site is http://tor.eff.org, and I would love it if some of you 
could take a look at this and give me your feedback. The Tor folks would 
like for libraries to use their software, but so far I'm not convinced 
(but would love to hear from those who are). In particular, we have 
discussed: a) libraries installing Tor clients on all internet access 
machines 2) libraries running a Tor server 3) libraries advertising Tor 
to their users. The Tor folks, of course, are not knowledgeable about 
library systems, much less library users, so this is the usual case of 
having to explain that many library users don't understand about things 
like running programs from the Windows command line, etc. In any case, 
among my reasons for hesitation are:

1) The Tor Windows client requires a fairly complex install (see: 
http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc-win32.html)
2) The Tor client would probably interfere with any IP-based access 
controls (as would the server), since it mainly masks your IP address. 
(The Tor folks have suggested that libraries could run their own Tor 
networks that function essentially as proxies -- I haven't fully 
understood that yet.)
3) I'm not sure how many libraries actually run and have control over 
their own internet servers
4) I don't know how library (and campus, etc.) IT folks would react to 
having anonymous access going through their networks. I suspect some 
would be very nervous about it. How would your institution react?

I'd like to get back to the Tor group with some kind of feedback, 
perhaps invite them to post their ideas to this list. Would you be 
interested? Would anyone like to enter into a dialog with them to help 
them make this a library tool?

kc

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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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