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The IETF and Tor – Group Thinks Anonymity Should Be Baked Into the Internet Itself

[Philip Lelyveld comment: I was not aware of Tor's history.  If the government partially funded and were involved in its creation, maybe unknown aspects of it don't give the bad guys as clear an advantage as they may think if it is implemented as a standard.]

The Internet’s main engineers have asked the architects of Tor—networking software designed to make Web browsing private—to consider turning the technology into an Internet standard.

If the discussions bear fruit, it could lead to the second major initiative of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in response to the mass surveillance by the National Security Administration. Already the IETF is working to encrypt more of the data that flows between your computer and the websites you visit (see “Engineers Plan a Fully Encrypted Internet”).

The Tor Project is a nonprofit group that receives government and private funding to produce its software, which is used by law enforcement agencies, journalists, and criminals alike. The technology originally grew out of work by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory aimed at protecting military users (see “Dissent Made Safer”).

When someone installs Tor on his computer and takes other precautions, it supplies that computer with a directory of relays, or network points, whose owners have volunteered to handle Tor traffic. Tor then ensures that the user’s traffic takes extra steps through the Internet. At each stop, the previous computer address and routing information get freshly encrypted, meaning the final destination sees only the address of the most recent relay, and none of the previous ones.

See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/521856/group-thinks-anonymity-should-be-baked-into-the-internet-itself/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20131127