Edward Snowden worked at the National Security Agency of the USA and whistleblowed about the rampant unauthorized worldwide spying going on.
People began to realize that "big brother" was already watching over all of us.
Phones are basically tracking devices that can make phone calls. Because even the poorest person has a phone, NSA is able to collected information on where you are, what you do and say, and who you communicate with.
NSA is surveilling everyone in the world that they can track.
The US Office of Naval Intelligence developed Tor for its own protection and for securely transmitting diplomatic traffic for the US State Department.
The US government promotes its use for oppressed populations that they support because the Tor network not only protects the identity of dissenters, it also allows them to reach sites on the internet that are censored and blocked.
Messages from a sender to a receiver on the Tor network are encrypted by using the public key of the receiver to lock messages to make them unreadable to anyone without the receiver's private key. The public key is like a lock that can only be opened by its corresponding private key.
It is used by people to allow them to circumvent censorship and/or to voice their opinions anonymously without the fear of reprisals from repressive governments and to have access to censored and blocked sites.
If you want to anonymously carry a secret packet from one place to another without getting caught, you best
zigzag thru a crowd without taking a direct route and leave no trace behind.
You need also to hide the packet so that it cannot be easily found. The very same criteria are needed to remain anonymous on the internet. Fortunately Tor network provides all those criterion.
The software that allows any computer to use the Tor network is freely available. Its open source code ensures that it stays free of any centralized control, free of any back-doors used to compromise the network, and free of any cost to the user. It has no accounts with passwords and user names. It keeps no logs and has neither central repository nor registry of addresses.
Tor encrypts the data, including the destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit comprising successive, randomly selected Tor relays. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data on to it. The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing, the source IP address. Because the routing of the communication is concealed at every hop in the Tor circuit, this method eliminates any single point at which the communicating peers can be determined through network surveillance.
Servers configured to receive inbound connections only through Tor are called “hidden services” and allow users to publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Rather than revealing a hidden server's IP address, and thus its network location, a hidden service is accessed through its "hidden service descriptors". The descriptor changes every 10 minutes and specifies 3 randomly picked volunteer proxy nodes in the Tor network. onion address.
The hidden services "onion addresses" are based on public keys of the hidden servers. The Tor network understands these addresses and can route data to and from hidden services, while preserving the anonymity of both clients and servers. These onion addresses are generated and stored in a onion address database that stores the hidden service descriptors. Other than the onion address database, Tor is decentralized by design.
A hidden service wanting to set up a connection to communicate with another node randomly chooses 3 nodes among the thousands of nodes that volunteer and agree to play the role of proxies.
The nodes are listed by a special node called the directory node. The 3 nodes are called the entry node, the relay node and the exit node. The hidden service exchanges public keys with each of the 3 nodes and messages are repeatedly encrypted as they are sent through the 3 nodes.
Each of the 3 nodes removes a layer of encryption to uncover routing instructions, and sends the message to the next router where this is repeated. This prevents these intermediary nodes from knowing the origin, destination, and contents of the message. The circuit thru the 3 nodes is broken after 10 minutes and a new one is built to thwart any attempts of attack or spying.
The hidden server then publishes a descriptor containing its public key and the addresses of its 3 introduction points and receives an onion address. In effect the hidden server advertises its service and introduction points and its anonymous name it will use for the next 10 minutes.
If a client wants to contact hidden services, it finds the descriptor of the hidden service and the introduction points of the 3 proxies it will use for the next 10 minutes.
It chooses a randomly picked node in the Tor network and asks it to act as a rendezvous point by telling it a one-time secret. Then it assembles an introduction message that includes the address of the rendezvous point and the one-time secret.
The client sends this message to entry node for the hidden server and requests that the message be delivered to the hidden server via the relay and exit nodes. The encrypted message from the client to the hidden server is “please meet me at my rendezvous point and identify yourself with my one-time secret”.
The hidden server creates a circuit to the rendezvous point and identifies itself by sending the one-time secret allowing client and hidden service to communicate with each other. The rendezvous point simply relays end-to-end encrypted messages between the client and the hidden server.
The Tor network, with hidden black marketplace services like Silk Road can be combined with the electronic currency called
which is as anonymous as cash. With this combination, what you buy and who you buy from can be kept private.
National postal facilities are at present prohibited from opening your letters and parcels that originate within your country. This combination of Tor, Bitcoin and post office privacy allows you to buy goods, whether legal or not, anonymously and have them discretely and securely delivered to your home.
THE END
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