Open Conversations: Privacy Can't Ask Permission (Roger Dingledine, Tor Project)
Funding the Commons Open Conversations · 2:13
Roger Dingledine of the Tor Project argues that privacy tools must serve people at the edges of the network rather than those holding power in the middle. He compares today's debate over end-to-end encryption with the earlier fight over HTTPS, which governments once warned would let criminals go unfound and which is now taken for granted. The next phase, he says, is protecting communications metadata and which websites a person visits, and he points to a blogger in Egypt who has no alternative to Tor.
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From Funding the Commons Open Conversations, hosted by Funding the Commons.
Transcript
It can't be power in the middle of the network because then you're just reinforcing the existing power structures where huge companies and governments and so on, they're not the ones who need privacy. It's the people who are at the edges who need their privacy. I'm Roger Dingledine. I work for the tour project, which is a nonprofit that writes privacy software to help people around the world be safer on the internet. right now are in the middle of the next round of the cryptography wars [music] where the world is worried about end to end encryption. The previous round was they were worried about whether you could use HTTPS in your web browsing.
They were worried about having the little lock in your browser because just 15 years ago governments were saying if everybody had encryption in web browsing civilization would collapse. We wouldn't be able to spy on users. Criminals would go unfound. And now 15 years later, it's normal to have encryption in your web browsing. You you go to your bank and if you don't have the lock, you're like, "What's going on? Why don't I have my encryption?" [music] So, the next phase of that is how do we protect the communications [music] metadata? The next phase is how do we protect which websites you're going to?
Cuz right now you say, "Oh, why would I want to hide that?" [music] But we keep seeing a series of reasons why. I try to think about which groups I'm helping the most with my [music] software. So, for example, if you have a military and law enforcement behind you, you don't actually need privacy on the [music] internet as much. You're doing fine. If we took tour away from the world, you would still have your military and your [music] police and so on. You don't need things like tour as much as vulnerable populations around the world. There's an Egyptian blogger who blogs about [music] gay rights and that person doesn't have alternatives to tour. They need something that can keep them [music] private and keep them safe even from their government. They're in that
vulnerable marginalized situation. [music] And for those people, tour is the only option.