University Professor Chastised For Using Tor 623
Irongeek_ADC writes with a first-person account from the The Chronicle of Higher Education by a university professor who was asked to stop using Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Paul Cesarini's door asking why he was using the anonymizing network. They requested that he stop and also that he not teach his students about it. The visitors said it was likely against university policy (a policy they probably were not aware that Cesarini had helped to draft). The professor seems genuinely to appreciate the problems that a campus IT department faces; but in the end he took a stand for academic freedom.
Re:Bravo (Score:5, Informative)
Bowling Green State University (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bravo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the ivory tower (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It can't be _THAT_ effective... (Score:2, Informative)
In addition, once your secure packets reach that first onion-routing node it acts as a proxy, keeping anyone who can't see your last-mile connection from detecting from where your connection really comes.
Re:the ivory tower (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about?
The use of tor on "someone else's network" is implicit, because you are connecting to someone on the other side of the network as a whole.
You say you use tor at home, but that's not "your" network either. I think your ISP would say that you are connecting to *their* network. I think the Hosting Provider of the web server you're connecting to would say it is *their* network. I think AT&T, (or whoever owns the backbone your data is traveling across) would say it is *their* network too.
If any of these network owners told you to stop using tor at home, what would you say to that? I'm guessing it would be pretty close to what this professor said to the IT goons trying to intimidate him into stopping.
The only time it's "your" network is when you have two of your own computers on your own LAN, and a tor router between them.
Re:Bravo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bravo (Score:1, Informative)
You're... kidding, right?
Have you even HEARD the term "Pork"? Bridges to nowhere? Hell, I'd consider the defense industry to be subsidized by the government.
Besides, with the government lately, it seems like the university by taking federal money would DISALLOW any sort of anonymizing things under the guise of "protecting the children" or some such.
Re:question... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:question (Score:3, Informative)
Re:question (Score:2, Informative)
University ID depts pay peanuts (Score:5, Informative)
Then when I wanted to hire anyone, however, they dictated to me what I could offer, and refused to accept any input regarding what industry norms were. So, when I needed a DBA (and frankly needed a really good one), they told me I should get someone Oracle certified, and that I should pay no more than $50k. Skilled, experienced, product certified DBAs, as you may know, tended to go for over twice that (usually more like three times that) a few years back in Boston, and our database wasn't Oracle anyway. I ended up hiring a junior-level person (when I really needed a senior level person) because that was the best I could get for the money they were offering (in fact the only applicant we had received who had any experience with the database products we actually used), and told HR they could forget about certification. Their response was to complain a lot that I hadn't hired a good enough person, despite that they hadn't actually asked me (his manager) about his performance, and he was actually doing unusually well for someone of his level. They also nagged me extensively to replace him with a woman who had applied who was oracle certified (which was still useless because we still didn't have oracle), but didn't actually speak English. (Presumably that's why she was willing to take the lousy pay rate.)
10 months after I was hired the university outsourced my job, proving that their claim of long term job security was a lie in the first place. (I hear they had to hire three consultants to replace me, each one at a cost of two to three times my salary.)
I've seen this pattern repeatedly in university IT groups; they won't pay what it really costs to get someone who can really do the job, but they insist on unreasonable qualifications given the pay level they're offering, so instead of either shelling out what it costs to get what they want or accepting the best qualified person who would normally be in the pay range they're offering, they instead hire the loser who is willing to both take the low pay rate AND inflate their qualifications (either by exaggeration or outright lies) to meet the university's unreasonable demands. So, when they most need a skilled, experienced person, they're most likely to get a lying fraud who can't get the job done and will give everyone else a hard time to try to make it look like nothing is their fault.
Re:Bravo (Score:3, Informative)
It's Jem. And she is outrageous.
(Oh no -- maybe I should have used Tor to submit this comment?!)
Re:Bravo (Score:4, Informative)
-nB
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tor is not so effective (Score:3, Informative)
BGSU's IT usage policies (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/cio/file9602.pdf [bgsu.edu]
and
Now, the first one seems like it is worded vaguely and may or may not apply in this situation, but the second one is pretty clear: as long as you are using anonymity services "to escape responsibility". Clearly, the professor was not trying to skirt the law or detection for any shady behaviour. of course, in the eyes of admins, allowing any use of such anonymizers could be dangerous to their network, and make their jobs harder.
I take most issue to the detectives' request that the professor refrain from discussing Tor in his classes. It would be academically unethical for the prof to bend to this pressure because a little pressure was put on him by the rent-a-cops. The detectives can ask the professor to do whatever they want, but dictating what he can and cannot teach in his classroom is inappropriate.
Re:Bravo (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed!
" If you need a bypass operation you're not going to die on the waiting list because it's too expensive to do it."
To be fair, people do sometimes die on the waiting lists. Its tragic when it occurs, and often makes the national news. Its certainly something that a lot of effort is spent on preventing, and that effort is largely successful. In the vast majority of cases people on long waiting lists are generally in pretty stable condition. And that is part of the "problem", deteriorating cases are prioritized over stable cases -- so if you are stable it can take a long time to reach the front of line, leading to the unbelievable long waiting lists you read about.
For a good analagy consider a combat medic performing triage - patients that are deemed stable may have to wait hours or days to get patched up while people in critical/deteriorating condition are processed immediately. If people are continually coming in off the field, the stable patients just get pushed back further, and are only finally tended to during lulls, or if their condition deteriorates. Its a terrible thing to have to go through, but it is the fairest and most just approach in the situation.
Thus the main problem with the waiting lists in Canada isn't that you are likely to die while you wait, but rather that you have to deal with the condition (and associated pain and inconvenience) WHILE you wait, and that is admittedly terribly terribly frustrating, especially if its disabling in any manner.
But despite the waiting lists and issues associated with them, I suspect that Canada's health care is more effective than the US's is, when measured in terms of how many people live vs die due to availability of care. (Whether its waiting "too long" in Canada, or not being able to afford care in the States.) For the simple reason that a national-scale system of triage seems far more effective at saving the largest number of people vs hoping that only people who can afford care will need it. (the only way the US system could reliably care for more patients.)
Naturally there is pressure from the well-to-do to desire to 'queue-jump' by spending some of that money to avoid time spent in pain. Currently that is disallowed, and that is controversial. I don't have a problem with the rich spending money to get out pain faster; I have a problem with the fact that the more they are allowed to queue jump, the longer the poor have to wait.
The argument that if they queue jump to a 2nd tier in a two-tier system so the poor actually get served faster if the rich can 'pay to get out of the way' doesn't hold water for the simple reason that supply is relatively inelastic. I.e. the doctors and nurses that will staff that 2nd tier are going to come from the first tier. So the poor will have to wait longer. Worse, the more profitable tier will be more attractive, and will be where you find the 'best and brightest', further disadvantaging the poor.
Because of our proximity to the US we essentially have the two-tier system NOW, and the problems with it are apparent.
Wealthy Canadians willing to pay go to the states to "queue jump", and Canada loses doctors and nurses to the states due to the greater earnings potential. I think Canada's socialized medical system suffers overall as a result.
Re:Nice Straw Man (Score:3, Informative)
While the government's response to Katrina was slow and poorly executed, it was not contingent upon ability to pay.
Yes it was. The government put up matching funds, so the poor areas were doublby fucked.
Re:Bravo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bravo (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the huge money sink isn't the $350,000 one-time bypass surgery, at least not for people who can get back to work. The biggest money sink is treatments of chronic conditions, things like MS or mental disorders where the patient isn't going to recover but is going to live on and needs medical care for decades on end. I recently read about a girl in my country, 15yo who killed her mother and also got her own child, they have 8 nurses on her 24x7. If we wanted to save money, we'd put her in a padded room and the kid in foster care.
However, there are priority queues to get otherwise healthy, working (read: tax-paying) citizens back to work. A rather young relative of mine needed a hip surgery - rushed to the head of the line, then retraining. Same with a neighbor in his 50s, if not quite as expendient. That 80yo that's probably going to have a hard time recovering from major surgery? Well, if we get around to it. And in the final stages of life, there are limits to what they'll do. The difference is that we're trying to give everyone a good run - that 30yo isn't going to die while the 90yo millionaire lives on for another year if we can help it. We do have private clinics here too, if you can afford it though.
2) If we could get the legal $ystem out of it, the costs would be much lower but there would be more malpractice. We currently say "no mistakes and no malpractice" but that decision probably doubles or triples every thing we do medically. Which in some cases means that the procedure that could be done cheaply- is now too expensive.
I'm not sure I follow you because there's accepted medical protocol and there's not accepted protocol, aka malpractise. While we don't have your multi-million dollar lawsuits (though we of course pay damages to people that have been mistreated) we do have medical review boards which can do everything from give you a mild criticism to having your license revoked, which is basicly the end of your medical career. You certainly see far less unserious fly by night clinics here than you do in the US.
3) Even in socialist countries- you are paying. Sure- you may rip off the doctors (with a resulting shortage of doctors and hence long wait periods) but the drug company executives are still flying around in jets and vacationing in maui.
They pretty much hate us. One you don't get to bribe the doctors to prescribe their brand of medicine, second as a matter of public policy doctors must prescribe cheaper knock-off drugs if they work on the patient without any ill effects. If they're flying around in jets and vacationing in Maui, it's not because of us. As for shortage of doctors - not really. The biggest issue with doctors is that they're educated in big cities, while they're needed way out in the countryside where well - most of these urban doctors don't want to live. We're not above laws of supply and demand when it comes to getting people to educate themselves to doctors.
Yes to vaccinations for everyone and broken limbs (tho perhaps a limit on the number of times to reign in the reckless types).
And then you'll bring back the courts who'll decide on reckless etc., we cover everyone even if you're a mountain climber, basejumper or whatever else stupid thing you were doing. Turns out that those kind of people go absolutely crazy from limping around on crutches a few weeks, not to mention the pain and aches so there's actually no problem at all. People don't just set off down a double black diamond slope thinking "who cares if I beat myself half to death, the healthcare will cover it".
Re:Bravo (Score:1, Informative)
Real coverage, all things covered, heart surgery, bone marrow transplants, pancreous transplants its all there, you're wrong. Are there things that aren't covered in Canada? Yes, almost all because they are unproven uses of unscrupulously priced new treatments. Do people leave Canada to get treatment in other countries? Yes and those costs are covered too. The philosophiocal stuff about "everything" being covered is a red herring and dosen't contribute to the discussion.
You're wrong -everyone gets by-pass surgery, and there's no rationing. And there's no wait. Annoying even painful waits for Hip replacement? There can be waits, even months, but for life threatening crises? Nope, doesn't happen. You cannot pay for services in Canada to jump the line, get services not paid for, or to end wait times, nope doesn't happen, ever, against the law.
The real costs of American health care is billing. The billing systems are bigger than than the treatment buildings. There are so many insurance companies, government agencies, poor people, volunteer organizations and charities to deal with that hospitals, and health organizations, have billing and payment departments that have to employ more people, (who are often better paid) than care-providing staff. They spend more money trying to find ways to collect from working people that can't pay than they do on their treatments. The reason litigation is so expensive is because there are so many unscruplous people trying to make a killing off a money machine called healthcare, start to change that, and you massively lower the court costs.
Doctors in Canada get paid the same way as the U.S., buy the insurance company, and they set their own rates. Many make hundreds of thousands of dollars, many make in the realm of a million dollars, (though it is Canadian money). Canada has approximately the same number of Doctors per household as the reat of the OECD, and from I can tell more than the U.S. Yes, drug companies and their execs get far too much money, it's theft. But that has more to do with the same kind of copywrite legislation, and intellectuall property laws that are hurting society everywhere else, like technology, movies and software. The whole world is coming to the conclusion that this whole set of issues has run it's course. New laws need to be enacted to solve these problems.
How to read percentages. (Score:2, Informative)
the statistics used also seem to show that 24% of Linux machines are also part of botnets?
No, they show that 0.092% of Linux machines are in a botnet, if we can trust the poster. His link to marketshare did not work but his numbers were:
OS Market Share(Percent) Botnet(Percent)
Windows 93.87 23.47
Mac 5.67 1.42
Linux 0.37 0.09
Other 0.09 0.02
The way you want to look at it, the botnet numbers should add to 100%. They don't, so the numbers don't mean what you want them to.
If you want to be usefull you could find a working link, preferably from a site that shows Linux market penetration at something more realistic than 0.37%.