Why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?
The answer is that we believe people simply have the right to privacy in trade. Here's a discussion by the OpenBazaar team on the matter:
https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/issues/189
Do you want your credit card company to know exactly where you've shopped for the past two years? Would you like your employer to know what porn movies you enjoy? Would you want your neighbourhood burglars to know exactly how much money you spent on your brand new Swiss watch this month? Is it OK if your super-market chain only offers discounts to you on the condition that you don't buy anything from other super-market chains?
Should your wife be able to scrutinize what trips you went to and how much you spent on expensive chocolate and alcohol without your permission? Discover before her birthday that you bought her a ring as a present? Would you feel alright if Google used all your shopping history to show you targeted ads? As a seller of rare books, do you want the prices of all purchases to be published to potential candidate sellers instead of being treated as trade secrets? Would you want your annoying jealous nephew to know you've booked snowboarding tickets to Austria without inviting him?
Is it acceptable for these things to be posted on the Internet and commented-on by Redditors?
Please, I invite you to post your credit card records for the past year here. We'll be happy to look over them and leave some comments for you. After all, you've got nothing to hide, yes?
Anonymity is important for people. For some people, it's more important than others. Different people have different needs. Sometimes anonymity is a matter of life and death, sometimes it's just a matter of personal privacy and the right to be left alone. Users can use the anonymity feature as they see fit, but we need to be there to protect them if they require so.
And, yes, some trade can be only marginally legal or completely illegal. Sometimes illegal trade is ethical, and laws vary from country to country. At least at the trade level, we should be free and anonymous. What if your Internet provider disables the Internet in your country by secret warrant request of the government if you live in North Korea, or Turkey in the times of Twitter-censorship, or Egypt in the time of the revolt, or Iran at times of war? Is it OK to leak to your government that you purchased an antenna off of OpenBazaar to access the Internet through mesh networks? Sometimes the penalty can be death.
Not everyone lives in free regimes where privacy is a matter of a warm, cozy feeling and convenience. People need privacy in trade to be free.
That said, freedom comes at a cost, and the price for being free is not low :)
That's a ridiculous counter argument. If I buy a bunch of towels/etc. from an online merchant, I have every reason to believe they will not use any information they gather to publicly embarrass me or otherwise do me ill will. Their business relies on them not abusing their customers. If they showed any indication that they aren't trustworthy, I wouldn't do business with them.
On the other hand, I don't have any reason to trust someone on the internet requesting my credit card records in exchange for the privilege of being publicly embarrassed when they post it on the internet. The argument is never "I've got nothing to hide", the argument is that I have no reason to hide my Amazon purchases from Amazon.
Most of your examples are either non-issues or not realistic. My credit card company does have a right to see how much and where I'm spending - I'm borrowing their money when I make a purchase. I don't know of any service I use that sends my porn history to my boss (unless I decided to do it at work on computers owned by my employer). I don't know of any supermarket discount program that prevents you from shopping elsewhere - every rewards program I've ever seen is structured to encourage you to shop with them more, not punish you for shopping elsewhere. My wife has every right to scrutinize our bank account - if I didn't trust her I wouldn't have married her. If she finds out what her birthday present was, that's her loss for ruining the surprise, not mine. My annoying jealous nephew can get over himself - if he wants to come on trips with me then he needs to be less annoying.
If I don't want any of these things posted publicly on the internet, I a) won't post them publicly on the internet, and b) won't share the information with anyone that I don't trust to refrain from posting it publicly to the internet. Anonymity is not the same as privacy - privacy comes from keeping personal information to yourself.
So, to reiterate the grandparent poster asked, why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?
The argument most definitely is "you've got nothing to hide." This argument is bandied about a lot. With some sort of idea that your entire life should be laid bare before the whims of law enforcement/signals intelligence agencies. The idea always comes with the assumptions that:
- If you want to hide something from others is means that you must be guilty of some sort of crime, and deserve to be punished.
- All employees of said law enforcement/signals intelligences agencies are will never abuse their power for any reason, and if they do it's probably for a "good reason" (e.g. see Supreme Court Justice Scala(?) arguing law based on "Jack Bauer" scenarios).
Well, the conversation has apparently gone from asking why someone needs total anonymity when conducting completely legal activity online to protecting oneself from signals intelligence agencies. I have a vested interest in protecting my sensitive information online from identity thieves, scammers, people who would want to rob or injure me and people making arguments like the one I responded to who would likely use my information to embarrass me in an attempt to make a point about having "nothing to hide." When I have a credible reason to add the cops or the NSA to the list, I'll start taking measures to hide my perfectly legal activity from them as well.
The reason I don't fear them isn't because I believe they're infallible, free from abuse, etc. - the reason is that I'm significantly more likely to be assaulted by one of the hundreds of people that walk past me on the way to work than targeted by a rogue NSA agent trying to collect my online activity, and yet I can still walk down the street without being scared of everyone around me.
In the mean time, I know that if the NSA or FBI wants to target me they need a court order, and if I'm going to be arrested and tried in court the cops need evidence of illegal activity to convict me. When I see credible evidence that this is not the case, I'll take steps to protect myself from them. Despite more than a year of Snowden revelations, however, Greenwald and friends have yet to show evidence of a single American being thrown in jail because of the vast, Orwellian surveillance state that has supposedly developed around us.
If it was happening, that would have been the first thing they reported a year ago. The fact that they have yet to come up with anything tells me that in that giant trove of the NSA's deepest secrets, there is nothing to indicate any harassing or incarceration of regular citizens.
So to answer your question, I believe it's an ugly system with a lot of warts, but I have yet to see it break.
A couple of questions:
* Are you a fan of the "benevolent dictator" ideal? (The idea that forming a dictatorship is ok so long as the dictator has the best interests of the people in mind)
* Do you agree with the NSA's redefinition of the word 'collect' to mean that something is only "collected" when a human see it? If not, then why would you trust people that attempt to redefine common terms to mean things that normal people wouldn't expect in the hopes of deceiving them while appearing to be completely honest and up-front?
I'm not an authoritarian if that's what you're getting at - and this is getting way off topic...
> Do you agree with the NSA's redefinition of the word 'collect' to mean that something is only "collected" when a human see it?
I'm going to repost part of an older comment I wrote that addresses the issue:
This is the actual legal definition of 'collected' per DoDD 5240.1-R[1]:
"C2.2.1. Collection. Information shall be considered as "collected" only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties. Thus, information volunteered to a DoD intelligence component by a cooperating source would be "collected" under this procedure when an employee of such component officially accepts, in some manner, such information for use within that component. Data acquired by electronic means is "collected" only when it has been processed into intelligible form."
That would include sent to the NSA, processed by algorithms and stored. The "read by a human definition" as far as I can tell comes from the EFF selectively quoting that definition[2] and drawing their own conclusions from their selective quotation, not the regulation itself. As the regulation itself states, as soon as any DoD intelligence components receives it and processes it, it is considered collected.
The misunderstanding is compounded by Clapper's June 9th 2013 interview with Andrea Mitchell, where he tries to explain that there's a legal difference between collecting content and metadata and fails miserably[3]. Mind you, Clapper is not part of the NSA. That's not an excuse, since as DNI he should know better, but it does explain it somewhat...
[1] http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/524001r.pdf (see page 15)
[2] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect
[3] http://www.nbcuni.com/corporate/newsroom/nbc-news-exclusive-...
I hope that answers your questions. (and, btw, I hate it when people downvote because they don't agree with someone. I think it should be reserved for actual abuse, so I voted you back up a point if it matters to you).
> The answer is that we believe people simply have the
> right to privacy in trade
People who ignore the massive body of work that is Common Law, and the safeguards it provides are doomed to repeat them. Common Law wasn't dreamed up by some idiot politicians, it's the result of hundreds of years worth of "how do we protect the public?".
Which is why you'll find that it's 100% legal to purchase items with cash, under an assumed name, with a mask on, through an intermediary, or whatever the hell else you want, but it's generally illegal to sell anonymously because "caveat emptor" just doesn't cut it.
So come on, let's get some examples of legal goods for sale where there is any significant benefit in the seller having anonymity...?
Yes. When I sell towels, I put my business reputation on the line. Not my personal one. The customers don't know my real name.
Tell me this. When was the last time you knew the full name of a store clerk you interacted with? The name tag might say "Sally", but is it really "Sally"? Or is it "Sally Smith" or "Sally Jones" ?
You don't know, and you don't care. All you know is you went to a business (with a prominent name and location), and bought a towel. If you're happy with the towel, you'll go back. If not, you'll write bad reviews.
At no time do you know the full name or address of the store clerks you interact with. Therefore, it is completely appropriate for the clerks to demand the same level of anonymity online.
Now, this isn't always true. You might have a neighborhood hardware store you've been going to since you were 5. You might know the full name and home address of the owner. But that is his choice. It is entirely inappropriate for you to demand to know his full name and address, or to forbid him from operating behind an anonymous "Hi, I'm Bob" nametag.
I might not know the full name and address of the store clerk, but his employer certainly does. That clerk is representing his business and should be held accountable to business for anything he does. If I have I bad experience purchasing from that store, it doesn't matter to me that it was a bad clerk - it's Local Towel Sales, Inc. that's not going to get my business in the future.
I also as a customer don't need to know that "Sally Smith" owns the corner store, but the owner of the lot that she's renting out for her storefront certainly does. If she's running her business in such a way that it affects the value of the property or will result in legal action, she needs to be held accountable to someone.
It works exactly the same online. When I buy a product that Online Towel Sales, Inc. posted to eBay, I don't care about who posted the product online or packed it up and shipped it, I only care that it came from Online Towel Sales, Inc. and will choose whether or not to do business again with them based on that experience. Likewise, if the owner of Online Towel Sales is using eBay to peddle illegal counterfeit towels or something, eBay needs to know who to hold accountable because they have a vested interest in not having their website associated with illegal activity. I'm not going to come back to eBay if it gets a reputation for being a criminal safehaven.
In any case, the store is "stuck" with its identity and the employees involved will not only be fully identified, they might even go to prison. Or, at the very least, customers will know not to shop there and the store will have a very hard/expensive time starting with a clean slate reputation.
Stores are semi-anonymous for employees, but their enclosing corporations have Registered Agent addresses on file to receive (enforceable) process.
I lose all consumer protection by using something OpenBazaar.
> Yes. When I sell towels, I put my business reputation on
> the line. Not my personal one
If you're the business owner, absolutely and categorically not. Firstly, in every sensible country you are required to prominently display and let customers know the name of the legal entity with whom they're dealing. Secondly, in almost every sensible country, the owners of a business and the directors of a business are public record.
I have no clue at all why you think "store clerks" have any relevance to this discussion at all.
I don't know the technical details of OpenBazaar. From the article this thread is about, it says:
"OpenBazaar is open-source software that runs a peer-to-peer network that can be used with the Tor anonymizing network."
I interpreted that in the literal sense that it "CAN" be used and not "MUST".
If the only possible way to use the OpenBazaar client is to log into Tor, that would understandably raise skepticism about its ambitions for legal trade. A representative from OpenBazaar is in this thread and maybe he can clarify that technical detail.
As for hiding my sales of legal items, maybe I don't want my friends to know that I sold that ugly shirt they got for my birthday. I'm sure there are all sorts of legitimate reasons for being an anonymous seller of legal goods.
I believe that OpenBazaar's initial motive was to distance itself from DarkMarkets as the opportunity to directly link people worldwide for trade without intermediaries, or barriers of entry to the market outweight the needs of those looking to trade anonymously.
I foresee market forces killing off the sellers that prefer to remain anonymous and misterious unless they're selling special items.
In practice I believe people will be less scared to transact with someone who has an identity, who can be accountable. Honor and trust are necessary for all kinds of commerce.
If it were up to me, I'd build OpenBazaar to work flawlessly on the OpenInternet, if anybody needs to use the technology in a different way the code is open and I'm sure they'll find a way to try to hide themselves, but I think it's a fool's errand, no amount of Tor will hide you from the authorities if they want to get you.
I think the size of illegal markets as big as they can be are minuscule compared to the new era of trade I envision, never in our history we have been able to directly trade with anybody else out there. Centralized ecommerce outfits like ebay and amazon have only given us a glimpse of what's possible, but as good as they are, they can't scale to 100% of the planet, I believe a great p2p solution can do this and the consequences of this will be of historic importance.
This slide stack will give you the bigger picture OpenBazaar should be going after http://www.slideshare.net/yiibu/the-emerging-global-web
Worrying ourselves with pleasing users that want to be on Tor, at this point in time, I believe is a waste of time that draws the wrong kind of attention to the project. There's a much bigger opportunity to be seized, a truly world changing one.