admin Yellowikis wrote:
So, if someone from Andijan wanted to edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2005_unrest_in_Uzbekistan from Andijan
without fear of being caught by the friendly local police; they'd need to install the Tor client to help protect their IP anonymity and make it more difficult for their network location to be identified.
Setting up a username and password on Wikipedia also helps hide their IP addess (along with Tor)...
But (in theory) the actually post isn't secure from interception (and blocking?) - unless the wiki server is running https.
Tor encrypts traffic from your computer to the exit node. It can indeed be intercepted and blocked, because the IP addresses of the Tor servers are known. I have heard that Tor has been illegal in China since shortly after it was invented, and all traffic to it is blocked. But perhaps it would be useful in countries which are attempting to maintain an appearance of free speech.
In countries with blanket prohibition of anonymising services, the methods for distributing information anonymously are necessarily covert and diverse.
Do any Wikipedias run https?
No. But even if it did, the government could work out who is posting what by simply correlating the transmission time with the edit time. That's possible with Tor too, especially if the number of Tor users in the country is small and they're all being monitored.
Steganography is probably a better way to distribute information in such situations.
-- Tim Starling