The recent Paris attacks not only impacted a great nation, they rocked the entire planet to its core. Regardless of what country you were in, the support for the people of France was very evident across the Internet and social media. Now just weeks after the Paris Attacks French authorities are considering blocking the anonymizing search software Tor. Authorities are also considering blocking and banning public Wi-Fi during a state of emergency. French authorities point to the fact it is very hard to track someone using public Wi-Fi or shared networks. As far as Tor is concerned, the service is used by whistle-blowers, journalists and the populace who want to keep their online activities from being tracked.
According to Motherboard China already has a system that blocks Tor and if the French are seeking to block Tor, they may have to adopt a similar system. From the sound of it though, the French at least seem to only want to do these things in a state of emergency.
China actively blocks connections to known Tor entry nodes. These are the first relays that a Tor user’s computer connects to, and are publicly listed. Tor can also use non-public entry nodes, called “bridges,” and these are typically effective at allowing someone to connect to Tor from a country that blacklists the network. (China’s firewall can sometimes detect these as well, by analyzing the internet traffic flowing through the country.)
The balance between freedom from government control and protection of the people is a hard thing to maintain, especially in this new tech driven world. Whether or not French authorities get this proposal passed remains to be seen. In the meantime, what do you think about governments blocking Tor and public Wi-Fi? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
[button link=”http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9860416/france-block-tor-public-wifi-paris-attacks” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source:The Verge[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
