As they say in Soviet Russia, the television watches you and the radio listens to you.
And Waldo finds you.
Although America has its own surveillance mechanisms in place, like the Patriot Act, other countries continue to openly monitor and suppress the freedom of information online.
But restriction breeds resistance, and today’s version of freedom fighting has taken to the Web with a masthead of zeroes and ones.
This is where the Tor Project comes in.
Tor calls itself “Anonymity Online” and prides itself on being the most secure and secretive way to access the Internet. And the service is free to download on any operating system.
Tor shrouds the user’s online activity by generating untraceable IP addresses, which are like fingerprints for computers.
Think of Tor as the online equivalent of leather gloves.
The service is utilized by various groups to prevent online tracking, such as the military to prevent hacking by insurgents and media outlets to prevent information leaks, according to Tor’s website.
The potential for illegal activity is obvious, but that does not necessarily guarantee wrongdoing.
While many would reserve such secretive measures to paranoid conspiracy theorists and drug dealers, the service has proven to be an indispensable tool for many in oppressive countries abroad.
The government in Iran, for instance, is currently nationalizing the country’s Internet services. This essentially means it will cut citizens off from the Internet to create a government-sponsored version in compliance with Islamic law.
As of last week, websites including Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail were rendered inaccessible to Iranian citizens.
“According to computer crime regulations, access to this website is denied,” the page would read.
Access has been reinstated within the past few days, but the movement to an Iranian Web remains in motion.
According to The Wall Street Journal, approximately 50,000 Iranians were using the Tor network up until last week.
Tor is now engaged in an air war with the Iranian government as it fights to stay a step ahead of a national blackout and provide online liberty to the Iranian people.
The cause is certainly noble. People everywhere should have unabridged access to the Internet along with whatever information can be found there.
The Atlantic Wire hit the nail on the head with its headline “Iran’s Internet crackdown is like catnip to hackers.”
The Internet is the new front for freedom, and hackers seem to be holding all of the cards.
Many, however, would liken absolute Internet freedom and anonymity to anarchy — and they’d be right.
The Silk Road Market is a prime example.
Only accessible through Tor, the Silk Road Market is the Web’s black market, and seeing as every Tor user has his or her tracks covered, I had to check it out for myself.
Drugs, weapons, pornography, hacking services, stolen goods — the list of Silk Road products goes on.
It even uses its own currency — Bitcoins, an online monetary unit with an economy and fluctuating conversion rates that’s intended to be untraceable to the purchaser.
While we’re all aware of the existence of black markets, I never expected them to be a quick download and a few clicks away.
Like any tool, online freedom can and will be used for good or bad.
While Tor is fighting to keep information available to the Iranian public, Anonymous is hacking American networks and government sites to expose valuable information — the aforementioned catnip.
Iran may be putting up a fight, but the frightening truth is that today’s world is run by the Internet, and the Internet has been mastered by a young community of hackers.
Anonymous, Tor and the Silk Road pale in comparison to the hacking community’s massive potential.
I only hope Tor may be seen as the example of this power used for noble causes.
 
Clayton Crockett is a 20-year-old international studies sophomore from Lafayette. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_ccrockett.
 
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Contact Clayton Crockett at [email protected]