How anonymous can be anonymization services today?
In May this year, the Iranian government distributed a blacklist of the country’s international internet providers, around 15.000 "amoral" Websites contained, and demanded the immediate access barrier. In addition to erotic and porn offers, there were also several international information and news pages on the index.
From now on, these content unwanted by the government are accessible to the two million internet users in Iran – at least over gang: the privacy specialist anonymizer.Com took a proxy service in operation last week, whose use alone remains reserved for users from the Persian God State. The operators can be used on a hare-hedgehog game with the Iranian authorities: the changing access URLs are announced via radio broadcasts, as well as distributed over round emails to addressees, which are contributed by Iranian human rights organizations.
The project is financed from the US state pacifier. The International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the United States News and Propaganda Arm in Ubersee, pays Anonymizer INC. A not mentioned sum for construction and operation of the service.
The financial association of a company, which is to protect its customers, among other things, before accesses of the US state power, with a representative EBDShis state power is probably at least spacious.
At the latest since the so-called Patriot-Act, the US resists equipped with almost limitless access rights to business documents and customer kits, the well-known desire of the investigative authorities is known to collect data. Cereburos, book handler and diving schools had already had to ie their customer lists and so the liaison works between anonymizer.COM and IBB on privacy not necessarily soothing.
But even in countries in which no patriotic act will cause data protection for the time being, the providers of anonymization services are not easy: recently first the operators of the JAP project of the TU Dresden had to integrate a protocol function into their service at the arrangement of the BKA, which does not have an anonymization service necessarily make anonymous. On top of that, the Dresdeners love their users over these "Functional expansion" long in the unclear and responded only very spat with a press release on already circulating reports. Whether the procedure of the BKA was right, is more than questionable, which does not matter to the facts, however,.
This, now yes, unelegant approach has also spoken down quickly to the coarse pond:
"Self-resistant is Jap’s right to offer their services under the conditions they prefer", Aubert Lance Cottrell, boss and the land of Anonymizer Inc. Telepolis. "However, it is unethical not to be absolutely honest how these rules look exactly." And Cottrell lays according to:
The behavior of the user is directly oriented directly at their association over the protection of their anonymity. Users to load the level of data protection, can effectively equal to the places of a trap.
Hard and clear words. And the government financed Iran proxy? The Burger Rights Organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sees such a project at Anonymizer INC. In principle in good hands. Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney of the association, though also warns:
Theoretically, of course, the contract could contain a clause that the government has more access to the data than you already have anyway. The big problem is: whether there is a contract or not, the government has a remedy with which you can force each business to ie its customer data. The general question thus is called: has anonymizer user data in usable form?
Paula Dunne, Pr-Officer of the company:
Anonymizer is constructed so that it is absolutely impossible to release personal information to anyone. No private information is made on one of the servers on any way. The fact that the company is unable to pass on us to share user information is the final mechanism to ensure safety and protection.
Lee Tien also stobs in the same horn:
There is no protection against an obligatory court decision. But there are practical precautions. If you z.B. No server logs leads what we recommend, there are no data that can be ied.
Sure, a naked man can not be grabbed in the pocket, but maybe bring to singing? However, these arias were then intoned to the exclusion of the public: GEMAB Patriot-Act, it is also prohibited from a company to chat that at all customer data requested and published. One – if limited – press release as in the JAP case goods in the US thus more than unlikely.