Tor onion router: social good or anti-social practice?
At Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology:
Earlier this week, a hacker infiltrated the website of a company in France, defacing the site and using it to send vulgar emails. The hacker was not a Rose-Hulman student. But through a router maintained by a Rose-Hulman student, the hacker was able to do this anonymously.
The student, senior computer science major David Yip, was maintaining a router on his computer called a Tor onion router.
There are many ways to describe this activity: exercise of freedom, negligence, lack of due diligence, accomplice or accessory to crime. Is it a social contribution or an anti-social practice? Drawing the lines is very difficult (as legislators trying to ban open access points will discover).
One example of how universities do tend to have a stricter social compact than, say, ISPs.
[via Justin Mason]
