Well it’s still the same problem. I mean, it’s likely piracy to copy the public lib’s disc to begin with, even if just for a moment. From there, if I want to share it w/others I still need to be able to exit the library with the data before they close. So it’d still be a matter of transcoding as a distinctly separate step.

Not sure how that makes sense. Why would a captive portal block the 1st 39 attempts but not the 40th, for example?

My workaround is to establish a VPN (which happens quickly w/out issue) then run tor over that, which is also instantly working over the VPN.

What’s the point of spending a day compressing something that I only need to watch once?

If I pop into the public library and start a ripping process using Handbrake, the library will close for the day before the job is complete for a single title. I could check-out the media, but there are trade-offs:

• no one else can access the disc while you have it out
• some libraries charge a fee for media check-outs
• privacy (I avoid netflix & the like to prevent making a record in a DB of everything I do; checking out a movie still gets into a DB)
• libraries tend to have limits on the number of media discs you can have out at a given moment
• checking out a dozen DVDs will take a dozen days to transcode, which becomes a race condition with the due date
• probably a notable cost in electricity, at least on my old hardware

Wow, thanks for the research and effort! I will be taking your approach for sure.

I’ll have a brief look but I doubt ffmpeg would know about DVD CSS encryption.

I have nothing for these use cases, off the top of my head:

• Lemmy
• kbin
• Mastodon (well, I have Mastodon Archive by Kensenada but it’s only useful for backups and searching, not posting)
• airline, train, and bus routes and fares -- this is not just an app non-existence problem since the websites are often bot-hostile. But the idea is that it fucking sucks to have to do the manual labor of using their shitty web GUI app to search for schedules one parameter set at a time. E.g. I want to go from city A to B possibly via city C anytime in the next 6 or 8 weeks, and I want the cheapest. That likely requires me to do 100+ separate searches. When it should just be open data... we fetch a CSV or XML file and study the data offline and do our own queries. For flights Matrix ITA was a great thing (though purely online).. until Google bought it to ruin it.
• Youtube videos -- yt-dl and invideous is a shitshow (Google’s fault). YT is designed so you have to be online because of Google’s protectionism. I used to be able to pop into a library and grab ~100 YT videos over Invideous in the time that I could only view a few, and have days of content to absorb offline (and while the library is closed). Google sabotaged that option. But they got away with it because of a lousy culture of novice users willing to be enslaved to someone else’s shitty UIs. There should have been widespread outrage when Google pulled that shit.. a backlash that would twist their arm to be less protectionist. But it’s easy to oppress an minority of people.

We need a reform and a robust way to interact digitally with the government, pay taxes and also send messages etc.

I think that’s nearly impossible. Some people use the Tor network and govs tend to block it. For me, “robust” means being strong enough to handle Tor traffic, but I don’t think anti-Tor ignorance could ever be flushed out.

Some people also use very OLD devices, like myself, and refuse to contribute e-waste to landfills. That crowd is also hard to cater for. For me, “robust” also means working with lynx browser, but I don’t think the chase-the-shiny incompetence of only supporting new devices could ever be flushed out.

So I must ultimately disagree because if the gov were to achieve what they believe is robust, it would be a recipe for ending analog transactions that everyone excluded from their digital systems rely on. They should strive for robustness, but never call it robust. They should recognise that digital tech always excludes some people and so analog systems are still needed.

By the way: If your emails frequently lands in spam folders you should check your mail servers IP if it’s on some spam filter list.

That is exactly the problem. My mail server runs on a residential IP -- deliberately so. My comment stands: it’s naive to make a sender responsible for email landing in a spam folder when the sender has no control or even transparency over the operation of the recipient’s mail server.

Your continued failure to grasp the fact that the Tor community does not need server-side support is the main reason you have failed to understand why your main thesis has been defeated. Not understanding how Tor works to at least the most basic extent has ensured you’ve based everything in your position on misinformation (which most certainly comes from poor assumptions). Then you wonder why you think you see repititon as you repeat defeated claims because you don’t understand the facts that make your claims indefensible. Until you learn enough about To to realise there is no need for server-side support, you have no hope of even understanding the silly absurdity of your thesis.

You’re just recycling defeated drivel. There are no new arguments here and unless you figure out how to attack the arguments that defeated yours, using sound logic, this drivel of personal attacks only exposes the weakness of your indefensible position further. Relying on rudimentary information sources like a general purpose dictionary is consistent with the lack of English nuance from which your misuse of terms and obtuse language manifests.

Your fixation on insults indicates no formal background in debate. You’ve used the most common logical fallacy (among others) while naming it to call out multiple situations where it did not apply. This shows you’ve picked up common buzz phrases without grasping them (implying ad hoc hot-headed cloud fights without basic formal debate training). In the very least you could benefit from studying logical fallacies and taking a debate class. But to be clear that will only improve the quality of your dialog, it won’t compensate for the infosec deficit. In any case, none of that is going to happen in time for you to dig yourself out of your embarrassing position in this thread.

I don’t think anyone is embarrassed to be not supporting tor, bud. … misunderstanding basic English

Your 1st statement would actually be reasonable enough if we disregard the meaning you are trying to convey and treat the words at face value. If you had a good grasp on English and weren’t misusing the phrase tor support to begin with, your literal words are fair enough in that phrase. This is because supporting Tor requires deploying an onion host. Yet no one here has brought up the lack of onion host. The embarrassment is indeed not about lack of Tor support. It’s that they cannot handle fully serving clearnet traffic.

The Tor network needs no support because it is self-supporting. The Tor community bent over backwards to maintain gateways on the clearnet to accommodate the clearnet server without requiring any server-side support whatsoever. The Tor community is generally content as long as services do not go out of their way to sabotage the Tor network.

It’s of course not an embarrassment that the IRS does not support Tor. The embarrassment arises from the lack of competency that led them to proactively block segments of clearnet based on the crude and reckless practice of relying on IP reputation; which led to disservicing the Tor community.

There is no moral obligation to support tor.

I realize that you have dropped the direct and accurate language (tor blocking) in favor of indirect, vague, weasel words of “tor support” because you believe this choice of words will somehow serve you by deceiving your audience. By intent, your comment is perversely naive. But it’s arguably sensible enough in the literal sense of the words because moral obligation to add an onion server is debatable. Although a case could be made for a government’s moral obligation to respect and embrace data minimization, and even to the extent of deploying onion services. But when the bar of digital rights is so low, it would be premature to have that discussion particularly when you’re not even in a position to accept the idea that a tax administration owes taxpayers any dignity or respect. Which, to be clear the lack thereof is demonstrated by this messaging:

There is not even enough respect to tell Tor users that service is refused as a consequence of their IP address. Nor do they extend enough dignity to explain to those users why they block the Tor community, or which oversight office the excluded taxpayers may complain to.

Not supporting tor does not indicate a security fault.

It’s a demonstration of incomptence and it’s embarrassing for the federal government.

The McDonald’s analogy doesn’t apply to the context of this discussion.

Wooosh -- how could that go so far over your head? The analogy had similarities and differences both of which demonstrate how indefensive your stance is. The similarity exposes as clearly as possible how your claims about not “owing” quality service misses the thesis entirely. The difference in the analogy contrasts the lack of choice in the tax situation compared to the private market (where you can simply walk when the service is poor). Moral obligation arises out of the mandate.

There are other ways to handle your taxes, if you find them lousy or undignified, that’s a real bummer for you.

The moral obligation of treating taxpayers with dignity and respect is an equal obligation to all taxpayers. Undermining data minimization and forcing the needless disclosure of IP addresses of those contributing to the revenue service is indefensible and morally reprehensible. You’ve wholly failed in your effort to support the needless and intrusive practice of reckless forced disclosure of personal information irrelevant to the tax obligation.

Nobody owes you tor access. Nobody is obligated to allow tor access.

You continue with this useless claim. There are legal obligations. Then there are moral obligations. It’s an attempt at the equivocation fallacy to state a fact that is true of one meaning while the other is implied to the contrary. But more importantly, the arguement fails to counter the thesis. If someone says McDonald’s burgers are poor quality, and you come along and say “McDonald’s does not owe you good quality food”, it’s as if you are trying despirately and emotionally to defeat the critic with an argument using an claim that misses the thesis (that the burgers are poor quality). Citing incompetent security does not in itself inherently impose obligation. Obligation can be argued either way depending on which side of the meaning under the equivocation fallacy refers to. But the more important thesis remains: that service quality is poor due to a deficiency of competence.

You have options, you’re just refusing to use them

Unlike telling the burger consumer they have “options”, tax is not optional. Everyone is obligated one way or another to interact with the tax authority. So when service quality is poor, the option to walk is not there. It’s a mandate that you are trying to dress up as if taxpayers are given autonomy. Autonomy is compromised when forced to choose between lousy or undignified options therein.

Really recommend you go look at a dictionary, thesaurus, and some introductory material on security.

You absolutely should not be giving anyone infosec advice; most particularly given these rudimentary and arbitrary information sources, respectively.

You’re trying to turn this into semantics.

That’s what you’re doing when you say:

They don’t support tor. That’s a factual statement.

That’s not the words of intellectual honesty. The honest and straight-shooting way to say it without weasel wording is to say they are blocking Tor. Accurate. Simple. Does not mask the fact that it’s a proactive initiative.

You presented a strawman and attacked that strawman.

An analogy is not a strawman. If I wanted to present I strawman, I would have had to present the analogy as your argument. I did not. It was my analogy.

Did I make that claim?

you did, in the context of Tor:

That’s not anonymous. Neither is tor.

I recall saying tor doesn’t provide you with perfect anonymity. Another factual statement.

That is not what you said. Look above. Also, your newly revised statement (Tor not being perfect anonymity) is tue but an irrelevant waste of time, as you have been told twice already. Again, you’re distracting yourself with this pointless chase for perfection. Forget about perfection. It’s not a reasonable expectation for the infosec discipline.

It’s a synonym.

Not it’s not.

Maybe you should look up..

Your reliance on a dictionary is not helping you. You’re not going to understand nuanced differences between near synonyms from a dictionary. You need to be immersed in an English speaking culture to reach that level of understanding.

It is important. Which is why claiming there’s a security issue because they don’t support tor is silly.

Reread the thread. You’ve already been told that you can’t dress up a deliberate act of sabatage as merely “neglecting to support”. It’s the same silly claim that it was the first time you made it.

like the Amish

The Amish did not have a viable means of access that was artificially removed by a proactively inserted firewall rule. This fallacy of analogy shows your inability to grasp the absurdity of the comparison.

Of course if you don’t grasp the fact that the Tor DoS is not lack of support but rather a proactive disabling of something that naturally works, then it’s clear why it appears absurd to you. But the appearance in your view is due to not understanding that servers serve Tor out of the box by default (unlike the Amish).

This is a stawman.

You clearly don’t know what that word means. I presented my own argument, not yours. My words - my argument - simply exposes the absurdity of the basis of your claim as quoted. Hence why I quoted you without paraphrasing.

Tor is notorious for bad actors.

Sure, but you’re neglecting proportionality. Cars are notorious for drive-by shootings. But we don’t ban cars on that basis because (like Tor) the numbers of legit users far outnumber the baddies. We don’t oppress a whole community because less than 1% of that community has a harmful element -- unless we are a corrupt tyrant deporting all possible deportable immigrants, or an incompetent admin blocking the whole Tor community.

Not even remotely the same as blocking addresses at random.

Of course it is. Both scenarios block an arbitrary group of legitimate users who are exposed to collateral damage as a consequence of prejudiced trivia with the effect of collective punishment. Only to then claim “security is better” on the off chance that a baddy was blocked, without realizing that availability consequences are selectively overlooked.

Indeed, that’s what I was saying.

While claiming that anonymity is non-existent on the basis of lack of perfection -- perfection that you now concede we never have.

So does a VPN, you twit.

Yes, to a much lesser extent than Tor in far fewer scenarios, of course, with higher doxxing risks by a motivated adversary. And? Are you just going to leave the red herring there like that or did you have a point?

English your second language?

I was about to ask you that. You clearly are struggling. “Owing” is /not/ a drop-in replacement for “obligation”. Anyone who speaks English as their first language would be aware of that nuance and spot your conflation of the words instantly. It’s like you are entering an off translation.

Anything to be a victim. Grow up. Nobody owes you tor access.

There it is again. You continue to misuse that word -- in this case to build a man of straw. I already rejected your first attempt at redefining my position as being owed something.

It’s really not. You’ve been asserting that there’s somehow a lack of security because they don’t support tor because that means they’re failing on the “availability” point of the CIA triad. That’s incorrect.

Before you can claim it’s not a red herring, you must first grasp what is claimed as the red herring. Your reply displays that you don’t. When a demographic of people are wholly denied availability, and you make the false assertion that availability is /never/ binary, it’s both incorrect and irrelevant. Incorrect because you can have 100% loss of availability in a context. Context is important. And it’s incorrect because people without access are inherently without availability.

This is also incorrect. The scope is the American taxpayer who is able and willing to utilize the website. You are either unable or unwilling. You are not in the scope.

THAT’s incorrect. That’s the sort of weasel wording that people can see right through. You’ve taken the whole of taxpayers who are entitled (in fact obligated) to file tax, and excluded some of them as a consequence of infosec incompetence. You cannot redefine the meaning of a term to justify incompetence. It’s purpose defeating for PR damage control.

You absolutely can block entire swaths of address ranges and, in fact, have better security because you did so.

This is where your lack of infosec background clearly exposes itself. You can also /randomly/ block large swaths of people arbitrarily and with the same mentality claim “better security” because you think a baddy likely got blocked, a claim that inherently requires disregarding availability as a security factor. You will fool people with that as you’re pushing a common malpractice in security which persists in countless access scenarios because availaibility to the excluded is disregarded by the naive and unwitting.

A lot has changed from decades ago, you might consider going back to school.

Nonsense. Infosec, comp sci, and all tech disciplines cover most diligently principles and theory which are resilient over decades, not tool-specific disposable knowledge. The principles and theories have not changed in the past 20 years. You seem to be in a program that short-cuts the principles and fixates on disposable knowlege, likely a vocational / boot camp type of school, in which case you should consider transferring to a school that gives more coverage on theory - the kind of knowledge that doesn’t age so fast.

Neither is tor. And even if tor did provide perfect anonymity, tough shit.

WTF? You don’t know how Tor works. Perfection is never on the table in the infosec practice. You should forget about perfection -- it’s distracting you. But Tor most certainly provides anonymity in the face of countless threat agents, among other features.

Nobody owes you the ability to “anonymously” download tax material at your preferred comfort level of anonymity.

“Owes” implies a debt. I never spoke of owing or debts. The IRS has an obligation to inform the public. When they exclude demographics of people from their service (in particular people who funded them), it’s an infosec failure and an injustice.

Indeed, it is not binary. I’m glad you can see that now.

I said not necessarily binary. Your inability to grasp the various different contexts is profound. The non-binary usage is a red herring in this discussion. When you universally deny a whole demographic of people access, that’s binary. It’s a hard and fast total loss of availability for that demographic.

Availability has scope, and for the IRS, tor is not in that scope.

The scope is the American taxpayer. Of course Tor users are in that scope. You cannot deny access to a whole demographic of people on the crude and reckless basis of IP reputation and then try to redefine the meaning and purpose of availability to offset your incompetence. You need to face the facts and admit when you don’t have the skill to separate threat agents from legit users. Screaming until your blue in the face about how you would like availability to be defined does not bring availability to the demographic of legit users being denied access.

Given you seem to keep bringing up course work and professors and this naive view of security, I’m assuming you’re a student. Keep studying.

I only brought up school because at your level that seems to be where you are. My infosec MS came decades ago.

It is an option. Saying “nuh uh” doesn’t make it not an option.

Saying the contrary does not make a demographic of people magically part of a different demographic of people. Who do you think you are fooling by pointing to demographic A saying “they have access” in response to demographic B not having access?

This serves as availability. You have TLS,

Wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous.

postage,

You mean postal service. Again, wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous. The IRS needs your physical address in the very least.

and physical locations you can utilize.

Wrong demographic. That’s neither anonymous nor reachable outside the country.

You are just whining. Your refusal to use any of the plethora of means available to you has no relation to the competency of the IRS’ security. Grow up.

Your refusal to accept that a demographic of people are denied availability has backed you into a corner making absurd claims to justify incompetence. The growth and evolution is needed on your part. To give demographics of non-anonymous people access to tax material continues to miss the point about loss of availability to people who are.

Then there is no service that has any availability and all meaning is stripped from the word.

It’s not necessariliy a binary. You apparently did not even complete an infosec 101 class b/c that should have been made clear to you. Your prof has failed you. Availability loss is not necessarly a total loss. Even an underperforming server is a loss of availbility. Availability is a measurable quantity. Of course it can also have a binary context in a narrow sense (e.g. “the tor network has no availability”). This does not strip meaning away in the slightest. It is how the term is used. If a whole demographic of people do not have access, then there is no service (no availability) for that demographic, whether it’s a demographic of Tor users, or VPN users, or CGNAT users, or users on a particular platform. To fail to grasp this is to fail to meaningfully understand availability. If you can’t articulate a whole demographic of people losing access to a resource, you’re missing the fundamental purpose of the concept.

Indeed, and if TLS isn’t sufficient for you then by all means, use the postal service.

That’s not an option. Gov offices laugh at those requests now. Gov offices don’t even have the courtesy of expressing refusal of postal requests. They just ignore them. So no, you cannot rely on the postal service as a crutch for incompetent security when you cannot even expect it to work.

Hell, you could even go to your local IRS location.

You’re fired. This does not compensate or serve as an excuse for incompetent security. Expecting Americans living abroad to get on a plane to physically appear at an IRS office is absurd. Unlike most of the world, Americans must file their tax wherever they are in the world (which is not just a transmission but also research -- reading publications and advice).

No, you have full access.

You’re not reading what I wrote. I won’t repeat it all here but in short not everyone has clearnet access. Start there.

This is not about me, but if you meant “you” literally, then you need to read what I wrote about my personal situation. Only Tor works at the library for me. I rely on the library for anything large (i do not have a normal unlimited broadband connection). Grabbing many big PDFs could suck my quota dry.

Again, you are misrepresenting what availability is in the CIA triad.

Again, nonsense. Lost access is lost availability. If the Tor network has no access, then they have no availability.

Otherwise you’re arguing that all iOS apps are also insecure because they aren’t available to Android users.

In fact if you only offer service to iOS users, then you most certainly are unavailable to AOS users. Of course. You can‘t disregard the userbase in an availability assessment.

Your analogy would be more accurate if you started with an app that runs on both platforms, and you deliberately artificially sabotaged it from working on one of the platforms. Like a javascript app but you add a line “if Android then terminate end if;” It would result in reduced availabilty, and intentionally so.

If TLS isn’t sufficient (or available) for you, do the paperwork and mail it in.

The website is not just for transmitting tax declarations. If it were, then indeed there would be no problem here. Check it out, if you get access. There are countless publications and guides.

You do have access, just not through tor.

That is reduced access. And it makes a world of difference because the lost access also forces excessive disclosures. It would be perversely narrow to disregard that as a security compromise.

Also, you assume everyone has clearnet access, not just that everyone has the will to use clearnet, and that everyone would find clearnet appropriate for this, and that some users rightly see clearnet as a break from the rule of least privilege principle. But some people offer open internet access to the public on a tor-only network. Users on such a network have no clearnet option.

Furthermore, I personally have a DNS problem with my local public library. I have not yet taken the time to troubleshoot it, but when I connect to the library’s network, all clearnet attemps fail because of some DNS problem. Tor is the only way I can access the internet from my local public library. So until I get to the bottom of that problem, the IRS website is unavailable.

For me, not having privacy-respecting access is the same as not having access. For pushovers who don’t think about their own security, their availability is not affected. More broadly, it’s not your place to tell users what threat model and security posture is right for them -- unless they hired you for that. If a blockade forces a connection outside the parameters of someone’s security policy, they have lost availability.

Nor through Bluetooth. Nor plaintext. “Availability” does not mean you will support every known protocol so that purists and idealists can be happy.

You can’t dress this up as “neglecting to offer Tor support”. The IRS is taking a deliberate action that reduces availability. They took something that works by default and crippled/broke it in an act of sabotage.

infosec 101:

• confidentiality
• integrity
• availability

If users who should have access (e.g. US taxpayers) are blocked, there is an availability loss. Blocking Tor reduces availability. Which by definition undermines security.

Some would argue blocking Tor promotes availability because a pre-emptive strike against arbitrary possible attackers revents DoS, which I suppose is what you are thinking. But this is a sloppy practice by under-resourced or under-skilled workers. It demonstrates an IT team who lacks the talent needed to provide resources to all legit users.

A mom and pop shop, sure, we expect them to have limited skills. But the US federal gov? It’s a bit embarrassing. The Tor network of exit nodes is tiny. The IRS should be able to handle a full-on DDoS attempt from Tor because such an effort should bring down the Tor network itself before a federal gov website. If it’s fear of spam, there are other tools for that. IRS publications could of course be on a separate host than that which collects feedback.