(July 8, 2019 at 11:35 pm)Jehanne Wrote:Volunteering to Tor with a computer you work on, and which you have to restart every now and then, is probably doing more harm than good (making connections break). Plus, the Internet connection on the Croatian CrisisConnection ISP, though they say it's 8 mbps, often drops below 1 mbps, and breaks for at least an hour almost every day (I then use the cellular network).(July 8, 2019 at 1:00 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: I agree, there is little rhyme and reason behind any kind of censorship, yet alone encryption banning. The criminals will use strong encryptions no matter the laws, and all those laws might do is to push people with radical ideas into darker corners of the Internet, where they can't hear the other side. However, the governments still do that, because the media keeps demonizing people who care about their privacy and, for example, use Tor. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to use Tor and not to hide that using bridges, since then it would become more obvious to the government agencies that many people use Tor for something other than criminal activities. Plus, using bridges might be unethical towards people who live under repressive governments and who actually need them. Croatian government isn't (in all probability) spying too much on its citizens and putting people under surveillance just for using Tor, so it's a good thing if more people here show they care about their privacy on-line by using Tor for everyday browsing.
Bridges are needed because some governments (such as China) actively block Tor entry nodes, and some ISPs do deep-packet inspection on entry nodes. Better yet, volunteer your computer as being a middle-only Tor relay; easy to setup. I was a Tor middle-only relay for 7 years until I dumped my broadband ISP in favor on just using Verizon as a hotspot for my Internet; am saving about 1.5K per year, but, alas, I can no longer run a Tor relay.
Plus, I am not really sure volunteering a obfs4 bridge helps people in China, Turkey or Iran, since the vast majority of Tor users there use "meek".