Moreover:
- DOD.mil does not check
- I've been told I have my own Internet
- I am neither an Assange or Snowden case
- I suspect even my phone number is VLANNED
- Calling the US embassy is not a lazy function; the menu keeps changing when I tried to call them
- I suspect I've been kidnapped from Europe for some sort of religious psyops camp in the MENA region
- Somebody keeps downing my startups
tl;dr we are a vISP that created a quasi-anonymous Tor/OpenVPN chimera; we used to live in the dark net, now we're trying the clearnet interwebs; we're giving out free accounts to those interested. Fire an email to [email protected] with subject line "REGISTER REDDIT" and you will be credentialed in 72 hours max.
We use the 2nd Amendment (Cryptography is still classified as munitions by the State Department) to protect your 1st Amendment rights on the Internet. Yet we cannot protect you against alphabet soup agencies such as the NSA and the FSB. It's not that our hands are tied, it's that this isn't the 1990s anymore and cyberwarfare and cybercrime are a nation-state ping-pong game. They are above our threat model, they are one layer of abstraction above us legally speaking, and we do not have contingency plans against them. If anything, being an American non-profit NGO, they are required to protect us as we are an American legal entity. From our experience whatever data they are seeking (depending on importance), they will obtain one way or another. We are not statists either; we simply think a well-calibrated threat model is paramount to running a venture like ours. Last but not least, they themselves may be users of our service to conduct their job online discretely. Note that we are not here to fight the man on your behalf. If you use our service to send bomb threats to universities, we will hunt you down.
What we do protect you against is "Snoopy". Snoopy could be your ISP DJ'ing your DNS requests. Snoopy could be your housemates snooping on the Wifi network or running a rogue AP attack. Snoopy could be your boss or employer blocking certain websites. Snoopy could be services that are georestricted to certain areas for no reason at all. We offer quasi-bulletproof anonymity and privacy on the Internet. Snoopy could be your university banning services like Spotify. Snoopy could be the rest of the world charging Australia 30%+ extra on all services / products because Australia is a continent. Snoopy could be your mobile service provider obstructing VoIP or Skype traffic on their data network. Snoopy could also be your TV provider not happy with your Netflix technicolored bits traversing their wires, and so must be throttled down. We are anti-DPI yet use DPI as well for the benefit of our users (QoS for instance).
We are a vISP, originally from the Dark Net, opening up trial accounts on the Internet/ClearNet to test the waters.
We a non-profit NGO (social enterprise?) that is still in the process of acquiring 503(c) status in the United States.
We are testing out a new quasi-anonymous network design based on OpenVPN and Tor (more connection methods to our access points will follow in the future, such as IKEv2 and SSTP).
Technical Details: Initially one connects to the Tor network via the Tor Browser Bundle, once the connection to the Tor network is established, the user instructs the OpenVPN client to connect to our OpenVPN server (using our configuration file), which is sitting behind a .onion Hidden Service; the traffic is then forced to exit through one of our Tor Exit Nodes instead of a possibly malicious Tor Exit Nodes that tracks users or performs MITM on HTTP traffic or simply tcpdump.exe's your traffic for fun and profit. We provide DNS resolution through our service to avoid leaks and preserve privacy.
We do not know your IP address, you do not know our server's IP address, and nobody can prove that activity exiting through our Tor Exit nodes is our users' activities and not a user on the Tor network not belonging to our vISP (to rephrase: The Tor Exit Nodes are run by us to save the user the trouble of avoiding malicious Exit Nodes, to increase anonymity and privacy they are also shared with the rest of the Tor network; a Tor user may exit through our exit nodes even though they do are not one of our users). Please note that while connected to our network, you will also be able to resolve .onion addresses.
We don't keep logs, we are a decentralized and distributed team of netsec, cipherpunks, activists, journalists, privacy / security / encryption / anonymity / paranoid schizophrenic fanatics spread around the globe, nevertheless our "Foundation" is HQ in the USA as:
a. We're not required to keep logs by law (and we are not able to)
b. We're "protected" by some of the best LE agencies in the world. When you incorporate abroad, these same agencies are in your threat model. In our case, their threat while present, is diminished.
Once we obtain non-profit status by the IRS your monthly donations ($29.95 {note: you are under no obligation to sign up for a paid account after the free month account expires}) will be tax deductible. We are also thinking of starting the "Church of the Free Bits" with a mission statement of protecting users' rights' on the Internet, keeping bits colorless, encouraging anonymous free speech and freedom of expression on the Internet, and enhancing the user's Internet experience via the use of cryptography, encryption, mix-networks, True(tm) Net Neutrality and privacy enhancing technologies.
We used to not have a website, not even on the dark net (word of mouth), now we must apparently. We are sticking with the informal no website policy for now (or WordPress'ing it at some point). Don't judge us, front-end is not our domain nor focus. We are not very Social. We should have a blog soon however.
Don't confuse us with "VPN providers" or "Residential proxies". We are a Virtual ISP, and while we may use some similar technologies, we are in the RiseUp / Telecomix league, not your fly-by-night VPN/VPS provider. Don't confuse us with a solution you can roll yourself either; we have X users, as long as you stick to the Tor browser bundle rules you can remain anonymous. If you roll your own you're the only one originating from that IP address.
10% of our monthly profits go to EFF, ACLU, The Pirate Party. The rest is our salaries and reinvestment in the Foundation. We are audited once a year technically (certified to not be keeping logs), are legally insured, and welcome volunteers.
We are still at the MVP stage and our setup reflects it. Our SLA is far from 99.999%, try 85%-90%. That said we are experimental as f*ck and we break things often and break things fast, yet aspire to be digital Bodhisattvas who do no evil.
If you have any feedback or comments, drop us a line: [email protected]. We answer email (for now).
[Gentle Reminder: We're giving away free accounts: email [email protected] with subject line "REGISTER HN" and you will receive your credentials in the next 72 hours as well as the instructions. We are offering a one month give away to interested HN users to test out our network and iron out any remaining issues.]
PS. We provide perma-free accounts (aside from this offer) for .edu / .ac.uk / academia / military personnel stationed abroad / veterans, and Australians (no, really).
Ask away if you have any questions, though keep in mind our answers are polymorphic, we are still building our infrastructure, and our policies are still taking shape and form, according to user demand, local laws, and our own paranoia. Our service is not completely secure yet and may be hackable (it's an MVP before we move to big iron), we only ask for an email address at the moment for authentication purposes, your password is automatically generated, nothing more.
Would you please elaborate on this part "...his highly-symbolic visual language demonstrates what I understand as a telltale lack of nuance common to those suffering from certain mental illnesses, but the impressive part to me is that he really maximizes it"? I'm really interested in the intersection of mental health issues with various fields (I've commented elsewhere in this thread), and this is the first time I hear a review in the context of UX+{non-NeuroTypical}.
While we're at it, by "flow", do you happen to mean flow in a "workflow zen" sense [yes, I'm aware that the word zen has been abused to death :) ] know ?
I've stumbled upon Terry's work a long time ago...and suffice to say he's been a major inspiration. It's a shame the majority of netizens (Yes, HN and Reddit included) can't look beyond his eccentricity and mental health issues (then again, it takes some digging and google-fu to find out the full story / context behind the man...his posts don't exactly come with a disclaimer).
Going down the rabbit hole of Googling, Redditing, finding out more about him and his story ("a one-man novel, modern x64 almost-but-not-quite-entirely-unlike-retro OS?" type of thing is catnip to my synapses), I've also come to understand a friend's schizophrenic relative a bit better. I've read accounts of schizophrenia and art intersecting, but did not understand what it is, what it's like, *, until I witnessed schizophrenia intersecting with IT, at which point the gates of empathy, admiration and fascination were flung wide open.
His username on HN is / has been some variation on "TempleOS", "LoseThos", "SparrowOS", "TempleOSv2", etc. AFAIK all hellbanned due to un-PC comments posted in his, for lack of better phrasing, "Moments of Un-Clarity".
The irony (perhaps using the wrong word) of being hellbanned when the story of of your life's work..your magnum opus (especially in this case, an objective article that places it in context and with some background) is featured on HN's front page, makes me sad.
My goal is to achieve the same goal, except with n-number of subjects (math, science, humanities, the arts, etc) over x-number of years. Thanks for the suggestion!
I actually do own a copy, thank you for reminding me to read it again. Very useful strategies and the type of 'metaphors' used in the book (CS/IT-related) made it easy to understand.