“Renamed” seems like an understatement. I heard Digital Services was completely hallowed out. If you dump the people and change the name, what’s left? The chairs and keyboards?

cc @Zier@fedia.io

Musk is not personally present in the infiltration. He sent DOGE staff.

Knee-jerk fix: we make a FOIA request for the data that was removed.

But the shame of it is that FOIA reqs are not gratis, which means we have to pay again for the data. Elon’s DOGE office would just see it as a success that they are getting extra compensation for the data.

If anyone is writing or maintaining a playbook/handbook for how to run an authoritarian regime, removing open data would be a play to add.

Blocking Tor is useless for DDoS protection because there are not enough exit nodes to impact a US federal website more than a fly on the windscreen of a 16 wheel tracktor-trailor. Such an attempt will bring down Tor itself before the DOGE admins even notice.

Does your block screen look different than the attached snapshot?

The article is jailed in Cloudflare’s walled garden, so for the excluded, this is the full text:

That’s fair. I don’t really think it’s cloudflares fault though.

First of all you have to separate Cloudflare’s pre-emptive attack on Tor from that of other targets (VPN, CGNAT). The difference is that the Cloudflare patron is given control over whether to block Tor but not the others.

I wonder how that can best be expressed without overly cluttering the forum. The purpose of the forum is to track that, so it would be useful if someone would post lists of signficant or essential public resources that are in walled gardens. Maybe one thread for all of North Korea and a thread for Russia, … Venezuala, etc. But note as well if Tor is blocked but not in a fiefdom (walled garden), then !exclusive_public_resources@lemmy.sdf.org is the best place to post them.

You confuse bandwidth and resources.

Bandwidth is a resource. Citations needed for claims to the contrary.

Bots are often the most impactful clients of any site, because serving an image costs virtually nothing.

Nonsense. Text compresses extremely well. Images and media do not in the slightest approach the leanness of text.

Try using the web through a 2400 baud modem. Or try using a mobile connection with a small monthly quota of like 3gb and no other access. You will disable images your browser settings in no time.

Generating a dynamic page is WAY more resource intensive.

Bots and humans both trigger dynamic processing, but bots and humans of text-based clients to a lesser extent because the bandwidth-heavy media is usually not fetched as a consequence and JavaScript is not typically fetched and executed in the first place.

“Should be” embarrassed and “caring” are two different things. Indeed they do not care about the embarrassment as this shitshow rolls out. If they cared, they would make corrections.

Just like Trump is an embarrassment to the country. He is too oblivious and cannot step outside himself to even know of the embarrassment he brings to the country.

In the case of DOGE, the embarrassment is only visible to the small segment of informed digital rights proponents. We should of course express the embarrassment to spread awareness.

I’m behind a CGNAT and I have never encountered any issues? And when I think about it I don’t believe I have noticed any issues with using VPN either.

All shared IPs have a propensity to face Cloudflare’s preemptive attack on them. Some people on VPNs and CGNAT face chronic CAPTCHAs and hostile treatment just like Tor users do. And some get lucky and escape the collective punishment. It’s a game of chance. If you happen to be on a subnet or IP range without any significant or notable bad actors, it’s quite possible that you don’t get targeted by Cloudflare. I’ve even seen public libraries that get harsh treatment by Cloudflare, likely because a bad actor used the library and ruined the library’s IP reputation.

Someone in this thread reports hostile treatment when they use Opera GX, which is a VPN service.

This article covers some of the groups of people excluded by Cloudflare.

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 have to go out of your way to have your access reduced.

That would only be true of someone without a Tor setup to begin with. Some of us have Tor baked into our scripts and apps to the extent that using clearnet is going out of our way.

There are endless ways to achieve that and tor is just one of them.

They all have benefits and drawbacks, some cost money, some entail more effort, etc.

Besides the sigint opportunities on tor aren’t as minimal as you want them to be.

It serves the purpose for the case at hand.

Also, you’re connecting to the site and acting in behalf of yourself.

Only if you login, which is often not the case for irs.gov.

I’m at a loss why this should rank at all in the context of a tidal wave of measurable abuses.

Read the sidebar. It’s a service that is essential and intended for the whole pulblic. As the digital transformation forces people do perform transactions with public agencies, those agencies are progressively removing offline options. Exclusivity is trending as a consequence. Essential public services should be inclusive and open to all.

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.

Well, that’s notable. I’ve not installed mullvad so I can’t test it… but that’s the sort of thing that could be posted to this forum. It seems odd that a VPN would be blocked by the USDA but not Tor.