
Kickstarter Freezes Anonabox Privacy Router Project for Misleading Funders - byoogle
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/kickstarter-suspends-anonabox
======
ignostic
It's an interesting world we live in where Reddit and Hacker News users are
the ones doing investigation into the truth of claims journalists publish.

With real-time feedback and real-time coverage, it's almost inevitable that
our news sources will become increasingly less investigative and more
reactive. The first to report wins the traffic, which creates pressure to get
stories out the door. Unless you take The Atlantic or New Yorker approach,
it's a race, which leaves users users to do the fact checking. We can be
cynical about the state of online journalism, and maybe it's partly warranted,
but this is definitely where we're headed.

~~~
paulhauggis
Many of the "investigations" on Reddit..actually result in Internet mobs
destroying the reputation of a company or individual..even if they've done
nothing wrong (besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind).

It just happened to have worked out in this case, but this is the minority
from what I've seen in the past couple of years.

~~~
monochr
>(besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind).

People love showering people they agree like with money, this case proves it.
People also don't like to feel they are being taken advantage of and online
you can find that out with a few clicks and 10 minutes of googling.

If someone gives $5 to a campaign that promises awesome wonderfulness but then
finds out the awesome wonderfulness is being made in a Thailand sweatshop by
10 yearolds eating arsenic for breakfast they will pull the pledge and ruin
the companies reputation.

Which is all to the good. Just look at Apple, they had their hipsters locked
in when it was just the ridiculous 50% margins they were putting on their
products. When we found out people were being worked to death and we had to
pay those ridiculous margins that's when people became anti-Apple on mass.

Now if by anti-capitalist you mean anti-Dickensian exploration capitalist
you're damned right. And I hope every half decent human being would be.

------
skue
Hooray. This project was misleading and naive in many ways, and it definitely
seemed to violate Kickstarter's rules against resale. But that's not why I'm
happy this project got killed.

The much bigger problem was the open SSL account and sheer misguidedness of
running all network traffic through Tor. This project risked causing real harm
to people thinking that this would safeguard their privacy.

~~~
bduerst
It would pretty much flood the TOR exit nodes, would it not?

It seems like TOR isn't exactly a commercializable network.

~~~
nacs
It could certainly be commercialized if the company making the product funded
exit node servers to offset the increased usage from their customers (X
gigabytes worth of exit node traffic capacity for each customer or something).

~~~
Folcon
On this note, is there a reputable group that create exit nodes that can be
funded?

~~~
nacs
Some Googling reveals
[https://www.torservers.net/](https://www.torservers.net/) which seems to be
an European (German) charity that runs exit nodes and relays you can donate to
and they seem to be funding a couple Gbit worth of exit node traffic (
[https://www.torservers.net/exits.html](https://www.torservers.net/exits.html)
) plus some relays.

I'm sure there are other exit node providers that one could donate to also.
And of course, there's always the option of setting up your own exit node on a
VPS -- find a Tor-friendly ISP and installation is basically an 'apt-get
install tor' away (default configuration works fine). I run a few relays
myself on my servers and it uses very little system resources and bandwidth is
cheap.

------
JacobAldridge
If nothing else, and it seems like this specific project could be salvagable
at something closer to Germar's original $7,500 level, Anonabox has proven
that there is large, consumer-level demand for online privacy.

A better (more secure) consumer solution may be developed by an established
company as a result. More desirably, though sadly less likely, governments may
take notice of what the people they serve are demanding.

------
joshu
Anyone know where to get the Chinese board they were using? Seems pretty
actually useful.

~~~
epsylon
Better advice is to use the grugq's PORTAL:
[https://github.com/grugq/portal](https://github.com/grugq/portal)

~~~
joshu
How is his a hardware platform?

------
technotony
Wonder how many entrepreneurs are looking at this and seeing the awesome
market validation of the idea. I know there's some debate around whether this
is technically possible or not, but hopefully some smart hacker somewhere can
figure those issues out and make a success with this.

~~~
rdl
Grugq has been working on this since -- 2012. He's had working code; it was
just a problem of getting COTS hardware which would support it. Making custom
hardware is a bad idea for this for a variety of reasons.

Grugq, Marc Rogers, and I have shown a (much more functional, actually secure)
version of this, called PORTAL, at a couple conferences this summer, and will
have a retail version on Amazon by December -- none of this presale BS.

Free downloads of the firmware for some of the most commonly available routers
out there, and sold at cost ($20-25).

~~~
walterbell
Sounds promising. Please create a website or other citable URL that others can
use to promote it in advance of December.

~~~
rcsorensen
See the following:

[https://github.com/grugq/PORTALofPi](https://github.com/grugq/PORTALofPi)

[https://www.portalmasq.com/portal-
defcon.pdf](https://www.portalmasq.com/portal-defcon.pdf)

------
gregd
When I read this, "As the controversy around Anonabox grew, Germar told WIRED
earlier in the week that he had never intended the project to be aimed at
normal, non-expert users, so much as developers who would contribute feedback
and continue to improve the router". What I hear is, "I never thought people
would investigate me and call me out for lying".

~~~
downandout
I've said this in other threads on this but I think "lying" is an extreme
exaggeration for what happened here. I've read the whole listing and I see
nothing claiming that he designed the whole thing from scratch (and he would
be an idiot if he had tried to, as all of the parts are commonly available).

Basically he offered a router that was pre-configured to use TOR. There are
lots of people not comfortable with/capable of flashing their routers to use
tools like OpenWRT or DD-WRT...and for good reason, as a novice could pretty
easily brick their router. It's obvious by the response that a plug-and-play
solution does offer value to some people, whether he painstakingly designed
the hardware or not.

~~~
burnte
There was this photo with the caption that only generation 1 was stock
hardware, heavily implying the rest was custom designed:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/002/617/995/b560c4715481...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/002/617/995/b560c47154817abfd7e570c4e78e7b17_large.jpg?1411333699)

Right below it is a statement "By our fourth round of prototypes we had
created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU" which uses the word
"created" not "found" or "utilized".

Then there was this AMA on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_augus...](http://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_august_germar_a_developer_for_the_anonabox)

In it he says things like:

1\. "I am claiming my device is not the same as the wt3020 off the shelf
hardware yes." Self explanatory. He then states that "maybe" the only
difference is the amount of storage, which is odd considering he just denied
it's the same thing.

2\. "Yes that is my picture and yes, I am claiming that the anonabox is not an
off the shelf WT3020" Ditto.

3\. "Yes honestly that does look like the same circuit board. I can't help but
wonder if the factory that we sourced is going to try to sell them too." Here
he even infers that their design was stolen and being resold behind their
back. Again, this heavily infers they created/designed the board, and clearly
denies knowledge of any other existing boards like his, meaning they didn't
simply take an existing board and ask for more storage.

THEN he starts to walk it back, admitting to Wired they didn't design the
board as they had first claimed as noted here:
[http://www.wired.com/2014/10/tiny-box-can-anonymize-
everythi...](http://www.wired.com/2014/10/tiny-box-can-anonymize-everything-
online/)

Which has the line "This piece has been corrected from an earlier version that
included his claims that both the board and case were custom-built for the
project." Note the explicit statement that they designed everything.

Wired further stated "he clarified that the router was created from a stock
board." Clarified from the original statement that it was all custom designed.

Wired ends with "Germar also says now that the case was supplied by Gainstrong
and was not custom-designed by the Anonabox developers, a partial reversal of
how he initially described it to WIRED."

So, yes, he DID lie. He explicitly claimed it was all custom hardware multiple
times, even when DIRECTLY confronted with evidence to the contrary. Only after
several days of this did he begin to walk back his comments.

------
kordless
I'm curious about the initial 'success' of the fund raise before the
unfortunate issues that occurred. Any thoughts on the reason they exceeded
their goals so quickly? Does this support indicate there is a substantial
demographic of privacy advocates who are interested in personal solutions to
privacy? Or, are we looking at a more widespread support of any project (given
they don't misrepresent their claims) which advocates a more generalized
freedom of information?

Personally, I'd order the thing because I don't trust my router's software and
want something quick and easy to deploy.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well it represented that there are a number of people willing to pay $50 to
have a "set it and forget it"[1] tool to enhance their privacy. One might
think of that as a validation for the product space. No doubt you could
actually build these things now and sell them (although you would want to do a
better job of marketing them)

[1] Yes, I'm fully aware that this is not a security conscious point of view
but a lot of people just want someone else to solve the problem in an 'ok' way
for them apparently.

~~~
icefox
What about this: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1052775620/wemagin-
smar...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1052775620/wemagin-smart-usb-
drive)

------
Cybershambles
"I'm working on something to announce (hopefully) today. Will try to get a
PORTAL to everyone that wants/needs one. :)" \- thegrugq

[https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/523299858581430272](https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/523299858581430272)

------
aikah
My 2 cents : sure the initial description of the project was misleading BUT
after all the noise the people who were still funding the project KNEW what
they were getting into.

I think they should have the right to risk their money.The project sounded
FISHY they knew it,well their problem now. Noone's going to cry if the project
turns south. Noone's ever care anyway.

~~~
rhizome
I'm not sure Kickstarter is really motivated to wade into the caveat emptor
waters any further than they have.

