Indeed the IRS website blocks Tor users from accessing tax information, as if tor users don’t need tax information. Important legal guidance exists on irs.gov, so it’s obviously an injustice to block people from becoming informed about their rights and obligations.
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What’s the fix? Would it be effective to make a FOIA request on paper so the IRS must send the info on paper via USPS? Or would that require compensation to offset their burden?
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, nonsense. Lost access is lost availability. If the Tor network has no access, then they have no availability.
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.
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.
I’ve read what you wrote, but you are refusing to acknowledge reality. Availability does not even remotely mean what you are stating. You might reconsider taking infosec 101.
Then there is no service that has any availability and all meaning is stripped from the word.
Indeed, and if TLS isn’t sufficient for you then by all means, use the postal service. Hell, you could even go to your local IRS location.
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.
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.
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).
Indeed, it is not binary. I’m glad you can see that now. Availability has scope, and for the IRS, tor is not in that scope. This is not a security issue. Continue to scream into the void about how literally any impediment to every form is access is a security issue, but that’s not how any of this works. 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.
It is an option. Saying “nuh uh” doesn’t make it not an option.
This serves as availability. You have TLS, postage, and physical locations you can utilize. 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.
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.
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.
I only brought up school because at your level that seems to be where you are. My infosec MS came decades ago.
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?
Wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous.
You mean postal service. Again, wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous. The IRS needs your physical address in the very least.
Wrong demographic. That’s neither anonymous nor reachable outside the country.
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.
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.
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. You absolutely can block entire swaths of address ranges and, in fact, have better security because you did so.
A lot has changed from decades ago, you might consider going back to school.
Neither is tor. And even if tor did provide perfect anonymity, tough shit. You are again just whining. Nobody owes you the ability to “anonymously” download tax material at your preferred comfort level of anonymity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
It is important. Which is why claiming there’s a security issue because they don’t support tor is silly. Just don’t use tor. The website also doesn’t support the entire demographic of people who don’t use tech at all, like the Amish. No reasonable person would say that’s a security issue.
No, it’s absolutely correct. You can continue to whine that they don’t support your particular use case, but that’s your problem. The documents and services are all available right now for all Americans. You insisting on using your niche protocol is nobody’s problem but your own.
This is a stawman. Tor is notorious for bad actors. Not even remotely the same as blocking addresses at random.
You really need to go back to school. No principle and no theory in infosec requires every protocol be available in order to achieve “availability”. All of these fields are relatively new and still evolving.
Indeed, that’s what I was saying.
So does a VPN, you twit.
English your second language? It’s fine if it is, just know that “debt” and “obligation” are synonyms.
Anything to be a victim. Grow up. Nobody owes you tor access.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
While claiming that anonymity is non-existent on the basis of lack of perfection – perfection that you now concede we never have.
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?
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.
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.