Restrict circuits with all nodes in the same country

[vidalia]

A new German law will request the Tor servers (and more generally all servers that supply anonymity in a general sense) to keep logs during 6 months; more generally, it is logical to consider that if all the Tor nodes used in a connection are hosted in the same country, anonymity can easily be broken by the local authorities.

I use Tor intensively and see that, since a few weeks, Tor builds circuits where the 3 nodes are ALL either in the USA, either in Germany. This is easily explained by the large number of Tor servers in these countries.

Tor should include an option that would make impossible to create a circuit with all nodes in the same country. Better in fact would be that Vidalia offers this possibility! A single checkbox to tick or untick in the config option, for example.

I put a "critical" priority, as it is logical than anonymity can be easily broken when all nodes are in the same country.

Thank you

[vidalia]

That is a good idea. It could be done by a drop-down list in the Vidalia configuration, "How many nodes in the same country do you allow to build a circuit?". Replies 1, 2 or 3.

1 means that all nodes should be in various countries, 2 means that 2 nodes may be in the same country, 3 means that we don't care about this.

[edmanm]

See Ticket #40. If you're convinced this is a good idea and something Tor should implement, you might want to ask the Tor folks.