I’m over at DEFCON listening to a presentation on Tor. The presentation is pretty interesting. The presenter is pretty funny at points. He’s using the term “sending a Guido” to paraphrase strong arming someone into giving you info they don’t want to. It’s an interesting turn of phrase. Plus the connotation is that the design of the system takes into account that there is a degree of “social capital” expenditure to attacking most anonymous systems. You can “call in a favor” to get info, but once the capital required is high enough the attack is no longer feasible. Sounds kind of like social software, but twisted somewhat. Maybe it’s just that I’m aware of the diffusion of social issues into software design, but I don’t think I’ve heard the standard attack cost argument applied to calling in social favors.