Snowden's father says won't be 'emotional tool'

"If Firefox gets exploited, the malware could circumvent the Tor tunnel entirely," he said.The SOCKS server problem prevents TCP proxying via SOCKS in most cases, and in cases where the software supports it, DNS proxying isn't.Tortilla solves both of these issues and allows Tor to be used with virtual machines. This, Geffner said, makes it an excellent tool for security experts who want to visit or test attack Web sites, or blogs written by people who run attack Web sites, without leaving traceable tracks."It acts on DHCP, ARP, DNS, and TCP packets, and drops everything else," Geffner said, in explaining what kinds of Internet traffic work with Tortilla.

He added that Tortilla is failsafe, so that you can run it before or after you start your virtual machine or Tor itself.The benefits of Tortilla for security researchers are apparent, but there's nothing stopping people who are concerned with their online privacy from using it, either, Geffner said. "The fact that we're using Tor isn't a secret," when using Tortilla, he said, "but our identity is." The father of former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden said he would not fly to Russia to serve as an "emotional tool" in the United States' efforts to persuade his son to surrender.Lonnie Snowden told the Washington Post that FBI officials had not been able to guarantee if he would be allowed to see his son, who faces espionage charges in the United States for exposing secret U.S. surveillance programs."

I said, '??I want to be able to speak with my son...Can you set up'munications?' And it was, 'Well, we're not sure,'" Lonnie Snowden told the Post. "I said, 'Wait a minute, folks, I'm not going to sit on the tarmac to be an emotional tool for you.'"The elder Snowden earlier told state-owned Russian 24 television the FBI had suggested a "few weeks ago" that he should travel to Moscow to talk to his son.Edward Snowden, whose exposure of the surveillance raised questions about intrusion into private lives, has been stuck in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport since arriving from Hong Kong more than a month ago.