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Comment by moremetadata | Hacker News Reader

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Fifty odd years ago, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense invented a major portion of the internet's foundation: ARPANET.

Now, the internet is used to shitpost en masse, and serve porn and cat photos to billions across the globe, do its creators have any regrets?

I think the ethics of the US is on display for all!!!

lol.

> Ten years ago the US Navy invented Tor, an anonymous web browser. Now the ‘dark net’ is used to trade guns, drugs and child pornography, do its creators have any regrets?

I hope they don't. I certainly wouldn't. Despite some of its glaring downsides, I firmly belive that Tor is a net positive for humanity.

> Ten years ago the US Navy invented Tor, an anonymous web browser.

First release of Tor was in 2002 but it was started in the mid '90s according to Wikipedia.

The Tor Browser was initially released by the Tor project, not the US Navy, in 2008.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)

The browser was a community project. The onion routing framework was a naval research lab thing.

> The browser was a community project.

Yes, the Tor Project as I mentioned. Or, it's theirs now, anyway. I'm not sure if the original creator was affiliated with the Tor Project at the time. But it wasn't the Navy.

> The onion routing framework was a naval research lab thing.

I didn't mean to dispute that, but after reading my comment I wasn't clear. It was a few years after the Navy released it that the Tor Project became an official entity. I was mostly disputing the erroneous statement that the US Navy released the Tor Browser 10 years ago.

For what it's worth, the creators of Tor have stated their philosophy around that problem. Effectively that they shouldn't be the arbiter of what people can access

Its creators can't be blamed for this. Just like we don't blame the post office for circulating CSAM and drugs.

Unfortunately you can't have near-absolute privacy without some people abusing it. This is just a given.

And if the US hadn't supplied tor, the bad actors would have used i2p or invented their own. By supplying the tech at least they have some measure of visibility.

People here are overwhelmingly against privacy when it enables criminals to hide. Almost every crypto thread is dominated by concerns about KYC and AML.

I don't think so? For example signal's decision to leave the UK if they mandate a back door was very well received here.

The dichotomy indicates that isn't the fundamental principle driving it.

Or, possibly, that there is more than one person on HN, and some people might have slightly different opinions.

Or, possibly, that some people don't agree that cryptocurrency shares the same fundamental principle. Cryptocurrency isn't actually that anonymous and certainly isn't private, after all.

Or that people have objections to it on completely different grounds, not on anonymity/privacy grounds.

Plus, what yjftsjthsd-h said.

There are many reasons why what you perceive as an inconsistency may not, in fact, be.

I, in generally, (absent some exceptions like privacy coins) agree with you.

But the assertion wasn't that crypto is private, it's that the crypto threads evoke anti-privacy viewpoints like the need for KYC. KYC is inherently anti-private, it's a warrantless compelled search by the government of your papers for identity. My perception at least is different attitudes on average on those threads, like people are more accepting that privacy needs to be invaded to prevent criminals.

Your comment implied that you thought of that as an overwhelming sentiment on HN, though. I don't see any reason to think that it is (or isn't) based on the comments.

It seems you haven't formed an opinion. Which is fine.

Well, parts of the US government engage in arms trafficking and drug trafficking (sometimes at the same time, as in Iran-Contra). I hope they don't do CSAM trafficking or human trafficking, but I wouldn't be surprised at the least.

That's what the mercenaries... er contractors are for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Sex_trafficking_of_chi...

You say that like drug trade was a bad thing.

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