Comment by nacs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nacs | Hacker News Reader

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Tor seem pretty open about where that money is coming from and have DARPA and US goverment funds listed here with explanations: https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors/

"U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor leads the U.S. efforts to promote democracy, protect human rights and international religious freedom, and advance labor rights globally."

"DARPA's Resilient Anonymous Communication for Everyone (RACE) program researches technologies for a distributed messaging system that can: a) exist completely within a given network, b) provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability of messaging"

Both of those seem to align with Tor's goals of privacy and confidentiality.

Even if they aren't spying on people's TOR traffic, it's still useful for spies. The more people are using TOR, the easier it is for them to hide their own traffic alongside it.

How does that square with the GP's linked articles that allege the FBI "cracked" TOR on multiple occasions?

It strikes me as cognitive dissonance that someone would simultaneously distrust the USG for obvious reasons (TFA is about Snowden), yet also think they are a perfectly noble arbiter of "secure communications", and look the other way when copious evidence suggests that the USG has means to compromise said "secure communications".

It's a very roundabout way of arguing "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". TOR is a fine product if you aren't doing anything that the USG would realistically prosecute you for.

The USG is not a monolith and doesn't operate like one. It is composed of many entirely different organizations doing different things with different goals.

If it were just one agency, sure, but we have evidence that State, DARPA, and FBI all have their hands in the TOR cookie jar. It would be naive to assume that CIA and NSA aren't there too.

Occam's Razor says that TOR is primarily a tool of the USG for enabling intelligence & influence operations, particularly those involving low-level assets without clearances (e.g. color revolutions), and the stuff about "consumer privacy" is an unreliable side effect.

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