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You have to ask yourself if the good is worth the harm.

But the math on that looks like this.

The "really bad" people have no conscience. No qualms about compromising the device of some innocent victim and then using that as their "exit node" if Tor wasn't available. So if Tor doesn't exist, that's what they do, and that's worse. Because not only do the bad guys still get to be anonymous, now the owner of the compromised system takes the blame. Which is more likely to be someone less able than you to articulate what happened, and who has to claim they were hacked with perhaps scant evidence rather than being able to point to their IP address on the public list of Tor exit nodes. They also might not be in a country with due process. So what you're doing there isn't helping the bad guys, it's saving some of their innocent victims from being unjustly punished.

Meanwhile the "good guys" who use Tor do have a conscience, so they wouldn't do that to an innocent third party, and then without Tor they have nothing. So you'd be helping them too.

We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors.

Come on, Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false. You’re mostly enabling all sorts of criminal activities, from benign to major. Hosting a tor exit nod doesn’t make you a hero, quite the opposite actually.

> We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors.

Locks aren't for the really bad people, who are in fact going to break down the door. They prevent crimes of convenience.

But Tor is the lock, and the crimes of convenience would be e.g. mass surveillance of the population, in the event that ordinary people don't have it. So it's not clear what you're arguing here. That everyone should use Tor?

> Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false.

Start here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507790

Add to this, the illegal stuff isn't accessed via exit nodes, which link into the ordinary internet. Those things use hidden services, which are internal to the network and don't use exit nodes.

But let's even explore the premise. Suppose a lot of the traffic is people trading in illegal materials. Well, that's not really a big problem; people do that stuff via several other existing channels and the societal cost of each instance of someone buying pot over the internet isn't very high. Whereas the societal benefit of one single whistleblower is massive. These things can change the lives of millions of people. So even if it's 99% contraband, the remaining 1% is ten million times as valuable.

I would use that argument if I were an oppressive government that was troubled by journalists using Tor to expose me. It's only 1% right? Think of the children.

Quoth Fidel Castro: ¿Armas para qué? (What do you need guns for?)

Guess what he did after he took the people's guns

If your weapon against oppression is 99% enabling child pornography to thrive, I fail to see what overall good you are making. How many lives ruined for how many articles read?

You try to paint me as a "purist" that would allow the world to fall into the worst abusive governments just to save 1 child, but if you look at it honestly, you are at least as purist as me, because you would enable arbitrary amount of crimes just to save 1 journalist.

Assuming my 99% is accurate, the numbers are really not in your favor, plus journalists are grown adults that make their own choices, while children don’t chose to risk being abused, filmed and exposed online.

Even if we assume 99% of Tor is CP, that doesn't mean blocking Tor will remove 99% of CP. In fact, it probably will have no impact, as criminals will just use other methods, as they are well funded unlike oppressed journalists.

Surely there are also other ways for whistleblowers/journalists to communicate secrets. And why do you assume the random child porn creator/enjoyer is well funded? This kind of crime is more about availability and lack of consequences than money. Tor makes it invisible as no one will ever admit to it, but it's still easily available to anyone, with no consequences. Why are you so convinced that going after it is necessarily useless, necessarily harmful and necessarily wrong? I can't help but feel that it's a principled position, and that no amount of harm done would justify making it law-enforceable to you. How much lawlessness should we accept in exchange for how much whistleblowing? Any amount vs the slightest act doesn't sound like a good balance to me.

> Even if we assume 99% of Tor is CP, that doesn't mean blocking Tor will remove 99% of CP.

Yeah, sure. But now you're talking statistics, which is rather irrelevant in a discussion on principles.

It's true that keys are mostly there to deal with minor bad actors and don't do much against determined adversaries. They are however not much of an obstacle to authorized persons which is why we use them.

You also may notice that in most civilized countries we do stop at somewhat weak keys and glass windows and don't bother with fortifying each house to withstand a full on assault from a criminal organization. That's because this will have a very high cost and we are better off dealing with criminals in other ways so this lack of protection is not a real concern.

There's enough truly bad actors out there, not everything is shades of gray. Cartels, North Korea, ISIS, etc.

‘Truly bad’ still relies on the perspective of the participant though. Parents point is that ‘bad’ is a matter of perspective, and that right or wrong, at lease some cartel/nk/isis operatives believe their actions are justified for some greater good, Palestine/Israel opinions and belief are obviously a more easy to understand perspective, but the point still stands.

NK operatives feel incredibly lucky they get to not starve. Unless they got to where they are at due to nepotism.

I have no idea about nk politics, but if the media continually pumps out ‘the west is the reason we’re starving, join the military today!’ then they might feel lucky to both be fed, and to be serving their country.

You don't know that, you've never been there or probably spoken to a north korean. Not saying you're wrong (i can admit i have no idea), but i'm annoyed you're swallowing narratives from warlords who have been known to lie to start wars as if it's assumed default true

Hitler thought he is a good guy. Stalin thought he is good guy. Everyone thinks he is a good guy from the own perspective.

Really? Some cartel operatives believe their actions are justified for some greater good? Well unless you count filling your own pockets a "greater good" then they are objectively extremely deranged and delusional which possibly makes them even more dangerous.

> relies on the perspective of the participant though > Parents point is that ‘bad’ is a matter of perspective, and that right or wrong,

Not really, though. Some things are just 'bad' (you or the perpetrator might not agree but that doesen't change that fact).

Nothing is inherently right or wrong, see moral nihilism. At any rate, cartel operatives may have other intentions than just simply fill their own pockets. Maybe they are selling medical marijuana to people in need because they would love to help people, and get money doing that, how about this?

You're naming things that are in the grey zone though. For example I can find polls [0] suggesting that North Korea is one of the least popular countries, but not strikingly different in absolute terms than someone like Russia or the USA. Internationally speaking they aren't unusually bad actors.

The problem with a "no shades of grey" stance is that in any large organised group there are going to be some good points and reasonable ideologies for why they have banded together to do what they do. They may be mistaken on important points, and it certainly may be necessary to put all empathy aside and try to ruthlessly crush them regardless of any good points they have - but in practice that approach almost always leads to terrible results compared to negotiating to emphasise the good and suppress the bad. Take ISIS - the reason we have groups like ISIS running around is generally because of a no-shades-of-grey approach taken to deal with their precursors. The US policy in the Middle East typically destabilises things (although they are hardly alone in doing that).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_North_Kor... - "Results of the 2017 BBC World Service poll. Views of North Korean Influence by country"

Are we the baddies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY

> depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on

Here's the thing: I am not on either side of that conflict, or likely any other conflict you could use as an example. There are atrocities committed by both sides. There are victims on both sides. You could argue over who committed the worse atrocities or over who is the biggest victim until your face turns blue, it isn't going to end the cycle of violence as long as there are people facilitating that violence.

And no, I am not naive. I know there are people out there who care nothing about causes beyond their own self interest and who care nothing about their victims. I realize that these people are impossible to combat without the innocent coming in harms way. Yet the moment we fail to be ashamed of the harm we cause in the name of the cause, the moment we fail to acknowledge who is being harmed in the name of the cause, is the moment we become no better than them.

Oh just because you are not affected yet, you might be in the future, most probably if no one is there to help against people with obscene power and they start to easily win

Here's a better example then. Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"?

Lots of horrible dictators have used rhetoric like yours to rationalize/facilitate their actions.

The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm.

You have to pick a stance and live with the harm that comes out of it (yes, whichever stance you pick, will cause harm).

> Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"?

Realistically, I am unlikely to help since I am unlikely to understand the circumstances and I am especially unlikely to understand who I am aiding. Revolutionaries often look noble (or try to look noble) until they are in power and show their true colours.

Operating an exit node is something that I would be unwilling to do since it goes beyond possibly facilitating those who would want to do harm, it is pretty much a guarantee of facilitating those who would do harm.

> The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm.

While I agree that there is no absolute objective moral compass, we each have a moral compass. We have to live by them. Will other people exploit those morals to their advantage. Undoubtedly. That doesn't mean we ignore those morals. Personally, I draw the line at facilitating violence.

> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more

If we're talking about the decision to actually run an exit node, I disagree with this breakdown of the ethics. I can value freedom more than state protection in the abstract while at the same time not feeling that helping support freedom in Russia and China and Iran is worth the cost of simultaneously helping to shield perpetrators of violence closer to home.

In most people's ethical frameworks choosing not to run a Tor node does not make me culpable for the actions of a state suppressing its people, but choosing to run one does make me at least somewhat complicit in shielding the perp of a bomb threat.

how is this different from running a postal service? would you be against that?

The USPS has an embedded law enforcement agency [0] whose full time job is to track down people who are using the postal service to commit crimes. Tor is very specifically designed to make an equivalent impossible.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspect...

> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more...

This is again a forced binary "and/or"-decision, without anything inbetween.

It doesn't have to be like that - both can coexist, if both terms are not extreme.

(disclosure: my post is not related in any way to Israel nor Palestine and I'm personally not linked in/directly to anything related to Israel nor Palestine and this post is not related to the current conflict)

> Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse.

The problem is when you choose to involve yourself in nation-state conflicts they’re just not going to care about your protestations of neutrality and freedom. They’re just going to see you aiding their enemy.

> Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse.

Stepping back though neither side in that conflict needs Tor. They both have numerous supporters in other countries where that support is legal. They can send and receive information through trusted outside supporters including some outside governments. They just need secure communication channels to a few representatives among those supporters rather than something is general as Tor.

>In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately.

I want to argue for freedom, on the grounds that most people know whats best for themselves better than others, so on balance there should be more people using that freedom for good, but then most people are busy, and not as motivated or knowledgable of how to use that freedom as the malicious actors are.. so is that even freedom in the end?

During The Troubles bombs were sent via the Royal Mail. Nobody blamed the post office. Indeed any infrastructure is a tool of terrorism as we rely on it (I am not going to make a list for obvious reasons). I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk. The question is whether or not the same applies to free speech - you're right there is no win-win solution, but it still might be worth it.

However if you start "Peters no questions asked hand delivery service, shipping direct from Ireland to London so reliably you can set a timer by it" - and you deliver 3 bombs to politicians you might find yourself being asked a few questions.

At the time that's exactly what the Royal Mail was. Requiring identification to send packages is a much more recent development. Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead.

> Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead.

You ... do not read much about history, I guess from this.

> I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk.

The thing is, we absolutely don't tolerate this with infrastructure. We have entire systems in place to make sure that we can find people who use our infrastructure to kill people. The USPS has its own entire law enforcement branch whose sole job is to track down people who misuse the mail. I'm sure there are processes in the UK for the same.

With our infrastructure there's some non-zero amount of abuse that we acknowledge we won't be able to prevent in order to make everything work without infinite enforcement cost, but we don't just close our eyes to the abuse and not even try to do anything about it at all.

The difference between the post office and Tor is that Tor is very specifically designed to make tracking a sender of a bomb threat impossible. State-run postal services at least try to have an audit trail for what they send.

Well, many (if not most) exit nodes are ran by three-letter agencies, so at least there is some infrastructure in place.

There are quite a bit of differences here. The mail services transport physical goods, and the whole path can be tracked. Every letter or parcel is registered by the postal office where it was submitted to for transport. And usually there is quite some physical evidence with everything you do mail.

The poster wasn’t blamed, he was investigated, just like the post office was. Police didn’t just throw up their hands and walk away.

I don't think that dicotomy is quite right. bad actors can take away my freedoms (for example if they steal my bank account I'm no longer financially free as I'd have no money)

I don't know the correct balance. maybe it's just an impossible problem. I just don't think the two sides are freedom vs state protection.