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Criminals are numerically the most common Tor users. But the difference is that what's "criminal" depends on your place of residence. In America Tor is mostly
by api 11y ago
Criminals are numerically the most common Tor users. But the difference is that what's "criminal" depends on your place of residence.
In America Tor is mostly used (other than as a curiosity) for drugs and child porn. The former I could care less about, while the latter is indeed creepy. It's also occasionally used for private communication with journalists, a numerically less common use but a politically critical one. While I strongly detest child porn, I equally detest drug prohibition and journalist and whistleblower harassment/censorship.
In Iran? China? Saudi Arabia? Russia? In places like that Tor is used for dissident communication and private correspondence with people overseas. In those places public opposition to the ruling regime can itself be a crime.
There are also authorities including police and intelligence personnel who use Tor -- very ironically to hide from criminals. For example, an undercover cop might use Tor to hide their correspondence with the police from digital snoops in the employ of a criminal organization they are infiltrating. Some organized crime outfits are very sophisticated, making undercover work actually require a degree of 'op-sec' on the part of the agent. Compromise can be fatal.
Tor is a gun. Criminals use guns but so do police, hunters, and people legitimately defending themselves. In America you could probably defend Tor and other crypto tools on second amendment grounds.
- ironsides 11y agoPlease provide sources to support your argument. Edit: Why would I be modded down for asking someone making claims (questionable ones at best) to provide sources?
- api 11y agoTry this: http://geekslop.com/2015/catching-pedophiles-running-secret-dark-web-tor-honeypot http://geekslop.com/2015/catching-pedophiles-running-secret-... "... First, the pedo site saw magnitudes more traffic than the counterfeiting or drugs websites – in the order of 100 times more traffic than the other two combined. ..." BTW I wasn't arguing that Tor itself is bad, just refusing to engage in the common denialism one sees among crypto and Tor advocates in claiming it has no bad uses. The truth is that many things have negative uses: guns, knives, security systems, Bitcoin, crypto, fireworks, spray paint, alcohol or virtually any drug, explosives, drones, cameras, etc. All those things have positive uses as well, and it's ultimately the user who is responsible for how they are used. Pedophiles use SSL too, should we ban that? As far as police and intelligence agency use of Tor, look up some of the talks by the Tor founders in which they cite examples of these uses. In addition to undercover use, Tor is useful for law enforcement to hide their network location while investigating potential criminal sites online. Otherwise a site might easily see that the traffic is coming from a police or .gov site.
- dublinben 11y agoTraffic to hidden services makes up a tiny fraction of the overall use of the Tor network.[0] Any conclusions drawn from that use is highly skewed, and cannot be used to draw conclusions about Tor itself. [0] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-statistics-about-onions https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-statistics-about-onion...