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It's an interesting question. If Project Vigilant had compromised Tor, I'd expect there to be quite a few pedophiles who had used it to share cp getting busted
by redthrowaway 16y ago
It's an interesting question. If Project Vigilant had compromised Tor, I'd expect there to be quite a few pedophiles who had used it to share cp getting busted. I'm not aware of any such incidents, let alone many. I imagine that the government wouldn't want to give away that they had it compromised, and so would simply use the information to compose a list of people to watch for slip ups, but one would expect to see a rise in the number of arrests, which would likely get at least some play in the MSM.
Conversely, if the NSA had compromised it one would expect to see no outward signs, as they a) don't care about pedophiles, b) would claim "national security" to hide the means of tracking terror suspects from the public's eye, and c) likely wouldn't tell anyone when they did apprehend someone.
I think it's probably pretty likely that the NSA is running a few nodes, but that's the risk you take wit something like Tor, just as bittorrent seeders risk riaa proxies downloading from them.
- narag 16y agoI find funny that I was re-reading a novel this morning during the commute, about a WWII cryptographer and arrived at the point were he sees that the warning in every secret document was "never take any action that could reveal the enemy that we can break their encryption".
- redthrowaway 16y agoI don't suppose MILINT has gotten any less competent in the last 60-odd years, but not disclosing that Tor is compromised would seriously hamper using it as a source for law enforcement, hence my thinking it would be more likely to be NSA. If so, I doubt we'd ever know, short of somebody leaking it.
- yardie 16y agoIf there was an organized effort to bust people using Tor then a pattern would emerge. In so much if they were high-profile targets (political dissidents, whistleblowers, spies, etc.). If they were cp collectors I don't think anyone would care enough to do an investigation.
- trotsky 16y agoThis assumes that political dissidents, whistleblowers and spies are using tor in any significant numbers. It seems quite unlikely to me that this is true. I think you'd find that the vast majority of tor traffic is comprised of people trying to mask their location for criminal reasons, people looking to bypass local firewall restrictions and people using it as a free VPN.
- yardie 16y agoYes, but even criminals talk. If there were a string of busts and the item connecting them all was the fact that Tor was used by the criminals then it would be an easy conclusion to say that Tor has been compromised. Most of the CP cases are done with a lot social engineering. Instead of having some sort of super router that can sniff through all the packets its just a bunch of LEOs in an office trying to gain the confidence of the criminals.
- redthrowaway 16y agoThis was my thinking as well. The overwhelming majority of cases you hear about are broken using old-fashioned police work. Even petitioning ISPs for records seems to be a fairly minor part of the equation. A pedophile running a hidden TrueCrypt volume and using Tor to trade chid pornography on onion sites is likely to get caught only if they pull a Bradley Manning, that is, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Unfortunately, most pedophiles these days that trade in child porn are likely more technologically advanced than the people responsible for tracking them.
- smcl 16y agoCryptonomicon, perhaps? I loved that book
- narag 16y agoSo do I. I don't re-read books often.
- flawawa2 16y agoTitle of that novel please, sounds interesting!
- narag 16y agoSee smcl comment. Very recommended, BTW.
- redthrowaway 16y agoAnathem is also fantastic, once you get into it.
- pyre 16y ago> so would simply use the information to compose a list of > people to watch for slip ups How would they 'watch for slip ups' though? One would think that they would have to justify to a judge why the person was under surveillance in the first place.