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Last time Tor was mentioned here, a user posted this link [1], claiming Tor is a military financed destabilization project. Seems unbelievable, but there appear

by jakear 7y ago

Last time Tor was mentioned here, a user posted this link [1], claiming Tor is a military financed destabilization project. Seems unbelievable, but there appear to be lots of supporting documents. [1]: https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/fact-checking-the-tor-projects-government-ties https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/fact-checking-the-tor-pr...

mrtksn 7y ago
The funding part is not really a secret and it's even on the Wikipedia page but the "military financed destabilization project" begs for evidence. The more likely scenario is, I believe, as soon as any government got concerned about the stuff going on on the internet they assigned people to take care of it and those people started to look for a ways to exploit anything and the Tor project was a good target.
xfs 7y ago
What is unbelievable in aiming "to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states"? I think the State Department has funded plenty of other censorship circumvention projects like Tor. But you have to admit the funding for Tor was also meant to get the upper hand in the shadow battle across anonymous networks. I still remember how LulzSec was busted by the FBI with a timing attack on Tor. Without the ahead-of-time research on Tor it wouldn't be as easy for the FBI to get the same level of power against anonymous networks.
solarkraft 7y ago
I consider it very believable. Of course the US has the same interest in destabilizing other countries as other countries have in destabilizing the US. Russia gives controversial people a voice in the US, while the US finances TOR.
AJ007 7y ago
Wikipedia: “The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online.“ Recently, many or all of the US’s agents in China were captured and executed: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communicati... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie... This is why things like mandating Apple, Google, et al use breakable encryption is extremely bad. Anyone who follows information security knows Apple struggles to keep up with 0 day exploits. My opinion is that it is both in the interest of the United States government and all human-rights abiding democratically elected states to have as absolutely secure and anonymous communications systems as possible. I’m not the only one who believes this. In fact, I think this is very very much a CIA vs FBI situation, domestically. Is it really worth exchanging knowing what was on some dead nut jobs iPhone for the ability of government officials, the military, business executives (e.g. Jeff Bezos apparent breach by Israeli assisted Saudis), and every day common citizens to communicate securely?
- turk73 7y ago
  Even when Tor was new I had my doubts about it due to its origins among other factors. My dissertation was on privacy technologies in that era (early '00s). I covered a lot of ground at the time. The most sinister change in information technology is cloud and the fact that you have no 4th Amendment protections for anything stored there. Our laws simply aren't keeping up. But it was a neat trick to get everyone using cloud and then pulling the rug out of privacy by say "oh, and by the way, since the files aren't on your property, you have no legal protections for them."
- 420codebro 7y ago
  Good points. RE CIA v. FBI - I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being a loose handshake that they (CIA/NSA/FBI) will allow Tor (benefits CIA), in exchange for technical assistance in investigations (benefits FBI) -- namely the ability to own an endpoint. Don't need to own the service/protocol if I can own the host it is running on.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> dead nut jobs iPhone I think the principle here is that the same dead nut will simply cease using iPhones the moment they become insecure.
r721 7y ago
>Yasha Levine "Yasha Levine is a Russian-American investigative journalist and author. Levine, who was born in the Soviet Union, is a former editor of Moscow-based satirical newspaper The eXile." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasha_Levine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasha_Levine
13415 7y ago
This is a silly conspiracy. The facts about the initial funding of research on Tor have always been public and well-known, and the conspiracy is based on the idea that there was some grand scheme looking forward into the future for more than 16 years. It's much more likely that some researchers at some government agency implemented the known idea of onion routing in a proof of concept, their work was more successful than anticipated, and later some other researchers at some other government agency were told to try to de-anonymize their colleagues' invention again. However, I'd be more weary about more recent projects. A lot has happened during the past two decades in cryptography and privacy, and I do think it's credible that all kinds of agencies from all over the world nowadays have the task of subverting privacy projects right from the start. But back in the 90s? Unlikely.
- kijin 7y ago
  Yeah, just because something was either invented or first implemented in the military doesn't mean it's tainted forever. SQLite was originally designed to be used on ballistic missiles. Heck, the internet itself was first developed by the DoD (ARPA). A lot of technologies have military origins.
  - uep 7y ago
    I read a few reviews of the author's (Yasha Levine) other work[1], and it makes me think he has credibility problems. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Malcolm-Gladwell-Yasha-Levine-ebook/dp/B008VOJGE8 https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Malcolm-Gladwell-Yasha-Lev...
burtonator 7y ago
I know Roger Dingledine personally and unless he's a VERY VERY good actor he would rather kill himself rather than go down this path. That is unless the state actors know something he doesn't and is still pushing it forward.

by jakear 7y ago

mrtksn 7y ago

The funding part is not really a secret and it's even on the Wikipedia page but the "military financed destabilization project" begs for evidence. The more likely scenario is, I believe, as soon as any government got concerned about the stuff going on on the internet they assigned people to take care of it and those people started to look for a ways to exploit anything and the Tor project was a good target.

xfs 7y ago

What is unbelievable in aiming "to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states"? I think the State Department has funded plenty of other censorship circumvention projects like Tor. But you have to admit the funding for Tor was also meant to get the upper hand in the shadow battle across anonymous networks. I still remember how LulzSec was busted by the FBI with a timing attack on Tor. Without the ahead-of-time research on Tor it wouldn't be as easy for the FBI to get the same level of power against anonymous networks.

solarkraft 7y ago

I consider it very believable. Of course the US has the same interest in destabilizing other countries as other countries have in destabilizing the US. Russia gives controversial people a voice in the US, while the US finances TOR.

AJ007 7y ago

Wikipedia: “The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online.“ Recently, many or all of the US’s agents in China were captured and executed: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communicati... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie... This is why things like mandating Apple, Google, et al use breakable encryption is extremely bad. Anyone who follows information security knows Apple struggles to keep up with 0 day exploits. My opinion is that it is both in the interest of the United States government and all human-rights abiding democratically elected states to have as absolutely secure and anonymous communications systems as possible. I’m not the only one who believes this. In fact, I think this is very very much a CIA vs FBI situation, domestically. Is it really worth exchanging knowing what was on some dead nut jobs iPhone for the ability of government officials, the military, business executives (e.g. Jeff Bezos apparent breach by Israeli assisted Saudis), and every day common citizens to communicate securely?

turk73 7y ago
Even when Tor was new I had my doubts about it due to its origins among other factors. My dissertation was on privacy technologies in that era (early '00s). I covered a lot of ground at the time. The most sinister change in information technology is cloud and the fact that you have no 4th Amendment protections for anything stored there. Our laws simply aren't keeping up. But it was a neat trick to get everyone using cloud and then pulling the rug out of privacy by say "oh, and by the way, since the files aren't on your property, you have no legal protections for them."
420codebro 7y ago
Good points. RE CIA v. FBI - I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being a loose handshake that they (CIA/NSA/FBI) will allow Tor (benefits CIA), in exchange for technical assistance in investigations (benefits FBI) -- namely the ability to own an endpoint. Don't need to own the service/protocol if I can own the host it is running on.
heavenlyblue 7y ago
>> dead nut jobs iPhone I think the principle here is that the same dead nut will simply cease using iPhones the moment they become insecure.

r721 7y ago

>Yasha Levine "Yasha Levine is a Russian-American investigative journalist and author. Levine, who was born in the Soviet Union, is a former editor of Moscow-based satirical newspaper The eXile." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasha_Levine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasha_Levine

13415 7y ago

This is a silly conspiracy. The facts about the initial funding of research on Tor have always been public and well-known, and the conspiracy is based on the idea that there was some grand scheme looking forward into the future for more than 16 years. It's much more likely that some researchers at some government agency implemented the known idea of onion routing in a proof of concept, their work was more successful than anticipated, and later some other researchers at some other government agency were told to try to de-anonymize their colleagues' invention again. However, I'd be more weary about more recent projects. A lot has happened during the past two decades in cryptography and privacy, and I do think it's credible that all kinds of agencies from all over the world nowadays have the task of subverting privacy projects right from the start. But back in the 90s? Unlikely.

kijin 7y ago
Yeah, just because something was either invented or first implemented in the military doesn't mean it's tainted forever. SQLite was originally designed to be used on ballistic missiles. Heck, the internet itself was first developed by the DoD (ARPA). A lot of technologies have military origins.
- uep 7y ago
  I read a few reviews of the author's (Yasha Levine) other work[1], and it makes me think he has credibility problems. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Malcolm-Gladwell-Yasha-Levine-ebook/dp/B008VOJGE8 https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Malcolm-Gladwell-Yasha-Lev...

burtonator 7y ago

I know Roger Dingledine personally and unless he's a VERY VERY good actor he would rather kill himself rather than go down this path. That is unless the state actors know something he doesn't and is still pushing it forward.