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Not a good analogy. Most usage of Tor is either unnecessarily paranoid people, criminal enterprises, and state agencies. In fact, so far the leaks (Snowden, Wik

Not a good analogy. Most usage of Tor is either unnecessarily paranoid people, criminal enterprises, and state agencies. In fact, so far the leaks (Snowden, Wikileaks, etc) are the only cases I've heard of where Tor usage legitimately helped. Can you say the same thing about electricity? Again, I'm not saying that Tor should be shut down, it's just unsettling to work on something that the majority of its usage is "bad".

linschn 5y ago
Union workers , journalists, security researchers, IT managers, lawyers, and judges and prosecutors are the professions of people I teach the usage and inner working of TOR to. They all have legitimate use cases for it. And nobody has any idea what "most" (according to which metric anyway? Bandwidth, number of connections?) of TOR usage is for.
- lazybreather 5y ago
  I don't think TOR has to be justified by giving such use cases. Why can't I be a normal person and still use TOR for my browsing?
mnahkies 5y ago
It's also commonly used in countries such as China, Iran, Belarus to avoid oppressive government control. There was an interesting talk at fosdem a few years back about the network and its users https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/tor_project/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/tor_project/
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Do you have a citation that the majority of Tor usage is condemnable? I mean there’s nothing wrong with a state agency or a paranoid person browsing using Tor, for example. This is the first I’ve heard that the majority of Tor use is morally or ethically wrong.
gorjusborg 5y ago
More accurately, your opinion is that most usage of Tor is... His analogy is spot on.
imglorp 5y ago
Snowden taught us the state agencies should be feared and that nobody was unnecessarily paranoid. Anyone speaking truth to power should be cautious.
bawolff 5y ago
The same way a lawyer who defends freedom of speech lives with themselves when a significant portion of people who invoke freedom of speech [and get in trouble for it] are terrible people promoting terrible ideas.
xvector 5y ago
> unnecessarily paranoid people, criminal enterprises, and state agencies These things are the most newsworthy which is why you hear about them most often. Don't conflate "most newsworthy" with the "most common" use case for Tor.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> Tor usage legitimately helped. Every time I have needed to bypass a stupid local filter to read one of my favorite news sources (torrentfreak.com). Every time I've wanted to see what my website/project looks like to people from a variety of geographically different IP addresses.
- hyproxia 5y ago
  VPNs/Proxies do this job just fine though, without the additional latency/bandwidth penalty of Tor.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Good luck finding any VPNs/Proxies that isn't also used by criminals, which was the initial point you made. Tor is also different because it's a open source project, driven by their own non-profit foundation and doesn't costs any money to use. Also hard to find any VPNs/proxies that offer those things.
    - hyproxia 5y ago
      The difference is that criminals that use VPNs/Proxies can be easily caught, unlike Tor users.
    - Moodles 5y ago
      You're talking over each other. It's plain to see. The conversation you're having rests upon the answer to the questions: "What percentage of Tor usage is malicious compared to VPN, electricity, crowbar usage, etc.? And what percentage is morally acceptable?". Just pointing out that Tor is used by some good people and some bad people some of the time is useless on its own. Personally, I have a suspicion, that despite my love of freedom, Tor usage is probably primarily paranoid people and drugs, and a small percentage facilities anonymous exploitation of children in a way that no other technology can. I would love to be proved wrong and see some facts that Tor is actually a net good for the world. Also one thing I've noticed is that the majority of good use cases for Tor you can achieve with just the Tor browser, whereas the majority of bad use cases you need Tor hidden services. E.g. as a journalist you can still use Tor browser to talk to your sources anonymously. But try hosting a drugs website or child porn on the clear net: you need Tor hidden services for that. Basically you'd only really use hidden services if you want to host content that is banned in every country, e.g. pedophilia or drug network. Whereas if you're a freedom fighter, why not use Tor to connect to a Wordpress website hosted in a country that's sympathetic to your cause? I just don't see a use case for hidden services. Yes, it is less trust in a central provider, but at what cost? You can also just move hosting countries. "At what cost" goes back to the first two questions and it would be interesting to know how we all feel about it.
deleted 5y ago
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linschn 5y ago

Union workers , journalists, security researchers, IT managers, lawyers, and judges and prosecutors are the professions of people I teach the usage and inner working of TOR to. They all have legitimate use cases for it. And nobody has any idea what "most" (according to which metric anyway? Bandwidth, number of connections?) of TOR usage is for.

lazybreather 5y ago
I don't think TOR has to be justified by giving such use cases. Why can't I be a normal person and still use TOR for my browsing?

mnahkies 5y ago

It's also commonly used in countries such as China, Iran, Belarus to avoid oppressive government control. There was an interesting talk at fosdem a few years back about the network and its users https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/tor_project/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/tor_project/

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

Do you have a citation that the majority of Tor usage is condemnable? I mean there’s nothing wrong with a state agency or a paranoid person browsing using Tor, for example. This is the first I’ve heard that the majority of Tor use is morally or ethically wrong.

gorjusborg 5y ago

More accurately, your opinion is that most usage of Tor is... His analogy is spot on.

imglorp 5y ago

Snowden taught us the state agencies should be feared and that nobody was unnecessarily paranoid. Anyone speaking truth to power should be cautious.

bawolff 5y ago

The same way a lawyer who defends freedom of speech lives with themselves when a significant portion of people who invoke freedom of speech [and get in trouble for it] are terrible people promoting terrible ideas.

xvector 5y ago

> unnecessarily paranoid people, criminal enterprises, and state agencies These things are the most newsworthy which is why you hear about them most often. Don't conflate "most newsworthy" with the "most common" use case for Tor.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> Tor usage legitimately helped. Every time I have needed to bypass a stupid local filter to read one of my favorite news sources (torrentfreak.com). Every time I've wanted to see what my website/project looks like to people from a variety of geographically different IP addresses.

hyproxia 5y ago
VPNs/Proxies do this job just fine though, without the additional latency/bandwidth penalty of Tor.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Good luck finding any VPNs/Proxies that isn't also used by criminals, which was the initial point you made. Tor is also different because it's a open source project, driven by their own non-profit foundation and doesn't costs any money to use. Also hard to find any VPNs/proxies that offer those things.
  - hyproxia 5y ago
    The difference is that criminals that use VPNs/Proxies can be easily caught, unlike Tor users.
  - Moodles 5y ago
    You're talking over each other. It's plain to see. The conversation you're having rests upon the answer to the questions: "What percentage of Tor usage is malicious compared to VPN, electricity, crowbar usage, etc.? And what percentage is morally acceptable?". Just pointing out that Tor is used by some good people and some bad people some of the time is useless on its own. Personally, I have a suspicion, that despite my love of freedom, Tor usage is probably primarily paranoid people and drugs, and a small percentage facilities anonymous exploitation of children in a way that no other technology can. I would love to be proved wrong and see some facts that Tor is actually a net good for the world. Also one thing I've noticed is that the majority of good use cases for Tor you can achieve with just the Tor browser, whereas the majority of bad use cases you need Tor hidden services. E.g. as a journalist you can still use Tor browser to talk to your sources anonymously. But try hosting a drugs website or child porn on the clear net: you need Tor hidden services for that. Basically you'd only really use hidden services if you want to host content that is banned in every country, e.g. pedophilia or drug network. Whereas if you're a freedom fighter, why not use Tor to connect to a Wordpress website hosted in a country that's sympathetic to your cause? I just don't see a use case for hidden services. Yes, it is less trust in a central provider, but at what cost? You can also just move hosting countries. "At what cost" goes back to the first two questions and it would be interesting to know how we all feel about it.

deleted 5y ago

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