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Honestly I’m surprised it’s legal to run a Tor exit-node at all given the sheer volume of morally reprehensible things that go through it - regardless of its ut

Honestly I’m surprised it’s legal to run a Tor exit-node at all given the sheer volume of morally reprehensible things that go through it - regardless of its utility for journalistic freedom.

shakna 5y ago
Tor was created for the US Navy to hide their intelligence operatives and wouldn't work for that purpose without the rest of that noise. It requires that everyone uses it for anyone to reasonably be considered hidden.
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  Do you have any source on that?
  - shakna 5y ago
    It's not exactly a secret and any discussion of Tor's history will immediately bring it up, but sure. > For the onion router to work properly, the Navy needed to step back from running it. A cloaking system is not useful if all the cloaks say “Navy” on them. “If you have a system that’s only a Navy system, anything popping out of it is obviously from the Navy,” Syverson says. “You need to have a network that carries traffic for other people as well.” Tor Project was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2006 to manage operations. [0] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-23/tor-anonymity-software-vs-dot-the-national-security-agency https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-23/tor-anony...
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      Ah - wow, dang. I believed the cover-story that Tor was a side-project of a humanitarian org in the US gov that wanted to provide people in firewalled countries a way to access the wider internet - of course, Tor does do that (just as a nice side-effect, and to be fair, the US does benefit and encourage democratic (...and neoliberal) ideals worldwide as its in their own interests to). ...it's kinda like how we were all told that the 1950s-1970s space-launches with monkeys and other animals in them were for bio-scientific experiments when they were really just cover stories for launching spy-sats and military satellites.
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        > just as a nice side-effect, and to be fair, the US does benefit and encourage democratic (...and neoliberal) ideals worldwide as its in their own interests to To be clear, they encourage democratic ideals where/if it's in their own interests to. There are plenty of places where they encourage non-democratic ideals as well (or directly fund their own coups to put usually military leaders they like in power).
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        The space race was a test for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Probably most Tor exit nodes are run by agencies trying to snoop on traffic. I wouldn't trust Tor to solely protect my identity since there might be ways to attack it. But it can be an useful asset in a "pipeline" designed to protect one's identity.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Probably most Tor exit nodes are run by agencies trying to snoop on traffic. Well, that would explain why the nodes don't get shut-down when the local police come knocking... Still, that must require some very awkward conversations when ethics committees or even departmental budgets are approved - not to mention inviting consternation from the general-public who really don't approve of their tax-money being used to knowingly facilitate dark-net activities, especially horrific child abuse, ugh. (I'm a utilitarian myself, but personally I'd pull the plug on it: surely there are better ways for embedded agents to exchange information? What about digital-steganography, and concealable satellite comms hardware?)

Honestly I’m surprised it’s legal to run a Tor exit-node at all given the sheer volume of morally reprehensible things that go through it - regardless of its utility for journalistic freedom.

shakna 5y ago

Tor was created for the US Navy to hide their intelligence operatives and wouldn't work for that purpose without the rest of that noise. It requires that everyone uses it for anyone to reasonably be considered hidden.

ComodoHacker 5y ago
Do you have any source on that?
- shakna 5y ago
  It's not exactly a secret and any discussion of Tor's history will immediately bring it up, but sure. > For the onion router to work properly, the Navy needed to step back from running it. A cloaking system is not useful if all the cloaks say “Navy” on them. “If you have a system that’s only a Navy system, anything popping out of it is obviously from the Navy,” Syverson says. “You need to have a network that carries traffic for other people as well.” Tor Project was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2006 to manage operations. [0] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-23/tor-anonymity-software-vs-dot-the-national-security-agency https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-23/tor-anony...
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Ah - wow, dang. I believed the cover-story that Tor was a side-project of a humanitarian org in the US gov that wanted to provide people in firewalled countries a way to access the wider internet - of course, Tor does do that (just as a nice side-effect, and to be fair, the US does benefit and encourage democratic (...and neoliberal) ideals worldwide as its in their own interests to). ...it's kinda like how we were all told that the 1950s-1970s space-launches with monkeys and other animals in them were for bio-scientific experiments when they were really just cover stories for launching spy-sats and military satellites.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      > just as a nice side-effect, and to be fair, the US does benefit and encourage democratic (...and neoliberal) ideals worldwide as its in their own interests to To be clear, they encourage democratic ideals where/if it's in their own interests to. There are plenty of places where they encourage non-democratic ideals as well (or directly fund their own coups to put usually military leaders they like in power).
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      The space race was a test for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

DeathArrow 5y ago

Probably most Tor exit nodes are run by agencies trying to snoop on traffic. I wouldn't trust Tor to solely protect my identity since there might be ways to attack it. But it can be an useful asset in a "pipeline" designed to protect one's identity.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Probably most Tor exit nodes are run by agencies trying to snoop on traffic. Well, that would explain why the nodes don't get shut-down when the local police come knocking... Still, that must require some very awkward conversations when ethics committees or even departmental budgets are approved - not to mention inviting consternation from the general-public who really don't approve of their tax-money being used to knowingly facilitate dark-net activities, especially horrific child abuse, ugh. (I'm a utilitarian myself, but personally I'd pull the plug on it: surely there are better ways for embedded agents to exchange information? What about digital-steganography, and concealable satellite comms hardware?)