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It's an uncomfortable truth that Tor is enabling people to engage is activities that are the result and cause of human suffering, and it's something that doesn'

It's an uncomfortable truth that Tor is enabling people to engage is activities that are the result and cause of human suffering, and it's something that doesn't sit well with me. That's said, Tor is a noble project with a noble cause and these side effects aren't unique to Tor. Anything that gives people true anonymity is going to result in people using it to do things most people would find disturbing. There's a parallel here with the "guns don't kill people" sentiment that's often brought up when people call for stricter gun controls. And here I fnd myself exhibiting some cognitive dissonance; I could say "Tor doesn't exploit and abuse children, people do" and I believe that, but I also believe that guns are inherently bad and I would like to see stricter controls. I'm not sure there's a solution to this moral puzzle and I find myself actively choosing hippocracy. I'll keep on advocating stricter gun laws whilst vehemently opposing stricter controls on the freedom of information. So if anyone has a logical or philosophical solution to this mini moral crisis of mine, I'd really love to hear it.

jqm 12y ago
That same argument could be made against the internet in general. My philosophical solution is never to blame tools.
jmgrosen 12y ago
I, too, find this hypocrisy within myself. I find myself supporting groups such as EFF (which I believe should be supported) who take on quite radical positions, if not as radical as the NRA's. I'd like a solution to this problem as well, but one probably does not exist. Perhaps hypocrisy is a fundamental part of humanity...
drewrv 12y ago
Tor is designed and engineered to allow anonymity. Handguns and semi-automatics are designed and engineered to kill humans. If the creators intent matters, then there is a moral difference between the two.
- tdees40 12y ago
  Well yes, and I'm no gun-rights advocate (quite the opposite), but approximately 0% of guns (in the US at least) are actually used to kill people, and this is telling me that 80% of dark web activity is used for pedophilia. That seems like a very big deal.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- derefr 12y ago
  I would actually disagree; handguns and semi-automatics are designed to be able to kill humans, but that is not their purpose. Their purpose, like that of many other offensive technologies, is deterrence (i.e. cooperation in iterated prisoner's dilemmas). In other words: if you know I have a gun, the weights on what strategies you will consider for selfish gain shift away from those where I would shoot you with the gun, and toward those where I wouldn't. A gun can "do its job" while never being fired once over its service life! The game theory of guns is basically a smaller-scale replica of the game theory of nuclear weapons—except that it's actually really easy, in the modern day, to ensure a power imbalance (no non-military force has a military level of gunpower), so you don't end up in the particular nuclear Nash equilibrium of everyone having the best weapon and nobody using it (you used to, though; "mutually-assured destruction" was previously known as "a Mexican standoff.")
  - zbraniecki 12y ago
    The problem of guns is a bit deeper than iterated prisoners dillema (or actually, more literate). If you have a gun and I have a gun I have to take into account that you may use it. Which motivates me to preemtivly use it to prevent you from killing me. Of course you can think the same way and I can think that you can think the same way. Either way, if we both have a gun and I want to maximize my chance of staying alive (thus, fulfilling my survivial instinct), I should shoot. The difference between that and Nash's equilibrium is quite drastic in that: a) large scale is in play triggering empathic/humanistic thinking b) the person that is in position to use it is usually less desperate and or in personal danger, so it's more "you kill my people" than "you kill me". So, while I understand your logic, I would argue that the purpose of developing a weapon is to enable killing someone. The purpose of developing TOR is to enable privacy and anonimity.
delecti 12y ago
Nobody is going to accidentally download 50GB of child pornography, but people accidentally kill themselves or others with guns all the time. That isn't a perfect or ironclad resolution to the hypocrisy, but it does highlight an important difference in the intent behind the two things. Guns are weapons, and while they have perfectly innocent uses and users (shooting ranges), they are primarily created to cause harm.
chc 12y ago
I don't think they're that similar. Tor doesn't actually enable harm the way that guns do, and it certainly doesn't do it as specifically as guns do. Guns enable you to shoot things, and that's pretty much all they can do. Tor doesn't enable you to abuse a child, and it's capable of much more. Nobody abuses a child through Tor — they commit the abuse in person. Tor is sometimes used to access the artifacts of that abuse, but the core harm is unrelated to Tor and does not occur through it.
- davidy123 12y ago
  What about child pornography rings that generate "fresh" content within their membership? Reading about busts, that seems fairly common.
  - chc 12y ago
    They still commit the abuse in person, not via Tor. Tor exists on the periphery of a situation where harm takes place, not as a tool or cause of harm itself. People who do bad things can use Tor to hide better, but the same is true of a hole in the ground. That is not in itself a harmful thing.
sitharus 12y ago
Well, guns - especially handguns and military-style assault rifles as opposed to hunting rifles - are designed and built to kill. If you only have a gun for personal defence its only purpose is to kill a human. Non-automatic rifles and shotguns do have a use for hunting, though I'm of the belief that you should only hunt if you intend to eat what you shoot. Tor has purposes other than propagating harm. It can be used to share information which otherwise would cause punishment or harm to the persons supplying or reading, such as whistle-blowers or political dissidents. Now you can argue that those people are committing crimes and should be responsible for their actions, but that gets in to much murkier territory than killing or pedophilia.
- stvswn 12y ago
  "Non-automatic rifles" is a misleading term because it's technically correct but should also include the set "semi-automatic rifles" which are also non-automatic. I think your point, however, was to weigh in on the idea that "semi-automatic rifles" should be the subject of more regulation, so it might be helpful to understand the terms: Automatic: hold the trigger, bullets keep firing, also called a machine gun. They've been illegal to import or manufacture for civilian use since 1986, but you can still get one if it was made before 1986. Legally-owned machine guns have been involved in 2 murders in the US since 1934 when they were first regulated. Semi-automatic: Not a machine gun at all. It just means that you don't have to "re-cock" the gun after each time you fire. If you aren't familiar with guns, you probably think that all guns are semi-automatic, because in movies they always are. The vast majority of gun crimes happen with semi-automatic handguns. This is because these are simply the most common types of guns out there. Rifles and shotguns can also be "semi-automatic." "Semi-automatic rifles" aren't especially scary, though. They are just the same old rifles with a pretty common feature. They account for, at most, 2% of all murders in the US. Finally, you seem to argue that a tool for killing is therefore used for evil -- in other words, killing is inherently evil. Men with guns have done great evil and also great good. Similarly, Tor itself is amoral, and can be used to both good and evil ends.
ddod 12y ago
I can't help your moral quandary, but the rationalization should really go both ways in that both technologies give the populous some measure of control against a possibly oppressive government (be it minuscule and ineffective or not). The right to bear arms in the constitution wasn't written for hunters-- it was written as another check and balance for the government.
- stvswn 12y ago
  Agreed, and this point is often misunderstood by gun control advocates in the US (it's completely unfathomable outside of the US). Saying "I don't like that guns are used to kill people, therefore I'm okay with guns meant for hunting but these guns designed for people should be regulated or banned" completely misses the point. The Lockean philosophy behind the 2nd amendment is that individuals should have the means to protect themselves independent of (and even from) the state. We need guns in case we need to lead another revolution. Similarly, the state should always be aware that its citizens have the capacity to revolt effectively. We know that having this right means bad things will happen -- guns will be available for criminals to use, for example. If you believe in Liberal gun rights, you think that the evil that happens when guns are freely available is an acceptable price to pay for an important freedom. In the same way, that's why we need Tor -- because citizens need to be able to communicate and organize absent of government surveillance and interference. Tor is not important "even though" it can be used to avoid law enforcement. It is important "because" it can be used to evade law enforcement, because one day we may have to. I mean, of course, a purely hypothetical revolution. I am serious when I say, however, that the framers of the Constitution wanted future US governments to be constrained by the power of the citizens, and so they gave the citizens guns. They also guaranteed the right to assembly and free association (1st amendment) and the right to be free from search or seizure (4th amendment). Inter-citizen communication free from government surveillance is implied there, I think.
MetaCosm 12y ago
Good luck. I can say I sympathize with the pain that applying consistent logical principals can have on beliefs. The longer you have believed something, and the more intense the emotions around it are, the harder it is to give up on it. The more times you have defended your opinion, the more you feel you have to maintain it, you feel invested. I would just point out that you owe zero loyalty to what you thought yesterday (or 30 seconds ago). Maintaining views despite new information and logic is just dogma. Once you make things dogma and they conflict, you can either be a hippocrit (which at least makes you self-aware) or create ridiculous tortured logic to try to self-justify (which seems to be what you are asking for help with?) -- both are problematic, and IMHO harmful.
pdabbadabba 12y ago
Others have suggested interesting and valuable possibilities. Here's another: Why think about this so categorically? Mightn't the degree and type of harm also be a factor? Tor gives people a way to anonymously download child porn. These are probably people who would download child porn anyway and, while I certainly don't approve of even a single intentional download, I do wonder how much harm is caused by a single download. It's not zero, but it's a lot less, I think, than the harm of shooting someone. On the other side, it is also, apparently, much less likely that any given gun sale is going to lead to a murder. But it's possible that the moral arithmetic still works out to significantly greater average harm. We should also think about the potential benefits in the same way. Both Tor and guns supposedly have some capacity to protect/foster democratic government. One should also compare the probability of these positive outcomes.
WalterSear 12y ago
Tor doesn't kill people - demonizing someone with a pathology rather than seeking to help them does.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
stvswn 12y ago
I think you're correct in recognizing that inanimate objects like guns or software do not have agency and cannot have moral value. The actors who use them should be judged on the morality of the ends to which guns or Tor are the means. This doesn't mean that you can't advocate for the free use of one inanimate object and simultaneously advocate for the regulation of another. Just because I'm in favor of gun rights doesn't mean I have to be OK with nuclear-weapons rights or dangerous-exotic-animal rights. There's another similarity between Tor and guns (at least in the US). Neither can be eliminated anyway, it's better to discuss how to manage their existence. Tor has no central server that can be shut down. Guns are durable hunks of metal that can be easily hidden, and they exist in huge quantities across the US and could never be confiscated.
iwwr 12y ago
Well, you've got the benefit of free access to content and live in a free society with stable institutions. Most people in the world don't have that. Tor provides a uniquely valuable communication tool and mechanism to coordinate for social change, even if it allows some extremists or creeps to use it too. The value of privacy goes beyond that, to the balance beween state authority and individual autonomy, to freedom of speech and expression. If you argue against Tor you argue in favor of surveillance and against democratic control over institutions.

jqm 12y ago

That same argument could be made against the internet in general. My philosophical solution is never to blame tools.

jmgrosen 12y ago

I, too, find this hypocrisy within myself. I find myself supporting groups such as EFF (which I believe should be supported) who take on quite radical positions, if not as radical as the NRA's. I'd like a solution to this problem as well, but one probably does not exist. Perhaps hypocrisy is a fundamental part of humanity...

drewrv 12y ago

Tor is designed and engineered to allow anonymity. Handguns and semi-automatics are designed and engineered to kill humans. If the creators intent matters, then there is a moral difference between the two.

tdees40 12y ago
Well yes, and I'm no gun-rights advocate (quite the opposite), but approximately 0% of guns (in the US at least) are actually used to kill people, and this is telling me that 80% of dark web activity is used for pedophilia. That seems like a very big deal.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 12y ago
I would actually disagree; handguns and semi-automatics are designed to be able to kill humans, but that is not their purpose. Their purpose, like that of many other offensive technologies, is deterrence (i.e. cooperation in iterated prisoner's dilemmas). In other words: if you know I have a gun, the weights on what strategies you will consider for selfish gain shift away from those where I would shoot you with the gun, and toward those where I wouldn't. A gun can "do its job" while never being fired once over its service life! The game theory of guns is basically a smaller-scale replica of the game theory of nuclear weapons—except that it's actually really easy, in the modern day, to ensure a power imbalance (no non-military force has a military level of gunpower), so you don't end up in the particular nuclear Nash equilibrium of everyone having the best weapon and nobody using it (you used to, though; "mutually-assured destruction" was previously known as "a Mexican standoff.")
- zbraniecki 12y ago
  The problem of guns is a bit deeper than iterated prisoners dillema (or actually, more literate). If you have a gun and I have a gun I have to take into account that you may use it. Which motivates me to preemtivly use it to prevent you from killing me. Of course you can think the same way and I can think that you can think the same way. Either way, if we both have a gun and I want to maximize my chance of staying alive (thus, fulfilling my survivial instinct), I should shoot. The difference between that and Nash's equilibrium is quite drastic in that: a) large scale is in play triggering empathic/humanistic thinking b) the person that is in position to use it is usually less desperate and or in personal danger, so it's more "you kill my people" than "you kill me". So, while I understand your logic, I would argue that the purpose of developing a weapon is to enable killing someone. The purpose of developing TOR is to enable privacy and anonimity.

delecti 12y ago

Nobody is going to accidentally download 50GB of child pornography, but people accidentally kill themselves or others with guns all the time. That isn't a perfect or ironclad resolution to the hypocrisy, but it does highlight an important difference in the intent behind the two things. Guns are weapons, and while they have perfectly innocent uses and users (shooting ranges), they are primarily created to cause harm.

chc 12y ago

I don't think they're that similar. Tor doesn't actually enable harm the way that guns do, and it certainly doesn't do it as specifically as guns do. Guns enable you to shoot things, and that's pretty much all they can do. Tor doesn't enable you to abuse a child, and it's capable of much more. Nobody abuses a child through Tor — they commit the abuse in person. Tor is sometimes used to access the artifacts of that abuse, but the core harm is unrelated to Tor and does not occur through it.

davidy123 12y ago
What about child pornography rings that generate "fresh" content within their membership? Reading about busts, that seems fairly common.
- chc 12y ago
  They still commit the abuse in person, not via Tor. Tor exists on the periphery of a situation where harm takes place, not as a tool or cause of harm itself. People who do bad things can use Tor to hide better, but the same is true of a hole in the ground. That is not in itself a harmful thing.

sitharus 12y ago

Well, guns - especially handguns and military-style assault rifles as opposed to hunting rifles - are designed and built to kill. If you only have a gun for personal defence its only purpose is to kill a human. Non-automatic rifles and shotguns do have a use for hunting, though I'm of the belief that you should only hunt if you intend to eat what you shoot. Tor has purposes other than propagating harm. It can be used to share information which otherwise would cause punishment or harm to the persons supplying or reading, such as whistle-blowers or political dissidents. Now you can argue that those people are committing crimes and should be responsible for their actions, but that gets in to much murkier territory than killing or pedophilia.

stvswn 12y ago
"Non-automatic rifles" is a misleading term because it's technically correct but should also include the set "semi-automatic rifles" which are also non-automatic. I think your point, however, was to weigh in on the idea that "semi-automatic rifles" should be the subject of more regulation, so it might be helpful to understand the terms: Automatic: hold the trigger, bullets keep firing, also called a machine gun. They've been illegal to import or manufacture for civilian use since 1986, but you can still get one if it was made before 1986. Legally-owned machine guns have been involved in 2 murders in the US since 1934 when they were first regulated. Semi-automatic: Not a machine gun at all. It just means that you don't have to "re-cock" the gun after each time you fire. If you aren't familiar with guns, you probably think that all guns are semi-automatic, because in movies they always are. The vast majority of gun crimes happen with semi-automatic handguns. This is because these are simply the most common types of guns out there. Rifles and shotguns can also be "semi-automatic." "Semi-automatic rifles" aren't especially scary, though. They are just the same old rifles with a pretty common feature. They account for, at most, 2% of all murders in the US. Finally, you seem to argue that a tool for killing is therefore used for evil -- in other words, killing is inherently evil. Men with guns have done great evil and also great good. Similarly, Tor itself is amoral, and can be used to both good and evil ends.

ddod 12y ago

I can't help your moral quandary, but the rationalization should really go both ways in that both technologies give the populous some measure of control against a possibly oppressive government (be it minuscule and ineffective or not). The right to bear arms in the constitution wasn't written for hunters-- it was written as another check and balance for the government.

stvswn 12y ago
Agreed, and this point is often misunderstood by gun control advocates in the US (it's completely unfathomable outside of the US). Saying "I don't like that guns are used to kill people, therefore I'm okay with guns meant for hunting but these guns designed for people should be regulated or banned" completely misses the point. The Lockean philosophy behind the 2nd amendment is that individuals should have the means to protect themselves independent of (and even from) the state. We need guns in case we need to lead another revolution. Similarly, the state should always be aware that its citizens have the capacity to revolt effectively. We know that having this right means bad things will happen -- guns will be available for criminals to use, for example. If you believe in Liberal gun rights, you think that the evil that happens when guns are freely available is an acceptable price to pay for an important freedom. In the same way, that's why we need Tor -- because citizens need to be able to communicate and organize absent of government surveillance and interference. Tor is not important "even though" it can be used to avoid law enforcement. It is important "because" it can be used to evade law enforcement, because one day we may have to. I mean, of course, a purely hypothetical revolution. I am serious when I say, however, that the framers of the Constitution wanted future US governments to be constrained by the power of the citizens, and so they gave the citizens guns. They also guaranteed the right to assembly and free association (1st amendment) and the right to be free from search or seizure (4th amendment). Inter-citizen communication free from government surveillance is implied there, I think.

MetaCosm 12y ago

Good luck. I can say I sympathize with the pain that applying consistent logical principals can have on beliefs. The longer you have believed something, and the more intense the emotions around it are, the harder it is to give up on it. The more times you have defended your opinion, the more you feel you have to maintain it, you feel invested. I would just point out that you owe zero loyalty to what you thought yesterday (or 30 seconds ago). Maintaining views despite new information and logic is just dogma. Once you make things dogma and they conflict, you can either be a hippocrit (which at least makes you self-aware) or create ridiculous tortured logic to try to self-justify (which seems to be what you are asking for help with?) -- both are problematic, and IMHO harmful.

pdabbadabba 12y ago

Others have suggested interesting and valuable possibilities. Here's another: Why think about this so categorically? Mightn't the degree and type of harm also be a factor? Tor gives people a way to anonymously download child porn. These are probably people who would download child porn anyway and, while I certainly don't approve of even a single intentional download, I do wonder how much harm is caused by a single download. It's not zero, but it's a lot less, I think, than the harm of shooting someone. On the other side, it is also, apparently, much less likely that any given gun sale is going to lead to a murder. But it's possible that the moral arithmetic still works out to significantly greater average harm. We should also think about the potential benefits in the same way. Both Tor and guns supposedly have some capacity to protect/foster democratic government. One should also compare the probability of these positive outcomes.

WalterSear 12y ago

Tor doesn't kill people - demonizing someone with a pathology rather than seeking to help them does.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

stvswn 12y ago

I think you're correct in recognizing that inanimate objects like guns or software do not have agency and cannot have moral value. The actors who use them should be judged on the morality of the ends to which guns or Tor are the means. This doesn't mean that you can't advocate for the free use of one inanimate object and simultaneously advocate for the regulation of another. Just because I'm in favor of gun rights doesn't mean I have to be OK with nuclear-weapons rights or dangerous-exotic-animal rights. There's another similarity between Tor and guns (at least in the US). Neither can be eliminated anyway, it's better to discuss how to manage their existence. Tor has no central server that can be shut down. Guns are durable hunks of metal that can be easily hidden, and they exist in huge quantities across the US and could never be confiscated.

iwwr 12y ago

Well, you've got the benefit of free access to content and live in a free society with stable institutions. Most people in the world don't have that. Tor provides a uniquely valuable communication tool and mechanism to coordinate for social change, even if it allows some extremists or creeps to use it too. The value of privacy goes beyond that, to the balance beween state authority and individual autonomy, to freedom of speech and expression. If you argue against Tor you argue in favor of surveillance and against democratic control over institutions.