[tor-relays] Actual user demographics?

[Gunnar Wolf]

Isaac Grover, Aileron I.T. dijo [Tue, May 02, 2017 at 12:20:15PM +0000]:
> Good morning,
> 
> I recently presented to a group of ten local police chiefs on the
> topic of Tor and its more common, though less publicized, civil
> usage, as opposed to the more publicized criminal usage. During my
> presentation I emphasized this fact, and they countered that because
> its usage is entirely anonymous, it is reasonable to assume that it
> could be used entirely by criminals and none of the oppressed as I
> had claimed.
> 
> Which brings me to my question. Other than private individuals
> saying "Hey, I use Tor for X", how does the overall network know
> what the network is used for, even approximately?

In Debian, starting with the current stable version (8.0 / jessie), we
have a package called «apt-transport-tor». It allows for handling all
system installs and updates via Tor, downloading packages
anonymously. From the package description (partial quote only):

     APT already includes mechanisms for guaranteeing the authenticity
     of the packages you download. However, an adversary sniffing your
     network traffic can still see what software you are installing.

     Install apt-transport-tor, edit your sources.list to include only
     tor:// URLs, and you can make it very difficult for anyone
     intercepting your network traffic to be able to tell that you are
     installing Debian packages, or which packages you are installing.

This has of course uses both for servers in "busy" data center
networks and for individuals connecting from home.
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