[tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

[Anders Andersson]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 4:32 AM, Ali-Reza Anghaie <ali at packetknife.com> wrote:
> I find it curious that ~credibility~ of tor is being called into
> question by some. The source is readily available, the libraries it
> compiles against are readily available, the change logs, code control
> records, etc. are all readily available. Certain contributors to tor
> have come under fire from various Governments and private
> institutions. For bloody sin sake EVERYTHING has had Uncle Sam
> involved in some variable way at this point. Linux, GCC, sendmail,
> bind, etc. etc.
>
> FUD is an energy stealer and if you can afford that energy loss then
> at least put it to good use auditing and tracking down bugs or any
> backdoors you suppose. -Ali

I think that it's more curious that someone used Tor and didn't know
that it used to be a military research project. Like the internet.

But to be honest, if you don't know anything about programming it
doesn't matter that the source code is available, how are you supposed
to check? Pay someone a ridiculous amount of money to check it for
you? And there's no way to know how many independent programmers have
validated the source code. In a scenario where the military actually
would hide something in the source, all programmers working on the
project would of course be in on it together. There are only a handful
of them.