[tor-talk] Tor and Financial Transparency

[Paul Syverson]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 04:38:21PM +0200, Sebastian G. <bastik.tor> wrote:
> 30.08.2013 Juan Garofalo:
> > At 02:16 AM 8/30/2013 -0700, you wrote:
> >> Juan Garofalo:
> >>> At 02:14 PM 8/29/2013 -0700, you wrote:
[snip]
> >> 
> >> 1. Respect our efforts on this front. We're doing our best with
> >> what we have 2. Provide citations to support your conspiracy
> >> theories of Tor's subversion
> > 
> > Tor is funded by the US government. Your own sources.
> 
> Indeed, it is.

Right. And since no doubt at some point Juan Garofalo or someone else
in this discussion will yet again "discover" what we make every effort
to be as open and pretty loud about as is practical, Tor isn't just
funded by the U.S. government it was designed by U.S. government
employees and contractors based on technology invented by
U.S. government employees. You might see my "A Peel of Onion" for the
history.  It's on my homepage http://www.syverson.org/

> 
> > Tor doesn't work against a 'global adversary'(that is the US
> > government). Your own sources.
> 
> Note quite global, but at important places. Not sure how fine-grained it is.
> 

For the latest developments in making the adversary models and 
network models as fine-grained as possible and the subsequent analysis
you can see our forthcoming paper
"Users Get Routed: Traffic Correlation on Tor by Realistic Adversaries".
It's not on anonbib or my own homepage yet, but one of my co-authors has
posted the pdf. See http://ohmygodel.com/
And note that some of the issues identified have already resulted
in changes to implemented Tor versions. And no Tor isn't perfect.
Design improvements are ongoing. Constructive help would be nice.

> > Biggest 'hidden' server on the network apparently taken down...by the
> > US government.
> 
> As it seems this was not the fault of the 'hidden service system', most
> likely one hidden-service failed due to the software that was used,
> which lead to the takedown of all hidden-services affiliated with the
> one that failed.
> 
> > But you know what? I never said tor was 'subverted' by the US
> > government. Tor isn't 'subverted' - it just flawed...by design.
> 
> Fair enough, if that's what you believe, then please make your own
> thing. Create something better than Tor.

Right exactly. See all the research on the issues trade-offs, threats,
designs, etc. that Tor Project Inc. employees, government employees,
university and corporate researchers, and lots of others have done
trying to design for a diverse userbase. www.freehaven.net/anonbib/
is a fine place to start. If you can come up with better designs,
we would love to have them. Please share those rather than the
allegations you keep making but offer no support for, such as
"Tor isn't 'subverted' - it just flawed...by design."

aloha,
Paul