[tor-talk] Escalating hidden services

[Joe Btfsplk]

On 7/16/2014 6:28 PM, Ted Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-07-16 at 14:10 -0400, Griffin Boyce wrote:
>> Fosforo wrote:
>>> I am a big fan of pinkmeth hidden service
>>    Then I question your ethics. Nonconsensual porn is an extreme
>> violation of someone's trust -- not to mention gross and illegal. It's
>> also a slap in the face to people who run hidden services because their
>> free speech rights are being violated.
> +1 -- pinkmeth has already put the Tor Project in (spurious) legal
> danger and gives the community bad PR.
>
That may be true (from public perception).  But are a few sites like 
that on Tor worse than what's on the internet?
And the tons of crap (offensive stuff, to many people) on the net 
doesn't stop anyone from using it.
There's no uprising to shut the entire internet down.

I like Tor, but it's possible that if one priority is boosting general 
public opinion / approval for Tor, maybe not being mainly funded by the 
military would be a good step; when one of Tor's stated purposes is to 
provide people everywhere a means to avoid governments listening in.  
That has *only* to do with average, John Q. Public's impression of Tor 
from a distance (which is much of what John Q. will ever see / understand).

Average people or even Congress persons don't care about *or understand* 
that "_Tor is open source & its code can be & is examined by 
Universities & software experts.  And if there was any funny business, 
one or more experts would discover it_."

To average people, those types of statements are a foreign language.
All they see is software intended for anonymity - largely from gov'ts - 
that itself is largely funded... by the gov't.  That is all they see.
Don't explain it to me - you're preaching to the choir.  Explain it to 
the public... and... get them to believe the spiel.  :D