[tor-talk] Tor in the media

[z9wahqvh]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:

> On 10/02/2014 01:24 PM, z9wahqvh wrote:
>
>
> Even if (for argument's sake) 99% of Tor users/uses were unqualifiedly
> evil, that would say nothing about Tor. At most, it would speak to its
> relatively slow uptake overall, and perhaps to the prevalence of evil in
> the world. An anonymity system with a backdoor for outing evil (however
> defined) would be unworkable, and would soon die.
>
>
I don't know how to parse "say" in this paragraph. It certainly seems to
"say" something about the role of unsurveillable absolute anonymous
communications systems and who is going to be attracted to them and why. It
also would seem to raise serious questions about whether such efforts
should be supported--and, to raise questions raised in other threads here,
whether ISPs and other service providers and websites should let Tor relays
through.

Note that if you are correct, you are painting an extremely dark picture of
our political future, in which constitutional governance and rule of law
become, strictly speaking, impossible. You may think that this will
decrease the amount of evil in the world. My reading of world history
suggests otherwise.

I'm not at all clear why anyone would want to trying to help such an effort
along, unless one has a very apocalyptic view of the future.

Much more apocalyptic than the one in which our extremely flawed political
system continues to be able to operate, and possibly be revised in favor of
better ones. In a world of unsurveillable communications, rule of law and
constitutional governance are over.