[tor-talk] Clarification of Tor's involvement with DARPA's Memex

[Mirimir]

On 04/26/2015 05:31 AM, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
> So... nobody thinks using Tor might actually just make you stand out?

It quite obviously does, I believe. Given the current uptake status, I
mean. Of course, if everyone used it for everything, as the Tor Project
would like, using Tor would not stand out. And the Tor network would be
much larger, and would provide much stronger anonymity.

That's why I access the Tor network via VPNs.

> I mean, Tor might be quite broken and in that case you're just
> forwarding the relevant stuff to the agencies.

tl;dr: Tor's many capable and resourceful adversaries stymie each other.

Well, everything encrypted (beyond HTTPS) gets forwarded to the NSA and
counterparts, and is retained indefinitely, pending key discovery or
advances in decryption capabilities. Also for testing and play :) And
that obviously includes all Tor traffic, I believe.

It's also highly likely that the NSA and counterparts operate Tor nodes,
obviously including entry guards and exits. However, as capable and
resourceful as the NSA and Five Eyes are, there are other major TLAs
(e.g., China, Israel and Russia) and non-state actors (e.g., the Yakuza
and the Triads, and their associates). And then there are the
cypherpunks and other "good guys" :) And small-time criminals :(

To the extent that such non-cooperating groups are competing to operate
nodes, it's arguable that no one group can control enough of the Tor
network to pwn it. That's the plan, anyway :)