On 06/29/2016 05:26 PM, juan wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jun 2016 18:23:05 -0600 Mirimir <mirimir@riseup.net> wrote:
On 06/28/2016 01:31 PM, juan wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jun 2016 00:33:01 -0600 Mirimir <mirimir@riseup.net> wrote:
. But overall, I think that Tor has done much good.
for the US military, yes.
For sure. But also for online drug dealers.
Yeah. Ask Ulbricht. Or the guys from agora who made it quite clear that tor doesn't work. Or freedom hosting, or or or
Ulbricht went down because associates fucked up, got busted, and cooperated with investigators. Also, it seems that his OPSEC sucked. It's not clear how Freedom Hosting got compromised. I don't believe that it was a Tor exploit. And it was call-home malware that pwned users. Which only affected idiots using Tor browser in Windows. Agora owners never said exactly what flaws in Tor concerned them, as I recall. And there are workarounds. Bigger problems, I think, are moving large amounts of money anonymously, and explaining income.
Also, what % of 'illegal' drugs are sold through tor? 0.01%?
I have no clue. But for some demographics, I bet that it's huge. Have you ever tried to find DMT? I love DMT :)
There have been a few spectacular failures, certainly. And the security model of having illegal stuff mailed to meatspace addresses is laughable.
It is, but that's not the point. Although, you know, using the state's mail system to ship drugs is as stupid as using the pentagon's fake anonimity network for the online side of the business.
*Furthermore*, this being the cpunks mailing list, the standard should be a lot higher. Tor is not a realistic option at all for people who have a quarrell with the powers that be.
It's the best that's available, I believe.
If you are selling an 'anonimity' network for crypto-anarchism, then your anonimity network better work against the US gov't and assorted lapdogs.
Perfection is the enemy of workability :) And if you know of something better, please do recommend it.
But it has clearly increased availability, especially for niche substances like DMT and analogues. Quality too, I suspect.
For me, that's a good. No question.
More generally, Tor has allowed many to evade state control.
Yes. Many US agents and agents from vasal states. That's how tor serves western imperialism. Is that what you want?
It's not what I want, but it's what I'll accept. Consider this thought experiment. Let's say that some cypherpunk, with unimpeachable anarchist credentials, creates an anonymity system. One that's not vulnerable to local adversaries or global adversaries. One, perhaps, that uses covert channels, so ISPs can't even detect that it's being used. Then they release the source, and fun begins. So who would use it? I'm guessing that everyone who uses Tor, I2P, etc, etc would use it. And so we'd be back to where we are now with Tor, with just the exception that the new system isn't vulnerable to global adversaries. How would you keep statist criminals from using it? There's still the criticism that Tor is intentionally vulnerable to global adversaries. Maybe it was at first, by design. But it's an open-source project. You'd need to argue that contributions which increased resistance to global adversaries have been rejected or discouraged. Is there evidence for that?
Some of them deserve to die, in my opinion.
You mean the state agents no?
Both.
But the important point is that Tor has overall reduced state power.
Yeah well. Sounds nice. Too bad there's zero evidence for that claim. Actually the claim is pretty absurd. How can a project of the US military whose purpose is to serve the US military and the US state 'reduce state power'?
By providing freedom and privacy for state subjects. Also, see the above thought experiment. It doesn't matter whose project it is. The same people would end up using it.
Are you on drugs? =)
Always :) Mostly caffeine, though. Modafinil too :)
Is that not a good thing, juan?
No, tor is not a good a thing.
Dissapointing. Your argument boils down to "the mafia or the state can do good things, maybe, sometimes".
So you can look at some good stuff that can be attributed to tor, while ignoring all the bad stuff.
That's like basic economics turned on its head...
It's not a zero-sum game. As much as I sympathize for victims of criminal states, I believe that anonymity systems are essential for protecting privacy and freedom. I also believe that they may eventually reduce state power substantially. Although that's seeming more and more like a dream.
It's true that Tor has allowed the CIA to act more freely in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, etc. But that, like freedom for pedophiles, is just a cost of usable "anonymity systems" (or whatever you want to call them).
lol - so now it turns out that 'pedophiles' are the moral equivalent of the CIA or the murdering psychos at the pentagon?
Maybe not, but pedophiles are the goto example. Government criminals fuck people at much larger scales, for sure. Maybe the crypter assholes are a better example, but that's still small-scale.