--On Monday, December 16, 2013 12:27 AM -0800 coderman <coderman@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Juan Garofalo <juan.g71@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> [ a lot of things ... ]
>
> this is all coming to a few conclusions, where we simply disagree:
>
> a) the black budget was leaked, along with other leaks about technical
> capabilities and programs and priorities.  intelligence community is
> not immune to government budget pressure.  you insist there is a
> limitless expansion, and an unlimited technical ability.  i disagree.

        I didn't say limitless. If it sounded that way, let me rephrase to :

        Governments can spend a lot more money than a 'for-profit' enterprise in a
(hypothetical) free market. Private firms go bankrupt. Governments and
their 'agencies' usually don't.

        I'd be surprised if you disagreed too much with that =P

>
> b) you insist Tor's origins and funding sources are proof of
> malfeasance;

        I didn't say it's direct proof. I do say they are (highly) suspect. But
that was an aside.


        My point here is that the assertion (paraphrasing)

        "the nsa doesn't play the global passive adversary game against tor" is
unfounded.

        Schneier flatly said "they can't break tor" - which is something you don't
even agree as far as I can tell, but you regard as too costly (rather than
impossible)

> they've responded by diversifying funding. (not to
> mention scrutiny of Tor by external, mututally un-trusting parties.
> you can look at the code yourself, and interface with controller and
> path construction yourself, etc.)
>
> c) we both appear to agree that limiting solutions to technical realms
> is missing the bigger picture.  yes to political reform that cuts
> funding and restricts scope. yes to judicial reforms which demolish
> secret orders and secret courts. yes to social measures which value
> and reinforce privacy. yes to educational efforts which empower
> individuals to make privacy positive decisions, etc.
>
> last but not least, i second the call to fix it.  help write something
> better!

        Yes, I want to write a one time pad for an arm microcontroller (in
assembler) - OK, that doesn't fix the traffic analysis problem that  tor is
supposed to address, but seems to be a nice solution for encryption that
even the NSA can't break =P


J.