any moment now ...

[John Case]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2010, StealthMonger wrote:

> So, what can be done with that Tor node once it's set up?  It can't be
> used interactively (i.e. with low latency) because that "permanent
> record of all of your transactions in Internet-space" can be used
> today or tomorrow or "next year or next decade or ..." to correlate
> packet timings and destroy whatever anonymity the Tor node might
> otherwise have had.  And if the Tor node is configured to respond to
> instructions anonymized by a remailer network, the remailer network
> might as well have by used by itself in the first place, without the
> Tor node in the picture at all.


Oh - a very interesting question, and something I didn't think of, for 
reasons I will expain now ...

You see, if you have the ability to set up an anonymous Tor node, then you 
wouldn't be using Tor _yourself_.  By definition, Tor usage is only for 
people that can't safely set up their own Tor node.

Make sense ?

If you are running a Tor node, you're doing it for altruistic reasons - 
for people that have an immediate, right now need for privacy, and need to 
tweet the next meet-up spot, future risk be damned.

You, yourself, on the other hand, do not need this - you're a rich, well 
educated computer savvy type that can set up all kinds of interesting 
infrastructure for yourself and defeat the threat model I am talking about 
- not with Tor, but with (insert interesting privacy architecture here).

If you can run your own Tor node anonymously, you've got tunnels within 
tunnels, exiting at random points around the world ... right ?

Right.