[tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

[Michael Reed]

On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk<joebtfsplk at gmx.com>  wrote:
>> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
>> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt
>> has absolutely no control over it?  It's that simple.  It would seem a very
>> bad idea.  Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint&  consider it as
>> a common sense question.
> Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that
> only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses
> is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very
> good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own
> work.

BINGO, we have a winner!  The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the  
invention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows for  
bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and  
destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?"  The *PURPOSE* was for  
DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of 
forward deployed assets, whatever).  Not helping dissidents in repressive 
countries.  Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks.  
Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution.  Not giving a 10 
year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter.  Of course, we knew those 
would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial 
to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were 
going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use 
the network for, all the better...I once told a flag officer that much to 
his chagrin).  I should know, I was the recipient of that question from 
David, and Paul was brought into the mix a few days later after I had 
sketched out a basic (flawed) design for the original Onion Routing.

The short answer to your question of "Why would the government do this?"  
is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the government to 
have this capability...  Now enough of the conspiracy theories...

-Michael
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