"Tor is dead technology"

[xorcist at sigaint.org]

> As X said, it DOES sort of tip the opponent off that you have something
> to hide, but whether they can identify 'you'... especially using
> something like Tails that spoofs your mac address and leaves no trace
> that you've ever done anything more than power up at a given time.
>
> So if you're in some internet cafe in Singapore with a hundred other
> people walking in and out using the connection, the IP of entrance to
> the tor network just doesn't do a lot to identify you unless perhaps
> you're already being surveilled.
>
> Over time, if under surveillance the opponent could find a correlation
> between your presence and tor's use. Again, that why I've said 'the more
> users the better'. If everyone in that Singapore cafe was using it. the
> opponent would still be drawing a blank about your identity.

Yeah, in this respect the difficulties of Tor are much like the
difficulties of deniable encryption. Using it at all is in a certain way
incriminating. Its one of the main reasons why I try to explore novel,
legitimate uses of Tor, quite apart from anonymity. It's ability to reach
beyond firewalls for hosting is quite novel; unfortunately there isn't
much legitimate purpose for this. Personally I don't have a problem with
exfiltrating/liberating data from corporate coffers, but it is generally
frowned upon more widely.

But I wonder if there is a market for such an Internet cafe. An internet
cafe that provides wifi for your device, and a few on-premises computers,
and tunnels all connections through Tor as a matter of policy. I'd
certainly hang out there, just as a matter of geek-chic if nothing else.
Could also serve as a kind of base-of-operations for wider public
education about cryptography, privacy, security, and so on.