the tor scam - Re: AP deconstructed: Why it has not happened yet, and will not

Mirimir mirimir at riseup.net
Tue Aug 7 20:42:37 PDT 2018


On 08/07/2018 06:14 PM, juan wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 17:49:54 -0700
> Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>
>>> 	for other stuff...do you have to ask? What sort of system do you think should be used for coordinating 'criminal' activity, instead of streaming super full SHD video for retards? 
>>
>> That's the question. 
> 
> 	And the answer is : some sort of 'high latency' mixing network. And interestingly enough such a network doesn't seem to exist, although it seems to me it would require less resources than something like tor. And nobody seems to be worried about having or not having that kind of  network, which strikes me as odd...

Well, as I'm sure you know, high-latency mix networks -- Cypherpunk and
Mixmaster remailers.[0] -- predate Tor. That's how I used the original
cypherpunks list, way back when. A few years ago, I played with them a
little. I got QuickSilver Lite running in Wine.[1] Basically, all email
goes to alt.anonymous.messages, you download everything, and then your
client finds stuff that you can decrypt. Some resources were (are?)
available as .onion services. I probably have notes somewhere, if you're
interested.

I'm not sure why that all died. It _was_ bloody complicated, even with
QuickSilver Lite. Also very slow. And I can't imagine how it could have
scaled. Although I suppose that some of the binary newsgroups did get
pretty fucking huge. But anyway, overhead is a key problem with mix
networks.

Development of the Web was part of it, I'm sure. Although I recall
seeing a crude hack that pulled stuff from alt.anonymous.messages, and
massaged it into a web page.

>> I guess that you say that there is none, and we
>> should all just organize our local cells. 
> 
> 	What I was trying to say is that, if the use case is 'criminal activity', then using a 'low latency' network like tor which provides centralized 'hidden' services is a not a good idea. It's more like a recipe for disaster.

Well, if you exclude low-latency networks, you're pretty much left with
nothing to use. But even so, people who want anonymity, some of them
doing illegal stuff, _will_ end up using Tor. So why not help them use
it more safely?

0) https://remailer.paranoici.org/clist.html
1) https://www.quicksilvermail.net/qslite/


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