Tor Stinks re Traffic Analysis and Sybil (as do other networks)

[Mirimir]

On 11/24/2019 04:00 AM, John Young wrote:
> Critique of Tor applies equally, perhaps moreso, to the whole Internet
> for monetization, technology, personnel, administration, operation,
> funding, seducing the public, NGOs, dissent. So too, to crypto,
> anonymization, cypherpunks.
> 
> Perennial question is how to sort through the tsunami of claims and
> counterclaims, sponsored hacks, slyly appealing "free" SM, search
> engines, FOIA enterprises, Wayback and Wikipedia, paid and volunteer
> informants and agents, hot shit mail lists and get-it-now podcasts,
> star-studded conferences and outlaw-celebrity lectures, incarcerated
> Julians and Jeremys, fans and evermore fans of unexamined underwriters.
> 
> Has there ever been more people eagerly declaring in public their likes
> and hatreds, convictions and doubts, hoping to gain advantage over other
> people by pretense and deception. Actually, yes, there has been since
> talking, singing, dancing, education, civilization was invented to
> entrap prey.
> 
> Prey quickly learned from predators to reverse the panopticon. Usually
> by offering their gullible, edible kids, cohorts and mates as
> irresistable bait to fatten the enemy into overconfidence, sloth,
> braggrdy, imagined supremacy. Tor, like Trump, is hardly novel in this
> suicidalism, nor the crusading, diabolical internet of everything data.

For sure.

Figuring out who/what one can trust is arguably impossible. Or at least,
it's far too unreliable.

Bottom line, I think, it's foolish to trust anyone/anything.

So the challenge is prudently using whatever resources are available.

> At 06:39 PM 11/23/2019, you [Mirimir] wrote:
> 
>> On 11/23/2019 04:23 PM, Punk-Stasi 2.0 wrote:
>> > On Sat, 23 Nov 2019 15:39:55 -0700
>> > Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> The villains here are writers of the Tor Project website. They
>> bullshit
>> >> users, overselling Tor. Why, I don't know. Maybe it's all a
>> honeypot. Or
>> >> maybe they're just idiots.
>> >
>> >       Notice that they get paid as long as tor exists. So even if
>> tor was not a honeypot, and they are not idiots, they still have a
>> fundamental incentive to oversell it. Their paychecks.
>>
>> Yeah, good point.
>>
>> After those FOIA documents came out, I lost all respect for the Tor
>> Project. I get how conflicted they were. Needing government support.
>> Keeping the cops happy. Maybe having their jobs threatened. But selling
>> out is selling out, no matter how many excuses one has.
>>
>> >       Also, syverson and co. are complicit in overselling tor,
>> despite the fact that their papers for the 'technical intelligentsia'
>> spell out the limitations.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> >> I've wondered whether it's just that they need lots of users for cover
>> >> traffic. That _was_ a major factor in opening Tor to the public,
>> instead
>> >> of restricting it to government users. But that seems unlikely, now,
>> >> given that the NSA etc could easily run enough bots on hacked servers.
>> >
>> >
>> >       My guess is that the main reason for them to get as many users
>> as they can is to justify funding. Hell, maybe they even get a
>> percentage of funding directly proportional to number of users/network
>> size.
>>
>> Makes sense.
> 
> 
>