Comment by system33-
Comment by system33- a day ago
“The western governments run most of the exits” is one of those things everybody “knows” but rarely backs up.
The list of all relays is public knowledge by design. There’s contact information attached to relays. The big operators are known individuals and organizations. They contribute. Interact.
Which ones are actually the governments doing bad things against their citizens? It’s hard to tell? Then why do you make such claims?
Relays that observably do bad things are removed from the network all the time. Are those ones the government? Tor seemingly has a reasonable handle on the situation if that’s the case.
If the fed is doing correlation attacks, why would they run relays at all? “Just” tap the IXPs near major hubs of relays. Or heck, get data from the taps you already had. Silent and more widespread.
Pushing people away from tor potentially makes it even easier to deanonymize them, depending on the adversary model assumed.
> “The western governments run most of the exits” is one of those things everybody “knows” but rarely backs up.
Thanks for pointing this out. Seems obvious in retrospect but I don't really recall seeing a lot of evidence for this despite seeing the claim quite commonly. That said, the use of "rarely" makes me wonder what evidence has been presented in such rare instances. Just curious. (Of course it's also fine if the phrasing was just communication style.)