Comment by Spooky23 a day ago
Tor was literally developed by the intelligence community. I’m sure there are a variety of means to gather actionable intelligence from it, with or without the cooperation of the exit node volunteers.
Beyond a principled stance re communications, I can’t think of a reason to use it. If you’re planning to resist some regime that controls telecom infrastructure, the fact that you’re using it is both uncommon and notable.
I think if the Tor Project wants to boost their network they might try putting anything about how to do so on their website, easily-accessible. I'm trying to figure out how to run a relay and having a pretty challenging time finding anything at all about this. They just really want me to download Tor Browser, it seems.
Edit: I finally found it![0] I had to go to Donate, Donation FAQ, "Can I donate my time?" , "Learn more about joining the Tor community.", and then "Relay Operations" -> "Grow the Tor network" at the bottom right. I would really hope there's a more direct path than this...
Sorry that it is hard to find. This is the root link to point you towards.
https://community.torproject.org/relay/
Thanks for considering to run a relay.
No prob - and thanks! Looks like I found it right as you were drafting this message. It would be really useful to add some call to action about "Help grow the Tor network!" anywhere on the home page. Partly just to increase the "welcoming-ness" but mostly to reduce friction for ppl who want to contribute, and help make it clear that the network needs support from whoever :)
Unrelated to Tor, what was your favourite project to work on that you're allowed to talk about? That must be a fascinating job.
Unfortunately the tor part is the part I can most obviously talk about. Not that I work on anything classified. I just need to be mindful.
I got to travel to Canada, Mexico, and Europe (from the US) for tor meetings and privacy-enhancing technology conferences.
More or less every single cell that goes through the tor network today is prioritized and scheduled by the cell scheduler I wrote.
I still think the IC, and especially the state department, benefits from having Tor fulfill its actual design goals most of the time. There are operations and state department goals that can benefit from Tor working properly. It's the same with encryption in general -- the IC benefits from there being strong and bug-free crypto implementations. That they have in the past backdoored some of them doesn't change that they've also hardened others. I'm sure they come up with and deploy various attacks on Tor all the time, same with foreign nations (whom the state department would like to thwart). I'm skeptical though that they can do working attacks at any time and against any set of people.
For your AMA, if you want: How's the job? What keeps you working there? How's patriotism these days?
The job these days is boring but secure. Tor stuff was more exciting, then I switched teams because grass-is-greener.
At least for the teams I have been on and my view of leadership, there is very little political talk.
But patriotism isn’t politics… lol. The higher you get the more “hoo rah America!” is a part of the motivational speech or report or whatever. Down here in the streets it’s just another job. Pride in the country isn’t much of a driver. At least for me.
> Tor was literally developed by the intelligence community. I’m sure there are a variety of means to gather actionable intelligence from it, with or without the cooperation of the exit node volunteers.
These two statements make little sense together. It was originally developed by the Navy. Okay. So why would they design it from the get-go with such a fatal flaw that would risk their own adversaries gathering "actionable intelligence" from it?
I'd like to stress if we're talking about the Navy's involvement, then you're questioning the design of the whole thing from the very beginning, not just the current implementation.
Tor was literally developed by the Naval Research Lab. Not a part of the IC.
I know because I work there. AMA (edit: about tor. Because people say a lot about it without actually knowing much. But now I should put my phone down so… too late!)
To protect our most sensitive communications and vulnerable communities , Tor usage should be normalized so it is common and not notable.