Comment by sigmoid10

It’s a little silly to say “for example” and then intentionally pick what is widely known as the most sophisticated and pervasive system for controlling Internet traffic ever created.

The parent said “non-NATO countries”… there are 162 of those that are not China.

(It’s also a little silly to specify “non-NATO” since U.S. intelligence services have to exfiltrate data from NATO countries too…)

To get data out of China, the U.S. undoubtedly has special systems, which are worth the special investment because it’s China.

How do they see TOR traffic in a TLS tunnel?

> It's important to remember that the government and even a single agency (like the NSA) is just as chaotic, disconnected, and full of competing entities as any big tech company has (if not worse).

And yet even as early as 2003 they were taking a copy of every single bit that ran over the AT&T backbone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A). It's amazing how effective these "chaotic, disconnected, and full of competing entities" can be. We're entirely dependent on whistleblowers willing to risk their lives and freedom to learn about what they're doing to us.

I’m glad I didn’t have to scroll too far to see your comment.

In fact, A major power wins by creating a mote just big enough that only they can cross.

Servers in the public cloud are a lot easier to do traffic analysis on.

Yes, I boldly inserted that deliberately aware of its potential provocative effect. So I am truly glad you derive some enjoyment from it. I did too! Comrades in arms? Or at least in Internet nodding hahaha! :)

>spread democracy

We even have a presidential candidate that spouts similar propaganda that she is going to “Save Democracy”! Yeah right, save it by subverting it at every possible point. First she was appointed into the VP role, then her party skipped holding a primary election, then she was installed into the candidacy. None of those 3 easy steps to power even vaguely resembles a Democracy.

If those 3 succinct points aren’t enough, here’s a few more succinctly in one sentence: Members of her party have tried to deplatform her opposition, cancel her opposition, remove her opposition from the ballot, expropriate over $450 million dollars from her opposition (NY Kleptocracy), jail her opposition, and even assassinate her opposition twice! In all cases to deny and deprive the ability of voters to have a choice in the upcoming election. If her opposition is so bad as her party propaganda wants you to think, won’t that show in the general election? Why does half of America vote the other way? What have they seen that you haven’t?

intentional pause

There could be unlimited reasons why one of our candidates is not about “Saving Democracy” or how that slogan is just propaganda. I’ll give 4 more numbered reasons why:

1) She represents a party that is opposed to Voter ID requirements at polls, which would keep people from voting twice, pretty much like a Bitcoin double-spend attack. Her party’s establishment claims voter ID laws are a problem because they think their voting base is so stupid they couldn’t pass a drivers license test on any number of attempts; let alone figure out how to obtain another form of photo ID. Many in her voting base find that stance pretty offensive and rightfully so. Opponents will assert they couldn’t win a fair and free election if they tried to. Both sides aside, How are voter ID laws a partisan issue? They are just common sense!

There’s a reason their party tries to “get out the vote” every year: low-information-voters are their bread and butter. How many people actually have the time to think critically about these issues? I think America would be a better place if less low-information voter chose to vote and if more voters knew that it’s okay to leave choices on the ballot blank.

2) One of her long standing border policies has been keeping the borders open so that illegals can flood the cities and further dilute the voting power of the constituency base. This leads to more apportionment in the House of Representatives because under the current law, illegals are counted too. This perverse incentive dilutes the vote of the American people and the constituency.

3) Flooding American with illegals is very unpopular with the vast majority of America. If that was put to a vote with the American people, it simply wouldn’t continue. Most people are in support of legal immigration not illegal and unvetted immigration because we want the good talent and beautiful women to cross the border, not whomever can find a gap in the fence. I said beautiful women for your benefit. You’re welcome :)

4) Her third claim to fame is she won’t be going around to very many of the 3-letter agencies (if any) and saying “You’re fired!”. A bureaucracy’s favorite leader is a puppet. They get to control her rather than her getting to control them. When left unchecked, we have power-creep. When we have a bunch of bureaucrats running the government, it subverts the will of the people because we voted for the president, not the unelected bureaucrats who tell her and the current president what to say. Some people joke that the vast number of 3-letter agencies are the 4th branch of government. Some people want all of the power but are afraid of public speaking and don’t want to stand up in front of a podium to explain their case to the American People and appear online. Some simply can’t make a reasonable argument for one point or another... I can and I’m doing that now.

Spreading Democracy is possibly becoming a euphemism for spreading Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like taking the DMV and scaling it all the way up to the size of government. Thankfully due to the Chevron doctrine court case, the power of the bureaucracy has been reduced and we can appreciate the effect checks and balances have to save our system of government, which most scholars agree is a Democratic Republic.

Instead of the word Bureaucracy, her presidential opponent uses a more specific term to describe it. He popularized the term “Deep State” from fringe usage to mainstream usage. The term Deep State usually refers to a subset of the 3-letter agencies known as the intelligence community or the intelligence agencies. One of many possible citations is the Joe Rogan podcast episode #2138 with Tucker Carlson, which, although long, is jam packed full of secrets.

Both men talking in that episode have interviewed and have had public (and presumably private) conversations with an enormous and significant quantity and variety of people. They’re also among the best in the world at “active listening” which some people just simply can’t do. That causes interviewees to open up and spill the beans, which is where real journalism & interviewing is.

My most memorable takeaway from that episode is:

“The second point that’s obviously true is that weak people, which is a synonym for bad people, come together for strength and safety. They act as one. The hive mind is specific to a certain group of people: bad people. And that good people don't tend to come together, but they're coming together now.” and “It’s weak men and weak women who are instruments of evil. The weaker, the more evil that leader will be.” I’ll paraphrase: “Men and women without a backbone or spine are the most dangerous because they’re the most corruptible to do what’s wrong against what’s right. Sometimes we take it for granted that strong people wouldn’t do bad things because it compromised their morals or ethics. Like bad sportsmanship.”

I say all this at the risk of potentially not being able to leave Canada or the UK for 18 years if one of my layover flights ever stopped there, despite being a USA citizen in the USA. I also potentially risk being added to the target list of the next virus or bioweapon that leaks out of a lab like the Wuhan institute of Virology. We only found out what was happening there because the orange man wanted to cut all free money to China and someone reviewing the spending line items found we were funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Apparently we still are and it’s been allegedly upgraded from BSL 2 to BSL 4 lab. It’s just one of many labs. Like nukes, bioweapons produce plenty of collateral damage. Unlike nukes, they’re deniable assets. Bioweapons are freaking scary. You get to learn how easy it is to wipe essentially all human life off the face of the earth in the popular educational simulation game Plague Inc with various plagues.

In 1969, Bioweapons labs in Fort Detrick and Plum Island boasted to the President that they had the capacity to kill every American in America for 29 cents per life. That year President Richard Nixon surprised everyone and did one of the greatest things of his career, which is he went to Fort Detrick, then he announced the closure and termination of the U.S. Bioweapons programs. He saw that bioweapons were a poor man’s nuclear bomb. Then the Patriot Act was signed which according to Robert F Kennedy Jr had a hidden charter that while not retracting Nixon’s charter to close bioweapons progress, gave immunity to any federal official that violates those laws and who develops bioweapons and researches them. As you know, vaccine research and Gain of Function research are on a similar track so you can say you’re doing vaccine research when actually doing Gain of Function studies for bioweapons like most later evidence for COVID-19 shows. That information was suppressed because they didn’t want everyone to get all up in arms with China. Unfortunately, Gain of Function research is still continuing and being funded by tax payer dollars, no less.

I know what I’m saying is risky but the freedom of speech in my country is a right, not a privilege.

Last, my summary and disclaimer:

Vote for who you think is right based on the knowledge you know. I have a large appetite for knowledge but I don’t know everything. You may know something I don’t. I believe we all have a good head on our shoulders and can make good decisions with sufficient truthful information to make those decisions. If that information is sequestered, kept hidden, or censored, then democracy is subverted. Is that politician here to “Save Democracy” as some of her low-information potential voters say or are those just words of propaganda? Above I gave 4 more numbered points in support of why that’s just more propaganda but my motive is to inform, not to persuade.

Un, Thank you I guess? Seems we are… Winning?

What you’re claiming is not necessarily correct, but it’s an avenue of interesting speculation. Nevertheless, let’s clarify a few of your possible misunderstandings or points of confusion:

I’m not saying TOR is weak, nor that the reason for its concealment is to project a false sense of government strength.

What I am saying—and what you seem to have misunderstood—is that the TOR network is most likely used, precisely because of its strength, for highly sensitive clandestine operations. This results in blanket classification of all involved identities, making them inaccessible to law enforcement. Law enforcement likely understands this, which is why they don’t pursue it—knowing it’s a dead end. Instead, they rely on side-channel effects or mistakes made by criminals.

To my mind, this explains the public information we see.

Now that I’ve clarified, what do you think?

Well, I could be wrong historically here, but I think you need to recall a previous age where the interests of the state department pushing noble American values into disintegrating but strategically valuable locales might actually have been something that the EFF felt highly aligned with and wanted to support through its electronic and advocacy Capacities. For instance, why would they not support Internet and communicative freedom under a repressive regime?

I haven’t looked closely and I wasn’t there at the time so it makes it hard to say for sure but let’s speculate. I think the people involved in EFF are most likely slightly cynical, savvypolitical maneuverers themselve who, like you said realize the utility of multiple not necessarily overlapping objectives, where all involved parties could derive some benefits.

Certainly not an implausible situation that you lay out

I appreciate your appreciation of that statement. Thank you. :)

I2P, possibly

I'm assuming the "documentary" was the movie The Imitation Game staring Benedict Cumberbatch. If that's an intentional mistake, I'd guess by "French" they meant Austrian (as Hitler was born in Austria).

Right, you shouldn't expect traffic that goes outside the onion network to be secure and anonymous. That's the entire point of onion sites.

> reducing what they can publish about what's happening to their country.

To what audience? It isn't quite what you're getting at in your post but this is worth saying: graffiti, zines, contact with journalists, radio operations like pirate radio, all of it is much more established and less uncertain in risk profile than being online. Crucially it may also be more effective.

Evidently, you don't know what the NJ Turnpike is like in terms of volume of traffic.

That's assuming a lot given the rest of the statement.

> A VPS is $5 a month.

With insignificant data caps. To get the data needed I believe you're looking at a couple hundred a month, to start.

The comment that spawned this chain starts with:

>Let's say I as a private individual

>What detection?

Not speaking to the effectiveness of the detection (it's hard!), but there's information available, for example:

https://blog.torproject.org/malicious-relays-health-tor-netw...

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/wiki...

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/network-health/team/-/wiki...

Outside of 3 letter agencies which is obvious, I have known people who would do this for fun or whatever other personal motivation.

A lot of "hacker" mentality projects involve putting a tremendous amount of effort into something with questionable utility.

People climb mountains because they're there.

Top commenter specifically asked about himself.

technicly this is the only comment in this chain that is relevant to the featured article, but it's technicly so incomplete that it's almost wrong, I can tell from having read the thread and knowing next to nothing else about how TOR works.

They don't have plausible evidence to subpoena the guard node if a middle node only sees encrypted traffic. They would also need to control the exit nodes which communicate with the target's host or they simply control the host as a honeypot.

Respectfully, a large number of people rightfully fear for their lives, safety, and freedom due to being stalked or abused by a current or former partner. I have personally known several.

Using victims' devices and communications in order to locate, and then harass, trap, or attack them, is commonplace for stalkers.

tor-browser comes with other privacy-boosting features, beyond its method of talking to the network. That might make a difference too, if someone is likely to look at your browser history etc.

The second to last point is laughable since it's long been authorized in executive order that if the NSA stumbles upon information relating to criminal activity while searching for other stuff that they can report that info to the FBI.

Heck - FBI is allowed to do the same damn thing with the data they're given by the NSA. Y'know, the whole "backdoor search loophole" which amounts to laundering authorities across agencies to get access to data they wouldn't otherwise be permitted to have.

If the server is on the Tor network, an onion server, then it is encrypted end to end and no traffic or identity is exposed to either the onion server or any intermediary.

That is to say, if I started an onion server on one side of the world, then connected to it from somewhere else, my connection to it would be anonymous and encrypted to any external entity.

I wonder how many tor users actually know this. tor would probably not exist in the same capacity without that funding