Comment by keepamovin

Comment by keepamovin 19 hours ago

13 replies

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The original purpose of TOR was to provide agents and handlers with a means of secure communication, allowing them to organize subversive or espionage activities. It was created by the Department of Defense to propagate their interests and spread democracy around the world using these secure capabilities. Given this context, it's not unreasonable to assume that TOR is still being used in a similar manner today.

Because of its origins, access to the identities of users on the TOR network—even if they could be de-anonymized—would likely be extremely restricted, compartmentalized, and classified. This would make it much more difficult for such information to be used in law enforcement proceedings. Perhaps that, rather than a technical limitation, is the reason most high-profile arrests related to TOR involve criminals making some other mistake, rather than the security of the network itself being compromised.

Additionally, it’s interesting to speculate that some of the secure private defense and intelligence networks—parallel or classified world internets—could themselves be implemented as possibly enhanced forms of TOR. It would make sense that nation-states, through shell companies and other disguises, might run and control many seemingly innocuous machines acting as secure relays in these parallel networks. While I have no data to back this up, it seems logical, given that TOR was originally created by the DoD and then open-sourced.

Why wouldn’t they keep something that works, build on it, and enhance it as a means to secure their own global communications?

Xelbair 16 hours ago

>spread democracy

i have to say that i love that phrase, it is peak propaganda that just works.

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  • keepamovin 12 hours ago

    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! :)

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    • Aerbil313 10 hours ago

      Indeed old timer commies of HN might get irritated by that phrase, but in this corner of the world we love Democracy. This summer would pretty dry in my region because of global warming, but thanks to Democracy we had plenty of precipitation in the form of MK-84s. I wonder which neighboring country is going to get her share next year, it's a gift that never stopped giving since some 20 years.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror

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autoexec 12 hours ago

> Perhaps that, rather than a technical limitation, is the reason most high-profile arrests related to TOR involve criminals making some other mistake, rather than the security of the network itself being compromised.

I have no doubt that the government doesn't want to demonstrate how weak Tor is to the public, but it's also got to be dead simple to find those kinds of "other mistakes" they can use when they've identified the person they're looking for and can monitor whatever they do.

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  • keepamovin 12 hours ago

    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?

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    • sangnoir 11 hours ago

      > 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.

      Tor seems to be a poster child of the "Nobody But Us"[1] principle the NSA likes so much: it's strong when used by American spooks, but weak when used against them. If a country developed body armor that's impervious to all rounds except their own special alloy rounds, their use and promotion of that armor is not evidence of its utter robustness.

      I don't doubt a lot of darknet busts involve a lot of parallel construction - the intelligence community doesn't have to give detailed logs; summaries are enough (IP addresses, dates and times). This is before considering that the FBI is involved in both (counter) intelligence and law environment.

      1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS

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      • keepamovin 38 minutes ago

        I guess i don't necessarily disagree with your NOBUS assessment of TOR strength, it's hard to say without confirmed facts tho. Funny I always think of crypto algorithms as the examples of NOBUS: the NIST ones, etc. Again, no confirmed facts but that would be a source and method you really wouldn't want to confirm and burn.

        What do you mean by parallel constructions? Is that where LE discovers evidence through extralegal means, then needs to rebuild the narrative through a legally valid chain? Could be, but then again there's probably a lot of TOR identities that are completely out of reach for LE, leaving them with only legal construction. Wouldn't you say?

        I sometimes wonder about something, too: you know those "small" cases with huge human cost, like missing child, or murder in a backwoods area? I always imagine that classified capabilities could be used to solve them. The fact they are not, is painful, and I think must be "moral trauma" for LE/IC people involved. Even more so that they can't talk to anyone about it except their organizational therapists if then.

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jrochkind1 14 hours ago

> The original purpose of TOR was to provide agents and handlers with a means of secure communication, allowing them to organize subversive or espionage activities. It was created by the Department of Defense to propagate their interests and spread democracy around the world using these secure capabilities.

Do you think the EFF was in on it, duped, or just thought multiple competing interests could be served?

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  • keepamovin 12 hours ago

    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

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DrillShopper 15 hours ago

After talking to my Democracy Officer I have to say I love managed democracy!

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