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16 April 2011. A sends: Roger Dingledine writes that the US Navy uses Tor for open source spying:
http://idtrail.org/files/Dingledine%20-%20Tor.pdf
28 March 2011. Add comments from 1997 on TOR, called then the Onion Router.
25 March 2011. Add messages from A3 and JY.
24 March 2011. Add message from A and EFF.
22 March 2011
Creators of TOR:
David M. Goldschlag <goldschlag[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Michael G. Reed <reed[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Paul F. Syverson <syverson[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Naval Research Laboratory
More:
http://www.onion-router.net/Publications/IH-1996.pdf
http://www.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/F7/F7_1.HTM
http://www.onion-router.net/
TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:57:39 -0400 From: Michael Reed <reed[at]inet.org> To: tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote: > On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk<joebtfsplk[at]gmx.com> wrote: >> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against >> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt >> has absolutely no control over it? It's that simple. It would seem a very >> bad idea. Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint& consider it as >> a common sense question. > Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that > only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses > is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very > good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own > work. BINGO, we have a winner! The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the invention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows for bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?" The *PURPOSE* was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of forward deployed assets, whatever). Not helping dissidents in repressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin). I should know, I was the recipient of that question from David, and Paul was brought into the mix a few days later after I had sketched out a basic (flawed) design for the original Onion Routing. The short answer to your question of "Why would the government do this?" is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the government to have this capability... Now enough of the conspiracy theories... -Michael _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org
24 March 2011 A sends: From: A
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:41:41 +0000
Subject: Cryptome Fwd: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
To: cryptome[at]earthlink.net
Following the publication of the email extract on TOR, I asked the EFF what they made of it. Here it is. You can of course publish it.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rebecca Jeschke <rebecca[at]eff.org>
Date: 23 March 2011 21:29
Subject: Fwd: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
To: A
Hi A. This is from Senior Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. Thanks -- Rebecca
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:15:24 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen[at]eff.org>
To: Rebecca Jeschke <rebecca[at]eff.org>
CC: chris <chris[at]eff.org>, Peter Eckersley <pde[at]eff.org>,
Seth Schoen <schoen[at]eff.org>
Rebecca Jeschke writes: any thoughts on this?
It's totally true that the military people who invented Tor were thinking about how to create a system that would protect military
communications. The current iteration of that is described at
https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en#military
right on the Tor home page.
However, the Tor developers also became clear early on that the
system wouldn't protect military communications well unless it had
a very diverse set of users. Elsewhere in that same e-mail
discussion, Mike Perry (a current Tor developer) alludes to this:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-March/019898.html
In fact, the best known way we have right now to improve anonymity
is to support more users, and more *types* of users. See:
http://www.freehaven.net/doc/wupss04/usability.pdf
http://freehaven.net/~arma/slides-weis06.pdf
The first link is to a paper called "Anonymity Loves Company", which
explains the issue this way:
No organization can build this infrastructure for its own sole use.
If a single corporation or government agency were to build a private
network to protect its operations, any connections entering or
leaving that network would be obviously linkable to the controlling
organization. The members and operations of that agency would be
easier, not harder, to distinguish.
Thus, to provide anonymity to any of its users, the network must
accept traffic from external users, so the various user groups can
blend together.
You can read the entire (ongoing) discussion about government funding
for Tor development via
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-March/thread.html
(search for "[tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology").
--
Seth Schoen
Senior Staff Technologist schoen[at]eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/
454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 +1 415 436 9333 x107
Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology From: A3 To: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com> Cc: A2, cypherpunks[at]al-qaeda.net On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 17:43 -0400, John Young wrote: > Fucking amazing admission. No conspiracy theory needed. Wasn't this already very common knowledge?
Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology To: A3, A2, cypherpunks[at]al-qaeda.net From: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com> That's what the Eff-folks advocating TOR are saying. And point to a file on Torproject.org. See: http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm However, this appears to be a giant evasion perhaps a subterfuge, even reminds of what Big Boys say when customers learn they are siphoning customer data. Read the privacy policy the lawyer-advised apologists bark, and upon reading the privacy policy see that it only emphasizes the subterfuge. Openly admitting siphoning is supposed to make it okay because everyone does it under cover of lockstep privacy policy. Reject that. If the Tor operators really know what they are being used for, then they should admit to being agents of the USG, as Michael Reed had the guts to do. Claiming this US spying role for Tor is well known is a crock of slop, but then spies lie all the time and care not a whit that they peddle shit for eaters of it. If you believe them and like what they do then don't shilly-shally, just do what Michael Reed did but others are too ashamed to do after having been duped since 1996. If Reed's precedent for honesty is followed, there will be an admission that the Internet was invented for spying by its inventor. And then cryptography and other comsec tools. And then cellphones and the like. Hold on now, this is getting out of hand, the apologists will bellow, everybody has always known that there is no privacy in digital world. Actually, no, they did not. And those who knew keep their Janusian mouths writhing to reap the rewards of deception. Now that is a truth everyone knows. No conspiracy theory needed.