I mean, there are a couple of major points against it: it was originally developed by the CIA, the US government still funds quite a bit of its development and upkeep, and it’s intrinsically vulrnable to de-anonymization of traffic if a bad actor manages to control or spy on enough nodes (namely, if they are simultaneously spying on all of the nodes in your circuit), and the vast majority of Tor nodes are based in the US and EU, specifically the 5/9/14/69/420 eyes countries. Tor seems mainly intended for US intelligence use and also for political dissidents against socialist countries (or just any country the US hates). It’s no coincidence that Tor traffic spikes from whatever country a colour revolution is taking place, like Iran and Russia as two recent examples, which is very apparent if you download Snowflake (which creates a small Tor entry node/bridge on your computer) and monitor which IP addresses are connecting to it.

At the same time, we’re also very explicitly political dissidents and therefore we absolutely need ways to protect our data privacy and security. So… Should communists, especially ones actively campaigning for socialism/communism, be using Tor to anonymize their traffic? I’d instinctively say no but thinking more about it I actually don’t know for sure. Is there a risk it can be booby trapped for us. Are there any alternatives? Anyone familiar with Tor’s architecture who’s able to weigh in on how big a risk it is for us compared to benefit?

  • @TarkovSurvivor
    6•1 year ago

    It’s a communication system that was originally designed to be resilient against attacks on the physical infrastructure. The interconnected machines on the Internet communicate amongst themselves and if one node or a line connecting them is taken out then the packets of data can go in different directions to attempt to find their destination. This allows any two machines to communicate as long as there exists a route that connects them even while other connections may be destroyed. This could give the usa some ability to maintain communication in the event if a nuclear exchange and so it could be said to be a technology designed to give an edge to the USA in the event of nuclear war with the soviets, I don’t think this makes it explicitly anti communist though it is possible that was oke motive or justification for its development .