On 11/24/2019 04:00 AM, John Young wrote: > Critique of Tor applies equally, perhaps moreso, to the whole Internet > for monetization, technology, personnel, administration, operation, > funding, seducing the public, NGOs, dissent. So too, to crypto, > anonymization, cypherpunks. > > Perennial question is how to sort through the tsunami of claims and > counterclaims, sponsored hacks, slyly appealing "free" SM, search > engines, FOIA enterprises, Wayback and Wikipedia, paid and volunteer > informants and agents, hot shit mail lists and get-it-now podcasts, > star-studded conferences and outlaw-celebrity lectures, incarcerated > Julians and Jeremys, fans and evermore fans of unexamined underwriters. > > Has there ever been more people eagerly declaring in public their likes > and hatreds, convictions and doubts, hoping to gain advantage over other > people by pretense and deception. Actually, yes, there has been since > talking, singing, dancing, education, civilization was invented to > entrap prey. > > Prey quickly learned from predators to reverse the panopticon. Usually > by offering their gullible, edible kids, cohorts and mates as > irresistable bait to fatten the enemy into overconfidence, sloth, > braggrdy, imagined supremacy. Tor, like Trump, is hardly novel in this > suicidalism, nor the crusading, diabolical internet of everything data.
For sure. Figuring out who/what one can trust is arguably impossible. Or at least, it's far too unreliable. Bottom line, I think, it's foolish to trust anyone/anything. So the challenge is prudently using whatever resources are available. > At 06:39 PM 11/23/2019, you [Mirimir] wrote: > >> On 11/23/2019 04:23 PM, Punk-Stasi 2.0 wrote: >> > On Sat, 23 Nov 2019 15:39:55 -0700 >> > Mirimir <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> >> >> >> The villains here are writers of the Tor Project website. They >> bullshit >> >> users, overselling Tor. Why, I don't know. Maybe it's all a >> honeypot. Or >> >> maybe they're just idiots. >> > >> > Notice that they get paid as long as tor exists. So even if >> tor was not a honeypot, and they are not idiots, they still have a >> fundamental incentive to oversell it. Their paychecks. >> >> Yeah, good point. >> >> After those FOIA documents came out, I lost all respect for the Tor >> Project. I get how conflicted they were. Needing government support. >> Keeping the cops happy. Maybe having their jobs threatened. But selling >> out is selling out, no matter how many excuses one has. >> >> > Also, syverson and co. are complicit in overselling tor, >> despite the fact that their papers for the 'technical intelligentsia' >> spell out the limitations. >> >> Agreed. >> >> >> I've wondered whether it's just that they need lots of users for cover >> >> traffic. That _was_ a major factor in opening Tor to the public, >> instead >> >> of restricting it to government users. But that seems unlikely, now, >> >> given that the NSA etc could easily run enough bots on hacked servers. >> > >> > >> > My guess is that the main reason for them to get as many users >> as they can is to justify funding. Hell, maybe they even get a >> percentage of funding directly proportional to number of users/network >> size. >> >> Makes sense. > > >
