On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk<joebtfs...@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
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