Documents Show Tor Project is Nearly 100% U.S Government Funded

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rgMekanic

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Author Yasha Levine is writing a book called Surveillance Valley, and in his research, filed a FIOA request that produced nearly 2,500 pages of correspondence between the Tor Project, and it's main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Yasha has released all the documents obtained in the FIOA request on document cloud.

WOW! While I obviously have not had a chance to go through 2.500 pages yet, there is some really amazing things in just what I have skimmed through.

On 12/16/2009 09:13 AM, Ken Berman wrote:
> Roger - Pis help us out on something. Sarah at State is trying to do
> some good things in our arena and is receiving some pushback from
> some of the policy types at State re some of the so-called dual use
> nature of our tools: good for circumvention, bad for allowing the
> bad guys to do their thing.
 
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Crucially, the FOIA documents also cast doubt on Tor’s ability to shield its users from government spying. Although there’s no evidence of Tor employees providing the US government with a direct “backdoor” to the software, the documents do show that Tor has “no qualms with privately tipping off the federal government to security vulnerabilities before alerting the public, a move that would give the feds an opportunity to exploit the security weakness long before informing Tor users.” (source: https://www.rt.com/usa/420219-tor-us-government-funded-bbg/)
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Tor was only good for circumventing corporate network restrictions.

Hopefully the project dies and a legitimate technology will emerge.
 
bUt My vPn wiLl hiDE me.
I used to have dreams of getting on the school bus in my birthday suit and no one noticed, so if i surf nekkid will I be invisible to Big Brother?
 
rgMekanic said:
Author Yasha Levine is writing a book called Surveillance Valley, and in his research, filed a FIOA request that produced nearly 2,500 pages of correspondence between the Tor Project, and it's main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Yasha has released all the documents obtained in the FIOA request on document cloud.

WOW! While I obviously have not had a chance to go through 2.500 pages yet, there is some really amazing things in just what I have skimmed through.

On 12/16/2009 09:13 AM, Ken Berman wrote:
> Roger - Pis help us out on something. Sarah at State is trying to do
> some good things in our arena and is receiving some pushback from
> some of the policy types at State re some of the so-called dual use
> nature of our tools: good for circumvention, bad for allowing the
> bad guys to do their thing.
Click to expand...

It's always been this way. Tor was supposedly a way for the united states to help dissidents in countries like Iran talk to one another. But the Feds didn't like it so much when bad people started using it as well to break the law. That makes TOR a double edged sword.

The government first circumvented TOR by pattern matching. encrypted data from your computer to all the target sites and see when packets came up similar sizes at the same time, slowly wittling down the possibilities.

Next TOR started randomizing the packet sizes between nodes to make it harder to trace.

The Government started using exploits on browsers like firefox to retrieve your IP address on honey pots. They also used digital imprinting based on what OS you were running, your ram, your screen res, your CPU, your browser version, windows version and installed fonts, which made you just about unique.

I looked at TORs security about 8 years back and I dug deep to a technical discussion forum where you could talk about problems. And I asked, what is to keep the government from adding hundreds of high speed hop nodes where they can determine where the traffic is going by commanding enough of the machines in the path. Guess what was discovered a few years later...I think it was Berkley that added on all those nodes and it was the government who did it in corporation with them.

Now do I think it's secure...mostly. The wouldn't go through all these investigative measures if it were easy to walk right in. But the very fact you are using is like waving a red flag in an arena in front of the government bull. That makes you a target. They don't care if you are just curious or want some privacy to talk about your issues. (Like rape, or suicidal)

The long and the short of it is, the government knows you want to hide something by examining the IP packet headers as they come across the internet to known TOR nodes, so they are more then likely to investigate you.

You could counter by hiding the data in what looks like ordinary REST API data. But the target IP would still give you away as I'm sure the government keeps a list of what the TOR node IP addresses are.

So, TOR may keep your traffic semi private, but it won't keep you safe. It's more likely to get you in trouble as it puts a spotlight on you.
 
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You don’t need a back door when you have the keys to the house... And VPN’s only hide so much, I love it when people on my network think their VPN connection keeps my eyes off what they are doing. Network rule 1 intercept VPN connection, Network rule 2 of rule 1 fails crash this tunnel.
 
Color me not surprised, I mean it was created by the Government so why wouldn't they be funding it?
 
assume that nothing sold in the us or made in the us and exported elsewhere is backdoor-free, apple affair was just theater.
 
I keep it simple by just assuming nothing I do online is private, which of course means I never use things like Tor or even VPNs. I do use Tunnelbear on occasion, but that's only when there is a network problem somewhere between me and the remote server at work, which Tunnelbear usually allows me to get around by giving me a different route down the backbone.
 
Support free enterprise people. Buy your drugs on the street corner like normal, law abiding Americans. Fucking nerds.
 
This author is crowdsourcing research. Dump huge amounts of mediocre content for someone else to sift through and cite in your book.
 
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