Book Review | Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

May 12, 2024

Very good book. Key points:

privacy is of a place, and information should carry the privacy norms of the place in which it was made from place to place
the Navy researchers who made Tor are (1) more like typical academics than we expect, and (2) were very capable of negotiating with their ostensible domestic enemies to get what they wanted
the Tor Project did not, in fact, realize that the Dark Web would metastasize into what it became. This really only became apparent with Chelsea Manning & Wikileaks, Bitcoin, and Ross Ulbricht's Silk Road
as a result, circa 2013 when various LE agencies wanted to develop "bulk traffic intercepts" (UK's GCHQ foremost), Tor becames a scapegoat for allowing pedophiles
Tor was kind of dying until Snowden kicked off a new wave of grassroots anti-authoritiarian activists, who wanted to maintain Tor to maintain internet freedom worldwide
this increased "value-orientation" happened in conjunction with major internet outlets (BBC, Facebook, Twitter) starting to host their own onion sites

We advance human rights by creating and deploying usable anonymity and privacy technologies.
Open and transparent research and tools are key to our success.
Our tools are free to access, use, adapt, and distribute.
We make Tor and related technologies ubiquitous through advocacy and education.
We are honest about the capabilities and limits of Tor and related technologies.
We will never intentionally harm our users. Tor Social Contract (condensed), August 2016

Tor still is in active maintenance, and hasn't achieved wide adoption yet.
they tried really hard to get it integrated in to Firefox, but this failed
apparently Tor is being rewritten in Rust now
500k individuals connected to Tor during the Iranian 2022 summer protests
you can view Tor as an outgrowth of American imperialism, & even libertarian encroachment on the world (can you force libertarianism on other people?)
Tor will continue, hopefully