On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 19:29:26 -0400 tor@t-3.net wrote:
In the context of September 2013, this whole thing is scary. It was perhaps not scary in September of 2012, when we didn't know anything.
Just a point that many in the tech community knew what was happening, at some level, for the past decade. It's now that we have more data to back it up. Three years ago, many in the Tor community were called pathologically paranoid for our talking about stalking with technology (some call this tracking, advertising, snooping, packet sniffing, etc) on a global scale. It doesn't seem so far fetched now. In fact, some countries have been honing these practices for a decade or so.
Torservers, Noisebridge, and others have been taking money in exchange for running exit relays for a few years. For the vast majority of people (which includes organizations), it's far easier to transfer money to someone who can run an exit relay than it is to setup one themselves. I'm sure there will be sketchy orgs trying to turn currency into exit relays. It's a fact of growing an ecosystem.
I suspect most of the cost of running a relay isn't the relay itself, but the people to keep it running.