[tor-relays] NSA's "Tor Stinks"

[Jesse Victors]

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> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:48:01 +0200
> From: Konrad Neitzel <konrad at neitzel.de>
> To: tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
> Subject: Re: [tor-relays] NSA's "Tor Stinks"
> Message-ID: <1381312081.3204.32.camel at opensusevm1.site>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On Tue, 2013-10-08 at 23:40 -0400, krishna e bera wrote:
>> On 13-10-08 03:23 PM, Jesse Victors wrote:
>>> ...
>>> obviously has implications into other Tor users, the vast majority of
>>> whom use Tor for legal and proper activities.
>> Could you give some evidence for what "vast majority" means in terms of
>> percentages?  How are you getting such data?
> I think that we first need a clear definition what "legal" means or what
> "proper activities" are. The core problem is, that the definition of
> these terms can differ a lot (e.g. from country to country but even from
> person to person inside a country. At least the interior minister of
> germany seems to have some strange ideas :) ).
>
> And I just read a news article of a german publisher (Heise) about NSA
> and what they do and I understood it that NSA is claiming to just check
> on non US citizens or illegal things. The "owner" of the data that is
> sent between 2 tor nodes cannot be identified so when the NSA attacks
> any tor traffic there must be some kind of understanding, that using the
> tor network already is something illegal in the minds of these people.
>
> At least that was, what I understood when I was reading this article.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Konrad
Ok, I did not expect that this was going to be a talking point or be
otherwise confusing. No I don't have any hard numbers, nor do I run an
exit that I can test using tcpdump. But the Torproject repeatedly says
that Tor is often used for good, or simply to just hide one's Internet
activities for those who feel that they have a right to be hidden even
if they have nothing to hide. I have friends who do their browsing over
Tor, and there's nothing at all controversial about what they are up to
as far as I'm aware. I understand what you're saying: I agree that
simply going to Google may be illegal in some countries. I believe that
a few bad apples put Tor in the news, make things hard for the exit
operators, and spoil things for the rest of us.

My point was that the NSA is doing penetration testing on the Tor
network and doing what they can to figure it out. No matter what kind of
traffic goes through Tor, the fact remains is that they are doing that,
and we need to be aware of their efforts, the progress they've made, and
what they are planning. That was my main topic that I was introducing to
the group.

Jesse V.

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