[tor-relays] Bots, love 'em or hate 'em?

[starlight.2015q3 at binnacle.cx]

At 11:11 8/19/2015 -0400, you wrote:
>But all that bot traffic creates a lot
>of statistical "background noise," and
>so may be providing a service in making
>it more difficult for advanced adversaries
>to perform traffic correlation analysis.
>
>Thoughts anyone?

Here is one excellent reason to love Bot
traffic:

   The Latest Rules on How Long NSA
   Can Keep Americans Encrypted Data
   Look Too Familiar
   by Marshall Erwin
   January 22, 2015

   https://www.justsecurity.org/19308/congress-latest-rules-long-spies-hold-encrypted-data-familiar/

Recently-enacted legislation permits
the NSA to retain all US domestic
"incidentally  collected" encrypted
traffic they think might be of interest
_forever_ with the idea that it might
be decrypted or analyzed more completely
with future technology.

So the more garbage flung around by bots,
the better (as long as Tor remains usable),
as it increases the difficulty and cost of
storing Tor traffic by orders-of-magnitude.