questions of morality

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 08:35:58PM -0600, Aaron Cannon wrote:
> Hello all.  I'm a new member of the list and a newbie to TOR.  I have been 
> looking for a worthy cause to donate my bandwidth to.  I think I might have 
> found it in TOR, but I am a little bit hesitant because I am not eager to 
> facilitate someone's wrong doing.  On the other hand, I would like to help 
> those who would like anonymity online.
> 
> So, I suppose, in the end, it comes down to the simple question: do the 
> positive uses of TOR out-weigh the negative ones?

Hi Aaron. You've heard a number of perspectives so far. The perspective
of the Tor developers can be summarized by the list at the top of

http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc.html

and then by the discussion in the 'abuse' section on the wiki faq:

  7.1. Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad things?

  Criminals can already do bad things. Since they're willing to break
  laws, they already have lots of options available that provide _better_
  privacy than Tor provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and
  throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil
  and use them to launch abusive activities; they can spread viruses that
  take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world.

  Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow
  the law. Only criminals have privacy right now; we need to fix that.

http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#Abuse

Let me know if you need more convincing, or need help setting up a
server. :)

Thanks,
--Roger