[tor-talk] Illegal Activity As A Metric of Tor Security and Anonymity

Mark McCarron mark.mccarron at live.co.uk
Sun Jun 29 19:45:33 UTC 2014


Roger,

Fair enough.  I skipped through that talk and wow, you do look like you work at MIT.  It still seems to me that the marketing focus is given to a myriad of exposure techniques, but this global view is buried as a footnote.  Even though, it is the most important element.

I also noticed at the end of the talk, you began promoting Bitcoin, but failed to mention that the exchanges are monitored and the entire transaction history can be data mined.  Bitcoin is not anonymous, its about building intelligence on the financial links between people.  Financial metadata and statistical analysis that reveals the strengths of connections between people.  Its a bit like Facebook...or FinancialBook.

A serious blind spot exists when it comes to the real threats against users, large industry-scale espionage with international reach.  

So, again, I reiterate my point.  From a completely objective viewpoint, it does appear that Tor was designed to fit into a niche role in the US security apparatus and that Bitcoin was just a logical extension of that program.

I don't know what role you played in this, perhaps you are naive, perhaps not.  I suppose we will get our answer to that in the future versions of Tor.

Regards,

Mark McCarron

> Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 14:54:03 -0400
> From: arma at mit.edu
> To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
> Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Illegal Activity As A Metric of Tor Security and Anonymity
> 
> On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 07:30:35PM +0100, Mark McCarron wrote:
> > I see Roger has remained quiet, so I am assuming he either does not
> >want to address the issue or is subject to a National Security letter.
> 
> "Wtf dude?"
> 
> I'm working on the dev meeting that starts tomorrow. I'll get to answering
> your concerns... soon I hope. In the mean time you might watch our 30c3
> talk again, which aims to answer all of these issues.
> 
> --Roger
> 
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