> As X said, it DOES sort of tip the opponent off that you have something > to hide, but whether they can identify 'you'... especially using > something like Tails that spoofs your mac address and leaves no trace > that you've ever done anything more than power up at a given time. > > So if you're in some internet cafe in Singapore with a hundred other > people walking in and out using the connection, the IP of entrance to > the tor network just doesn't do a lot to identify you unless perhaps > you're already being surveilled. > > Over time, if under surveillance the opponent could find a correlation > between your presence and tor's use. Again, that why I've said 'the more > users the better'. If everyone in that Singapore cafe was using it. the > opponent would still be drawing a blank about your identity.
Yeah, in this respect the difficulties of Tor are much like the difficulties of deniable encryption. Using it at all is in a certain way incriminating. Its one of the main reasons why I try to explore novel, legitimate uses of Tor, quite apart from anonymity. It's ability to reach beyond firewalls for hosting is quite novel; unfortunately there isn't much legitimate purpose for this. Personally I don't have a problem with exfiltrating/liberating data from corporate coffers, but it is generally frowned upon more widely. But I wonder if there is a market for such an Internet cafe. An internet cafe that provides wifi for your device, and a few on-premises computers, and tunnels all connections through Tor as a matter of policy. I'd certainly hang out there, just as a matter of geek-chic if nothing else. Could also serve as a kind of base-of-operations for wider public education about cryptography, privacy, security, and so on.
