Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-22 Thread Paul Syverson
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 10:09:43PM -0700, Mike Perry wrote:
 Thus spake Joe Btfsplk (joebtfs...@gmx.com):
 
  On 3/21/2011 2:39 PM, Paul Syverson wrote:
  On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0500, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
  Last comments for a while. (All I have time for, sorry.)  I'm just
  going to respond to specific issues about system threats and the
  like.
 
  I don't pretend to know the answers, but know when to ask questions.  
  For all I know, the US wants the enemy to use Tor for plotting, thinking 
  they're anonymous, when they're not.  No one's answering my specific 
  questions, possibly because if they knew them, they'd be in top level 
  govt positions, sworn to secrecy.  For those doubting any of this has 
  any merit, are you still waiting for them to find WMDs in Iraq?
 
 Despite Lucky closing the thread in response to your conspiracy theory
 in favor more productive matters, I didn't get enough sleep last night
 to be productive, so I feel like trying to inject some reason into
 this thread.
 

I think you also did a nice job of finding the Tor relevance buried
therein. I'll respond to those parts where I think I might have
something to contribute.

 
 To distill your argument down, you've said so far:
 
[snip]
 
 4. Governments have inconceivable power.
 
[snip]
 
 You seem to have somewhat independently argued that #4 means that Tor
 cannot be trusted against (any) large government(s). This,
 unfortunately, may be true for some governments. Extremely well funded
 adversaries that are able to observe large portions of the Internet
 can probably break aspects of Tor and may be able to deanonymize
 users. This is why the core tor program currently has a version number
 of 0.2.x and comes with a warning that it is not to be used for
 strong anonymity. (Though I personally don't believe any adversary
 can reliably deanonymize *all* tor users, for similar reasons as
 detailed here: http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Sep-2008/msg00016.html
 but attacks on anonymity are subtle and cumulative in nature).
 
 
 The goal of Tor is to balance the interests of as many different
 parties as possible to provide distributed trust, and to raise the
 amount of resources that any one adversary must have before it can
 compromise the network. Academic research also focuses on ways to
 improve the network characteristics of tor to defend against
 wide-scale observation (think dummy traffic and Paul's topology
 research), but so far none of these approaches has proved either
 robust or lightweight enough to actually deploy.
 
 In fact, the best known way we have right now to improve anonymity is
 to support more users, and more *types* of users. See:
 http://www.freehaven.net/doc/wupss04/usability.pdf
 http://freehaven.net/~arma/slides-weis06.pdf
 

Distributing trust is also not just the number and diversity of users
(and relay providers) but how they are related in intentions and other
things. When going up against The Man*, you can't just assume a
uniform distribution on relays, users, and network links between those
wrt likelyhood-of-being-run-by-a-hostile/resilience-to-attack/etc
Which means numbers and even diversity isn't the whole picture. I go
into more on this in Why I'm not an Entropist. It is also the basis
of the trust-based routing we have been working on, which is basically
how do you route if you consider the possibility that significant
portions of the network might be under the view/control of your
adversary even if the network has 1 relays.

And since I'm really going to try to resist responding any more to
this thread, Thanks Mike for your other message containing the stab at
a soundbite-sized and coherent expression of what I was trying to say
about how the non-tech-savvy could trust Tor with the best
justification to effort ratio.

 
[snip]
 
 Of course, it still is concerning that any entity that can fit into
 argument #4 might be able to break tor, but hey, it's still 0.2.x.
 We're working on it ;).

Right. See above.

-Paul

*My name for a nation-state/organized-crime/your-favorite-big-scary
adversary. Gratis to Nick for enthusiastically liking this name in a
partially related discussion on trust based routing models and thus
encouraging me to use it.
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-22 Thread Joe Btfsplk

On 3/21/2011 6:38 PM, Al MailingList wrote:


That's a very good point klaus.

Joe - if you think the US Government is one big cohesive entity that 
funds projects consistently from a single pool of resources and money 
then I would politely suggest you may not have had much to do with 
them :P


Don't think that at all.  Don't believe I said anything that even 
suggested.  I'm speaking in general terms.  My comments also regard more 
than one govt.  In any govt project, there could be one or dozens of 
depts involved.

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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-22 Thread Watson Ladd
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk joebtfs...@gmx.com wrote:
 Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
 them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt
 has absolutely no control over it?  It's that simple.  It would seem a very
 bad idea.  Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint  consider it as
 a common sense question.

Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that
only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses
is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very
good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own
work.

Sincerely,
Watson Ladd
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-22 Thread Joe Btfsplk

On 3/22/2011 3:57 PM, Michael Reed wrote:


BINGO, we have a winner!  The original *QUESTION* posed that led to 
the invention of Onion Routing was, Can we build a system that allows 
for bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source 
and destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?  The *PURPOSE* 
was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, 
covering of forward deployed assets, whatever).  ...
The short answer to your question of Why would the government do 
this? is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the 
government to have this capability...


-Michael
___

Very interesting, Michael.  You were a part of it (or knew of it)  it 
was because govt intelligence (you are aware many - not me - call that 
an oxy moron:)) wanted a system they could use for various purposes, 
where the source  destination can't be determined by one of the mid points?


That does make sense.  BTW, I never said conspiracy - others did.  
Besides, many use the word or concept incorrectly.  A govt developing 
technology to use in defending the country isn't a conspiracy.  Covering 
up illegal activities, for instance, would be a conspiracy (like 
Watergate).  If some govt has figured out how to decode Tor traffic 
(or use it to great advantage) to thwart terrorists, that's not conspiracy.


I'm going out on a limb to say that US intelligence does not believe Tor 
gives terrorists a great advantage - for what ever reason(s), or else 
they'd shut it down, or at least stop funding it.  But then, we  other 
countries continue supplying arms to groups in various conflicts, which 
they often shoot back at us.   That said, it may be an earlier poster's 
comment about lack of foresight may apply.  It would seem that enemies 
*might* benefit from it as much as govts, unless govts are capable of 
more than many think they are.  No one, except people w/ high level 
clearance (perhaps various countries) knows the full answer to that, and 
they're not talking.


They thought the A-bomb was a good idea  no other country would get the 
technology.  Huh.  I was on the fence on that one.
It *may* be much like other ideas, such as the famous introduction of 
cats to an island, where they had no natural enemies.  It almost 
destroyed the island's eco system.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/12/eco.macquarieisland/

For what did you think might happen sorts of things that individuals  
govts do, I now reference them as Introducing Cats to an Island 
principles.  Ideas that sound good at 1st, except for forgetting to ask 
(and seriously ponder) the most important question of all, What's the 
worst that can happen if we...
Hey, let's build nuclear reactors on major fault lines all over the 
world.  Yeah, that sounds good.


Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Joe Btfsplk
1st, thanks for the refresher, Paul.  I'll bet most users didn't know 
Tor was started by the NRL.  Unfortunately, for many, that won't ease 
their minds much.


I don't have the knowledge  skills to check Tor's source code  bet 
well  90% of users don't either.
I know (knew) my comments on Tor being funded (or started) by any Fed 
organization would not be well received.  Neither were the handful of 
people w/ inside knowledge after 9-11 attacks, shouting there was no 
justification in attacking Iraq.  They were shouted down  quickly 
labeled as unpatriotic.  Even today, surveys show a significant percent 
of people still believe Iraq was responsible for 9-11 attacks.  Don't 
confuse me w/ facts - I've already made up my mind.


Again, WHY would Sam develop or fund technology that would make it 
possible for * their enemies *  to communicate anonymously and 
privately, possibly allowing them to plot against him, with ABSOLUTELY 
no way to decipher that communication?


It's a serious question.  Please save the check the source code 
yourself comments.  Open source code means literally nothing.  Did it 
mean anything when Iraq cracked down on Tor users?  Researchers often 
show that.  What makes this project different than other govt funded 
projects?  (This seems like the, It'll never happen here / to us 
mentality).


It * IS * happening to us in pretty much every aspect of citizens' 
privacy.  That's no secret.  What makes Tor any different?   If one govt 
can figure out how to identify Tor traffic, so can others.  Above ALL 
else, govts NEVER reveal the full extent of their intelligence 
capability.  That would be foolish.


I've never known Sam to get involved in, or fund something - especially 
like this - * w/o wanting something in return.*  Ever.  WHETHER or not 
they make known, to anyone, what they want or intend to do.  It's been 
shown for over 50 - 60 yrs (probably much longer) that even people in 
charge of entire govt projects (or govt funded ones), often don't know 
the  *full* extent of what's being done w/ the research, technology, 
info, etc.  If you want to ignore history, go ahead.




On 3/20/2011 11:46 PM, Paul Syverson wrote:

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:04:45PM -0500, Edward Langenback wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

Joe Btfsplk wrote:

On 3/20/2011 5:08 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8388484/Iran-cracks-down-on-web-dissident-technology.html

Iran cracks down on web dissident technology...

...  The value of ???internet freedom??? technologies to US
foreign policy has not gone unnoticed in Washington: the Tor Project???s arms
race with Iranian authorities is_funded in part by grants from both the
Department of Defense and the State Department_.
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You've GOT to be kidding.  Tell me that's a mistake.  Tor Project,
dedicated to privacy  anonymity, takes $ from DoD  Sam?  While the US
spies on it's citizens, unconstitutionally?  That's rich.
Honestly, this enlightenment will make me reconsider ever using Tor for
anything I don't want sent directly to DC.  It's like trusting car
magazines' reviews that get their advertising $ from car manufacturers.
There is no way the fed is going to give $ to any privacy organization
w/o wanting something (cough, back door) in return.  Every ISP has been
forced into violating users' privacy.  Why would Tor project, after
taking $ from Sam, be any different?  OK users, go ahead  stick your
head in the sand.

EVEN if it's not true, for me, Tor project has lost a good deal of its
credibility through its associations.  Of course, no government would
ever lie  neither would a company (ATT, Ford, Google, R.J. Reynolds...).

If I'm not mistaken, not only has TOR had at least some government /
DOD funding from the start, the original project was started by the
military.


People seem to need a periodic refresher on this.
I will just state the long public and published facts.
Interpret them as you like. You can read more details at
http://www.onion-router.net/History.html
but here's a quick summary:

I invented onion routing at NRL with David Goldschlag and Mike Reed in
1995-96 as a US Naval Research Laboratory project with initial funding
from ONR. All of us were NRL employees at the time. Our first deployed
system was in 1996 and source code for that system was distributed
later that year. (Code was entirely US government work by US
government employees, so not subject to copyright.)

As part of a later NRL project, I created the version of onion routing
that became known as Tor along with Roger Dingledine and Nick
Mathewson starting in 2002. I have been an NRL employee throughout all
this.  Roger and Nick were contractors working on my project. NRL
projects funded by ONR and DARPA were the only funding they had to
work on 

Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Nick Mathewson
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:40 AM, katmagic the.magical@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:07:49 -0400
 Paul Syverson syver...@itd.nrl.navy.mil wrote:

 universities are in on it, and the supposedly independent researchers
 who found code flaws were also in on it (or sock puppets created by
 Roger to create credibility). But at some point you have to look at
 the size, diversity, and entrenchment of the conspiracy you think is

 Mike Perry is the one who creates the sock puppets. See
 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1967#comment:6 for
 incontrovertible proof.

Please, let's not introduce sarcasm to discussions like this.  It only
confuses people.

(For the uninitiated: Mike Perry and Ioerror are not the same person,
even if a guy says so with lots of exclamation points.)
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Klaus Layer
Joe Btfsplk joebtfs...@gmx.com wrote on 21.03.2011:
 Again, WHY would Sam develop or fund technology that would make it 
 possible for * their enemies *  to communicate anonymously and 
 privately, possibly allowing them to plot against him, with ABSOLUTELY 
 no way to decipher that communication?
 

Do you really think, that there is a one Sam who makes clear decisions 
regarding TOR? There is a very large organization (the US) consisting of many 
different people with many different opinions. Some of them don't like TOR, 
some thought it is an exiting research project and funded it, and others just 
don't care about it. 

Regards,

Klaus


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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Joe Btfsplk

On 3/21/2011 2:39 PM, Paul Syverson wrote:

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0500, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
Last comments for a while. (All I have time for, sorry.)  I'm just
going to respond to specific issues about system threats and the
like.
I appreciate your comments  the work of all involved w/ Tor.  I read 
the papers you linked, though I've seen most of the material in various 
places.

I will not join in the speculation about what governments do or why.
Perhaps you should, because at least one govt seems to be steering the 
boat.  Therein lies the problem (not you, specifically).  My comments  
MAINLY questions, weren't about typical or even very sophisticated 
adversaries.  They concern WHY any govt would continue funding an 
anonymous communication project that in today's world, very real enemies 
can use against said govt, in a very real way, if the govt has no way to 
monitor it?  One should ask, Why would they do that?  It doesn't make 
sense unless there's more to the story.  Also, in terms of adversaries 
against something like Tor, any advanced, well funded govt dwarfs the 
most sophisticated adversaries.  Many govts have unimaginable technology 
 resources as well as legal (or not so legal) authority to demand info 
(from ISPs, etc.) that no typical adversary would.


The threat models, discussion of thwarting various attacks, safety in 
numbers, etc., are all based on assumptions like, 1) the adversaries 
don't have unlimited time, resources  $.  That assumption is out the 
window if an adversary is a large govt.
2) The adversary doesn't have access to (some) info going IN and OUT of 
a network like Tor.  Not valid for a govt.  They can get what they want 
from ISPs - and have.  The info may be encrypted going in, but they can 
see you're accessing a Tor node.  A large govt could ALSO monitor every 
single exit node ( may).


There's NO comparison between people looking at open code, universities 
or organizations doing small studies on flaws in Tor, etc., and 
capabilities of a large, advanced govt.  So please, I'm not talking 
about how many people or universities look at Tor.


Advanced govts no doubt have incredible technology regarding breaking 
encryption.  Not a typical adversary.  Since Tor was developed BY a 
govt, and since many talk about one of its greatest values is to allow 
people in repressed societies to communicate freely, the adversary 
those users need to be most concerned about, is probably the one MOST 
likely to breach Tor's anonymity.  I doubt most people think Tor's main 
purpose is to hide communication between two cheating spouses.


A govt helped develop Tor for SPECIFIC reasons (we probably don't know 
all of them)  still funds it.  Then for users around the world counting 
on Tor for protection from their govts, the govts would have to be 
considered as one of the main adversaries to Tor.  Either the US is 
really dumb for developing a system, perfect for enemies to use against 
them (kinda doubt that) or there's more to the story.


I don't pretend to know the answers, but know when to ask questions.  
For all I know, the US wants the enemy to use Tor for plotting, thinking 
they're anonymous, when they're not.  No one's answering my specific 
questions, possibly because if they knew them, they'd be in top level 
govt positions, sworn to secrecy.  For those doubting any of this has 
any merit, are you still waiting for them to find WMDs in Iraq?



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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Lucky Green
On 2011-03-21 16:17, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
[...]
 I don't pretend to know the answers, but know when to ask questions. 
 For all I know, the US wants the enemy to use Tor for plotting, thinking
 they're anonymous, when they're not.  No one's answering my specific
 questions, possibly because if they knew them, they'd be in top level
 govt positions, sworn to secrecy.

This thread has crossed into the unreasonable realm of conspiracy
theories akin to fears that jet aircraft dispense mind-controlling drugs
via their con trails. Let's call and end to this thread and move on to
more productive discussion about how to improve Tor for its users.

--Lucky
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Al MailingList
That's a very good point klaus.

Joe - if you think the US Government is one big cohesive entity that funds
projects consistently from a single pool of resources and money then I would
politely suggest you may not have had much to do with them :P

Alfred

On 21 Mar 2011 16:27, Klaus Layer klaus.la...@gmx.de wrote:
 Joe Btfsplk joebtfs...@gmx.com wrote on 21.03.2011:
 Again, WHY would Sam develop or fund technology that would make it
 possible for * their enemies * to communicate anonymously and
 privately, possibly allowing them to plot against him, with ABSOLUTELY
 no way to decipher that communication?


 Do you really think, that there is a one Sam who makes clear decisions
 regarding TOR? There is a very large organization (the US) consisting of
many
 different people with many different opinions. Some of them don't like
TOR,
 some thought it is an exiting research project and funded it, and others
just
 don't care about it.

 Regards,

 Klaus
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Ali-Reza Anghaie
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 3:16 AM, Mike Perry mikepe...@fscked.org wrote:
 For example: Trust the community. So many different people have
 worked on, volunteered for, attacked, reviewed, and researched
 tor-related topics from so many different institutions and backgrounds
 that it is *the* most extensively studied and independently reviewed
 anonymous communications system ever designed, let alone built. This
 makes it secure.

Alright, I can understand your argument and you and Roger are speaking
from experience.

And I like this version of a FOSSH response. Thanks for the education, -Ali
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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-21 Thread Mike Perry
Thus spake Joe Btfsplk (joebtfs...@gmx.com):

 On 3/21/2011 2:39 PM, Paul Syverson wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0500, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
 Last comments for a while. (All I have time for, sorry.)  I'm just
 going to respond to specific issues about system threats and the
 like.

 I don't pretend to know the answers, but know when to ask questions.  
 For all I know, the US wants the enemy to use Tor for plotting, thinking 
 they're anonymous, when they're not.  No one's answering my specific 
 questions, possibly because if they knew them, they'd be in top level 
 govt positions, sworn to secrecy.  For those doubting any of this has 
 any merit, are you still waiting for them to find WMDs in Iraq?

Despite Lucky closing the thread in response to your conspiracy theory
in favor more productive matters, I didn't get enough sleep last night
to be productive, so I feel like trying to inject some reason into
this thread.


To distill your argument down, you've said so far:

1. Tor was/is funded by a government.

2. Governments only act out of self-interest.

3. Governments often have ulterior movies.

4. Governments have inconceivable power.

You've argued that #1, #2, and #3 together means that Tor cannot be
trusted. It appears we may have dissuaded you from this, because of
the fact that so many other individuals and entities have also had a
hand in Tor research and development.

You seem to have somewhat independently argued that #4 means that Tor
cannot be trusted against (any) large government(s). This,
unfortunately, may be true for some governments. Extremely well funded
adversaries that are able to observe large portions of the Internet
can probably break aspects of Tor and may be able to deanonymize
users. This is why the core tor program currently has a version number
of 0.2.x and comes with a warning that it is not to be used for
strong anonymity. (Though I personally don't believe any adversary
can reliably deanonymize *all* tor users, for similar reasons as
detailed here: http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Sep-2008/msg00016.html
but attacks on anonymity are subtle and cumulative in nature).


The goal of Tor is to balance the interests of as many different
parties as possible to provide distributed trust, and to raise the
amount of resources that any one adversary must have before it can
compromise the network. Academic research also focuses on ways to
improve the network characteristics of tor to defend against
wide-scale observation (think dummy traffic and Paul's topology
research), but so far none of these approaches has proved either
robust or lightweight enough to actually deploy.

In fact, the best known way we have right now to improve anonymity is
to support more users, and more *types* of users. See:
http://www.freehaven.net/doc/wupss04/usability.pdf
http://freehaven.net/~arma/slides-weis06.pdf

This is also why it is not the case that point 2 means that Tor is
necessarily broken just because The Tor Project has done the legwork
to show these and other groups how a robust Tor is useful for them.
The Tor Project has done this because every new entity that believes
Tor is useful makes Tor stronger and more anonymous for every other
entity.

Most of the governmental entities that like Tor either like it because
they use it (think FBI stings, investigative research, and soldiers
deployed overseas), or because they understand that a liberation
technology like Tor is both great PR for them, and a great tool in
diplomacy and statecraft, to deploy in countries where it is clear
that better information flows will weaken or even topple unfriendly
rulers.

These are good enough first-order benefits to discount some ulterior
bait-and-switch conspiratorial motives, I believe. Couple this with
the fact that the real serious cybersecurity threats come not from
tor, but from sophisticated, well funded adversaries that have their
own botnets that can leverage the same properties of the Internet
that tor leverages, regardless of tor's existence.

Once this is understood, there isn't really a whole lot of downside to
government entities encouraging a stronger Tor that these entities
don't already have to deal with in other ways (such as better
information security).

Of course, it still is concerning that any entity that can fit into
argument #4 might be able to break tor, but hey, it's still 0.2.x.
We're working on it ;).



-- 
Mike Perry
Mad Computer Scientist
fscked.org evil labs


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Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

2011-03-20 Thread Paul Syverson
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:04:45PM -0500, Edward Langenback wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA256
 
 Joe Btfsplk wrote:
  On 3/20/2011 5:08 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8388484/Iran-cracks-down-on-web-dissident-technology.html
 
  Iran cracks down on web dissident technology...
 
  ...  The value of ???internet freedom??? technologies to US
  foreign policy has not gone unnoticed in Washington: the Tor Project???s 
  arms
  race with Iranian authorities is_funded in part by grants from both the
  Department of Defense and the State Department_.
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  You've GOT to be kidding.  Tell me that's a mistake.  Tor Project, 
  dedicated to privacy  anonymity, takes $ from DoD  Sam?  While the US 
  spies on it's citizens, unconstitutionally?  That's rich.
  Honestly, this enlightenment will make me reconsider ever using Tor for 
  anything I don't want sent directly to DC.  It's like trusting car 
  magazines' reviews that get their advertising $ from car manufacturers.  
  There is no way the fed is going to give $ to any privacy organization 
  w/o wanting something (cough, back door) in return.  Every ISP has been 
  forced into violating users' privacy.  Why would Tor project, after 
  taking $ from Sam, be any different?  OK users, go ahead  stick your 
  head in the sand.
  
  EVEN if it's not true, for me, Tor project has lost a good deal of its 
  credibility through its associations.  Of course, no government would 
  ever lie  neither would a company (ATT, Ford, Google, R.J. Reynolds...).
 
 If I'm not mistaken, not only has TOR had at least some government /
 DOD funding from the start, the original project was started by the
 military.
 

People seem to need a periodic refresher on this.
I will just state the long public and published facts.
Interpret them as you like. You can read more details at
http://www.onion-router.net/History.html
but here's a quick summary:

I invented onion routing at NRL with David Goldschlag and Mike Reed in
1995-96 as a US Naval Research Laboratory project with initial funding
from ONR. All of us were NRL employees at the time. Our first deployed
system was in 1996 and source code for that system was distributed
later that year. (Code was entirely US government work by US
government employees, so not subject to copyright.)

As part of a later NRL project, I created the version of onion routing
that became known as Tor along with Roger Dingledine and Nick
Mathewson starting in 2002. I have been an NRL employee throughout all
this.  Roger and Nick were contractors working on my project. NRL
projects funded by ONR and DARPA were the only funding they had to
work on Tor until 2004. The first publicly deployed Tor network was in
2003, which was also when the source code was made available and
publicly licensed under the MIT license.  The first funding Roger and
Nick got to work on Tor that was other than as part of an NRL project
was from the EFF starting in 2004.

Tor got funding from a variety of sources after that, including several
U.S. government projects, both before and since becoming a US 501 (c)(3)
nonprofit. You can find a summary at
https://torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en

HTH,
Paul
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