What Few Know About Tor Might Shock You

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-In-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

Technology is constantly evolving. In ten years the internet will look nothing like it does today. Talk of a “darknet” and “clearnet” will become more pervasive as the free market develops ways around the undermined aspects of online privacy. In today’s climate, it is more importnat than ever to be on your toes when it comes to protecting privacy. Many people get the impression it is impossible to enjoy online privacy. While I do not believe it to be impossible, it is much more difficult than most people think.

One browser and network that is very popular with those interested in keeping their location and activities private is called Tor and also known as the “Onion” browser.  However, this summer Pando’s Yasha Levine uncovered that nearly everyone involved in Tor was (or is) paid by the US government, undermining Tor as a privacy tool.

Tax documents released this month revealed that the Tor Project received over $1.8 million from the US government in 2013, with $256,900 coming directly from the State Department, with an additional $555,413 coming from Internews Network, a “pass-through” organization for State Department money.

In fact, $830,269 of Tor’s budget came from the US Department of Defense, including for helping the US military with “communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”

It is fairly common knowledge that Tor was developed by the Navy to help US diplomats and spies to communicate anonymously from foreign locations.  The developers were aware that the private sector would likely also use this technology but it was initially developed for the US government. But what was less well-known until recently was that Tor was still receiving funding from the world’s largest terrorist organization – the US government- of $1.8 million per year. This means that Tor developers are on the US government payroll, and have been.

According to a high level TDV anonymous source, about one year ago, Tor nodes doubled in a month or so, which could have been for a couple reasons. Was it a sideways attack, in which a doubling of nodes by a malicious party could undermine Tor’s security? Or was it many more people becoming aware of Tor after Edward Snowden’s revelations?

As well, a few years ago, a dumb mistake on their part left lots of Tor users vulnerable. What really caught our sources attention on it was that they never apologized and their arrogant tone (Jacob Applebaum’s in particular) also left an uneasy feeling. 

In a post on Cryptome, Michael Reed, an original developer of the onion routing program, responded to a thread on this subject:

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). Not helping dissidents in repressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better…I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin).

By clicking here, you will read of the military uses of Tor.

At The Dollar Vigilante (TDV), we believe the future lies in darknets but warn to be wary of Tor and to look to other open source peer-to-peer networks, many of which are just evolving, rather than to leave your trust in an organization that was not only founded via the stolen funds (taxes) of the US government but still is to this day.

[Editor's Note: This week in the TDV newsletter Justin O'Connell outlined ways to better protect and store your bitcoin offline]