Also, remember that the NSA has had that kind of capabilities for a while, yet what came out of the Snowden leaks was “Tor stinks” (read: “We don't know how to break it in any practical sense”).
yup. Though apparently they could deanonymize some folks, but couldn't target the users they wanted.
But I'd expect that to change, a low-latency network like tor that also doesn't create cover traffic just architecturally isn't equipped to deal with something approaching a global passive adversary. Though networks for even that can be built..
The takeaway was indeed that they could deanonymise individual users, but they couldn't target it and it required significant amounts of human effort (i.e. it did not scale).
AFAIK, Tor developers are willing to implement cover traffic; the main reason it hasn't happened so far is that there is no known way to do this that clearly helps against that kind of threat. Until we have this (either from academic research, the Tor Project's own efforts or something else), it would be at best a placebo.
