Don't take this the wrong way, but... this is hardly news. From top of the Tor Project's "Who uses Tor?" page:
"Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the Naval Research Laboratory.[0] It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications." [1]
The article you link to quotes one of the original TOR authors, but fails to link to his words. They're here. [2]
Even if Tor hadn't originally been built by the NRO, spooks would still be using it for their "open source" intelligence gathering: it is effective, well-built software that protects against the threats that it claims to protect against.
That Pando Daily article attempts to claim that the fact that NSA captures Tor traffic makes Tor a danger. The leaked NSA slides from which that fact comes from also reveal that NSA captures and stores (for a long time) all encrypted traffic that they cannot decrypt. [3] This means that connecting to a non-USian site using SSL/TLS makes you just as much a target as Tor usage. :)
I get that people freak out about government funding of this project or that project, but there are a few things to keep in mind here:
1) Tor is open source and is developed in the open. [4]
2) Respected cypherpunks and cryptographers have periodically evaluated the project and declared it to be effective and high quality.
3) A weakening of Tor or the Tor Network reduces its value for intelligence gathering and covert law enforcement operations.
[3] Other NSA slides reveal that the NSA can't actually break Tor. They have to rely on endpoint compromise or improper configuration of hidden services to unmask Tor users.
"Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the Naval Research Laboratory.[0] It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications." [1]
The article you link to quotes one of the original TOR authors, but fails to link to his words. They're here. [2]
Even if Tor hadn't originally been built by the NRO, spooks would still be using it for their "open source" intelligence gathering: it is effective, well-built software that protects against the threats that it claims to protect against.
That Pando Daily article attempts to claim that the fact that NSA captures Tor traffic makes Tor a danger. The leaked NSA slides from which that fact comes from also reveal that NSA captures and stores (for a long time) all encrypted traffic that they cannot decrypt. [3] This means that connecting to a non-USian site using SSL/TLS makes you just as much a target as Tor usage. :)
I get that people freak out about government funding of this project or that project, but there are a few things to keep in mind here:
1) Tor is open source and is developed in the open. [4]
2) Respected cypherpunks and cryptographers have periodically evaluated the project and declared it to be effective and high quality.
3) A weakening of Tor or the Tor Network reduces its value for intelligence gathering and covert law enforcement operations.
I welcome your questions and/or comments. :)
[0] That phrase links to http://www.onion-router.net/
[1] https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en
[2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-March/0... (Notice that this is an official Tor Project mailing list archive, and that the message is still visible. :) ) Extended discussion is available here: http://www.cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm
[3] Other NSA slides reveal that the NSA can't actually break Tor. They have to rely on endpoint compromise or improper configuration of hidden services to unmask Tor users.
[4] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/