> The things that makes TOR useful for people avoiding prosecution also makes it useful for people involved in malicious and criminal activities ... Everything from spam and network attacks to trafficking people and contraband.

> Although the Tor Project could promote options to restrict these malicious actions, they choose to do nothing. Seriously: if a TOR hidden service offers hard-core drugs or human trafficking or fake IDs, then they should be shut down.

I hope I can convince some folks here to be skeptical of this kind of thinking.

Think about it: If the Tor project came up with some clever way to take down bad hidden services, then what would be stopping a government from forcing them to take down legitimate hidden services too? And meanwhile, the criminals would move on to some other Tor-like service, and keep doing their thing.

In short, you're not going to stop criminals, who will always find a way to keep doing what they're doing. You will, on the other hand, impede the free speech of honest users.

The Tor project should focus on making it impossible for hidden services to be taken down--even by the Tor project itself! And they do :)