Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulluuk | Hacker News Reader

After reading Edward Snowden's autobiography (Permanent Record, great read), I feel like Tor, end-to-end encryption and similar solutions/products are basically a dagger through the heart of intelligence services. As such, I find it hard to believe that they knowingly gave the public such tools. And if they did, it sure as hell backfired on them.

View on HN

It is not a "dagger to the heart", it is something they have to take into account.

What makes things harder for them makes it harder for the enemy, and vice-versa.

If anything, maybe it will help intelligence services realize that gathering intelligence is only half of the job, keeping secrets is the other half. Well, maybe they already realized it and we are not aware of that (it means it worked). But at the time of Snowden's leaks they failed big time. While most people focused on the content of the leaks and arguing about whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor, what I mostly saw is a guy who managed to break the security of the NSA. If a single guy can do that, what about trained spies backed by world power gouvernements? I guess countries like Russia and China already knew everything there was to know about the NSA. I could go for some "master plan" conspiracy theory, but my guess is just that the NSA is incompetent, or at least it was at the time of Snowden. Maybe that "dagger to the heart" is more like a wake up call, I hope for them.

Tor was developed by the US Navy. The military understands how crucial encrypted messaging is, and doesn't particularly care whether or not it's a dagger through the heart of other TLAs. In a bureaucratic battle between the military and domestic intelligence agencies, the military wins.

And additionally funded by the US State Department to provide anonymity for users seeking political expression in countries where that expression may be dangerous.

The State dept happily encouraged the use of broken cryptography machines in the past. They don't have a clean record on transparency.

If they run enough nodes to deanonymize users, it's a dagger through the heart of other intelligence services, but an absolute blessing for the NSA

Hmmm almost like whoever has a head start and unlimited finances and resources due to being the reserve currency could have done exactly that.

For very obvious reasons you don't need to run any nodes, craft any malware, or scrutinize a target's layer 3+ OPSEC, in order to break Tor. You simply go to tier 1 ISPs and buy up IP datagram headers going to/from entry nodes and you win. The only solution is a constant rate of fake traffic to the guard node.

Why? Snowden said they do traffic anaylsis on everyone, including phone calls. They find you via other means if you are not extremely careful like Snowden himself.

Discussion about these issues has been stifled since critics like Assange and Applebaum have been smeared (but not prosecuted) with sex charges and Greenwald is being depicted as a conspiracy theorist.

> After reading Edward Snowden's autobiography (Permanent Record, great read), I feel like Tor, end-to-end encryption and similar solutions/products are basically a dagger through the heart of intelligence services. As such, I find it hard to believe that they knowingly gave the public such tools. And if they did, it sure as hell backfired on them.

I have heard it somewhere but using Tor or end-to-end is like using armoured car to transport money between park bench and cardboard box. If someone wants you compromised, you will get compromised, it only matters how many resources they are willing to throw at you. And for average person, it's not a lot. So best way is to blend in. And using Tor, end-to-end, VPN(full of people with something to hide, it would be stupid not to infiltrate or honeypot) will make you stand out, you might even peek someone's curiosity. Not a very healthy way to operate on the Internet...

> If someone wants you compromised, you will get compromised, it only matters how many resources they are willing to throw at you.

Wants who compromised? What are they going to do against people who use no pseudonym and never originate from the same machine or the same physical location?

E2E and onion routing are potentially problematic -- if they aren't compromised by the government. When controlled by the government, they can lull the targets of government surveillance into a false sense of security. For instance, the government-run Anom[0] network that was completely compromised, but claimed E2E encryption. I wouldn't exactly call it a dagger through the heart of government sigint activity.

0 - https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-sold-criminals-fake-encrypted...

BBC which is run by BritishIntel Services, one of the very first things that they did when the war in Ukraine exploded was to set up many new TOR nodes

But yeah, TOR is certainly a double edged sword, but I am led to believe that they assess that it's offensive capabilities to pierce against Anglo-Oligarchy enemies offsets the drawbacks it produces on how they themselves deal with homefront dissidents

My take is that, well, yeah, that's one of the benefits of having overwhelming power and capabilities, that they can afford to take one or two punches in the nose, if that means that they will beat the ever living shit out of their actual enemies

As long as Ukraine exists, the Darknet has free roam to proliferate with US's half-baked OKAY'ing.

It is sharpest triple-edged sword in modern intelligence existence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com