> Far better to test it in court with a stupid revenge porn website than testing it with a case of, for example, a whistleblower where authorities feels they need to win.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the less privacy-obsessed posters on here. Even so: really?

Hypothetically speaking, if the US state apparatus wants to clamp down on Tor and anonymising services, then you don't want your test case to be a whistleblower for whom there may turn out to be wider public sympathy. You want it to be some obvious, incontrovertible scumbag. Plays much, much nicer in the public gallery. That's just how it's done.

Cf. how a more punitive defamation regime in the UK was won on the back not of politicians trying to protect their expenses or some such, but the hacking of a dead teenager's voicemail and various other dirty tricks of the gutter press. This is just the way you do things.