It is debatable if Tor provides any more security than just using someone else's open wifi point. Great for evading bans on online forums, worthless against the DEA.
- How Tor was created by the U.S. government (Naval Research Lab) for the purpose of providing anonymity to intelligence agencies. It is now also widely used by law enforcement agencies to maintain anonymity in criminal investigations.
- How the project was funded primarily by intelligence agencies.
- How the NSA, which can monitor a large fraction of internet traffic, can unmask Tor users by correlating traffic directed at Tor entry points with traffic observed at Tor exit points. Snowden's leaks revealed that the NSA was working on breaking Tor anonymity and believed its efforts were "pretty much guaranteed to succeed".
That's absolutely not true and if the author doesn't understand why, then he doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about.
Additionally, the list of exit nodes is open and public, (https://www.torproject.org/projects/tordnsel.html.en) so any given server can tell if you're using Tor.
Comparing Tor to your neighbor's open wifi was an example of how poor Tor's anonymity is, rather than how good your neighbor's connection is.
Tor anonymises extremely well both client and server. All other stuff in between should be used through SSL and with caution (after all SSL is kinda broken and the NSA can perform MiTM attack or steal and sign certificates from major authorities).
If you 'leak' metadata using JS or by logging to services e.g. to Facebook (the dumbest use of TOR I've ever seen), then obviously state-level authorities are not your concern. Otherwise you wouldn't real had public profiles on social networks anyway.
Comparing the neighbours Open WiFi to TOR is very naive, even if the NSA is after you. The Open WiFi will a give 1km radius of your CURRENT position on-the-fly. On the other hand to analyse metadata sniffed from an exit-node will probably take hours if not weeks and still would be a (mostly) wild guess over where you where at the time of the attack.
OTOH, I am not sure this is a bad thing, at least in terms of the "legality of Tor" ... it's often discussed whether simply using Tor will, at some point, be legally questionable and I think there is a built-in legal defense here: How can merely using Tor ever be illegal if it is currently funded by the government ?