Tor is designed and engineered to allow anonymity.
Handguns and semi-automatics are designed and engineered to kill humans.
If the creators intent matters, then there is a moral difference between the two.
Handguns and semi-automatics are designed and engineered to kill humans.
If the creators intent matters, then there is a moral difference between the two.
In other words: if you know I have a gun, the weights on what strategies you will consider for selfish gain shift away from those where I would shoot you with the gun, and toward those where I wouldn't. A gun can "do its job" while never being fired once over its service life!
The game theory of guns is basically a smaller-scale replica of the game theory of nuclear weapons—except that it's actually really easy, in the modern day, to ensure a power imbalance (no non-military force has a military level of gunpower), so you don't end up in the particular nuclear Nash equilibrium of everyone having the best weapon and nobody using it (you used to, though; "mutually-assured destruction" was previously known as "a Mexican standoff.")
If you have a gun and I have a gun I have to take into account that you may use it. Which motivates me to preemtivly use it to prevent you from killing me. Of course you can think the same way and I can think that you can think the same way.
Either way, if we both have a gun and I want to maximize my chance of staying alive (thus, fulfilling my survivial instinct), I should shoot.
The difference between that and Nash's equilibrium is quite drastic in that: a) large scale is in play triggering empathic/humanistic thinking b) the person that is in position to use it is usually less desperate and or in personal danger, so it's more "you kill my people" than "you kill me".
So, while I understand your logic, I would argue that the purpose of developing a weapon is to enable killing someone. The purpose of developing TOR is to enable privacy and anonimity.
What I will say is the intent of the creators is being completely misrepresented here. Guns are designed to satisfy a feeling of fear that may or may not be rational. Most guns never kill anyone and most aren't involved in any conflicts. They are made and sold to satisfy fears, their peddlers cater to those fears. This is also why ar-15 style carbines and other nearly useless weapons (you can't hunt with them, they have hardened core ammo that will penetrate all sorts of things after hitting the target.. ) are so popular, they are "more powerful" and satisfy a deeper or more broad fear. Almost nobody buys a gun with the intent to kill someone and I think that's an important distinction.
I'd argue that tor and pgp/gnupg are used in nearly identical ways for most geeks, we're afraid to not have access to them but I don't know anybody that regularly uses tor or pgp for emails and such. It is oddly isomorphic now that I think about it, if you say the purpose of a handgun is to kill a human, I wonder what percentage of their regular use for that purpose is by criminals, it has to be pretty high, much higher than non-criminal use.
At the same time, guns are designed to kill, not to satisfy your need of safety.
There are many other items that work in a similar manner - airbags are designed to save you in an accident, but you want them in your car to feel safer. Burgler alarms are designed to react when someone is breaking into your house, but you install them to reduce the risk that someone will even try, contracts are designed to cover your ass in case of a court case, but they are signed in hope that it makes court case less likely etc.
But coming back to wepons, they are designed to kill. You can argue that fake guns are designed to scare attackers, but real guns are designed to kill. Their parameters, their tests, their ads, their designs, are all focus on precision of shooting, targeting, and efficency of the bullet to penetrate the target. They are designed to be a good tool for killing.
Tor is designed to be a good tool for privacy and anonimity.
You can test it using a simple mental experiment - if the needs of pedophiles and people needing anonimity diverged and became incompatible, I honestly believe that Tor would be developed to fulfill the needs of the latter group. If the need of people looking to feel safe would diverge from the efficency of a weapon in killing, then I honestly believe that the weapon manufacturers would keep designing weapons to be efficient in killing.
> but I don't know anybody that regularly uses tor or pgp for emails and such.
That's a fallacy here. You may not know people who use it, because you may, guessing here, not spend time with people who have a reason to be afraid of their governments. You may not be part of the wikileaks movement. You may not know journalists who track mafia in Italy or Russia. Those are just examples. And, because I work on multiple open source projects, I definitely know many people using PGP on daily basis.
> if you say the purpose of a handgun is to kill a human, I wonder what percentage of their regular use for that purpose is by criminals, it has to be pretty high, much higher than non-criminal use.
I guess you are right. :)
But I'm not sure how it relates to the topic of authors intentions.
The whole idea of drawing moral distinctions between objects is a canard. Objects (including atomic bombs and function-enhanced H5N1) lack agency, so they are of course morally neutral. This neutrality doesn't preclude our talking about the morally-relevant effects these objects have on society though.
It's plausible under the utilitarian calculus that a ban on Tor would be in our collective interest. I personally don't think it is, but the question of Tor's overall utility is legitimate and the answer isn't immediately obvious.