It's just like with Tor, government agencies want you to believe that it is used mostly for "criminals", but it isn't.
I fell to government propaganda? Which government's? American? Mine? I dislike both. Did the owner of Bitmixer fall to government propaganda too? They could see what their service was used for and decided there was too much sketchy stuff.
I support vpn, tor, bitcoin, etc. on principle but I have no idea (and it doesn't change my level of support no matter what the answer is) how much of it is used for legal or illegal but moral (China, dictatorships, etc.) stuff and how much for just crime (guns, drugs, hitmen, fraud, etc.) and I'm pretty sure you don't either.
Perhaps you fell to Kool Aid instead and are blind to all the abuse these enabled too?
A crime is a crime only if some authority says that it's a crime. Why should everyone on the Internet be subject to US law (and law of subservient US client states)? There is no law on the Internet except for the raw exercise of skill and power. Consider the NSA, for example. Or the Russians. Or Google and Facebook, for that matter.
There's a revolution going on. Freedom is coming, perhaps. Or failure and subjugation, if the kleptocrats win. Time will tell.
As for why people use tor - you can monitor tor metrics and read news from the countries where you see growth, you'll notice that most users come to tor just to circumvent censorship.
A crime is a crime, no matter the status of its perpetrator, there are lists of "unsolved crimes" where the criminal(s) responsible are still at large and/or unknown.
As for saying so-and-so by name being criminal, that might be slander if they weren't convicted but saying "people who commit crimes are criminals" is absolutely correct and always true, by definition of these words.
Why would there be a phrase "convicted criminal" if it was a tautology and "criminal" itself included the need for conviction in its definition?
Crimes become crimes only when perpetrator is caught and convicted? You can't call clearly illegal things like buying firearms with erased serial numbers or ordering weed and cocaine crimes just because the person doing it did not the caught (yet)?
Do you really think someone does not become a criminal the moment they order a kilo of crack, only the moment they get convicted?
If someone was clearly murdered would you also say they weren't actually murdered until the murderer himself is caught and convicted too? Murder is a crime after all and crime only is confirmed when the criminal is convicted, not when it happens. Can you trample all around the body or is it called a "crime scene" and restricted by the police the moment the prematurely dead body is found?
You are ridiculous, exactly the kind of nutjob (even pulling the "government propaganda" cards on me and the owners of bitmixer for calling drug traffickers criminals) people associated with privacy tools and the kind governments can point at to discredit these tools in people's eyes.
Not only that. The government must establish jurisdiction, or obtain the cooperation of whatever government has jurisdiction.
Indeed, they are.
> ... even though they were never prosecuted. ...
Moreover, even though jurisdiction was never properly established. And even if relevant laws are morally repugnant, and enacted by kleptocrats abusing their power.
> People who use those services are not uncaught criminals, this is just government propaganda, ...
Worse than propaganda, it's unprovoked aggression, by the powerful against the weak.
> they are legitimate users.
Most of them are, I believe.
Bitmixer.io guy/girl and others over there call them criminals and say they do illegal things (i.e.: weapons and drugs) using Bitcoin and mixers. Your distinction is really a moot point and being so pedantic serves no one and just looks stupid.