You are implicitly blaming the projects and the developers, while the rest of the world spends billions on developing software and networks without having any regard for privacy.
No low latency system will be anonymous in the face of a global passive adversary. Tor does not claim to protect against a global passive adversary.
That isn't true. The trivial system is the one where everyone has a broadcast transmitter and transmits constantly even when there isn't a real message.
The implementation of that over the internet is full mesh, which is impractical, but it's a spectrum trading off anonymity for bandwidth and there are potentially interesting points along that spectrum between Tor and full mesh, where they use more bandwidth but then a global passive adversary can't learn anything. Something like virtual circuit switching could potentially work for example.
nothing is IMO. it's a function of raising the cost so it becomes too prohibitive for an adversary to track you. the only way to be "truly" anonymous online is not to go online (or to be truly anonymous irl is to stop being alive).
We should all realize that there are much worse outcomes than the current society we live in, and lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe. Truly anonymous communication is a catastrophe-enabler.
"Could be worse" is not a compelling argument.
> lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe.
I'm curious what you could possibly be thinking of, because to me it seems obvious that the exact opposite is true.
This idea that all communication must be "accountable" to a central authority is very modern, and very very dystopian.
If bad guys can conspire in secret, I consider that an acceptable sacrifice in the name of liberty. Just like ensuring there is no surveillance inside of bathrooms (but what if terrorists assemble their bombs there!).
It is remarkable how often zealots are eager to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others to achieve their 'liberty'.
Liberty isn't enhanced by enhancing the ability those who wish to harm us to do so. We have laws and law enforcement for a reason. Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations. That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
I also find it remarkable how often people are willing to sacrifice any amount of liberty in the name of preserving life.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? That would certainly deter a lot of crime. Of course it's an obviously ridiculous extreme, but it serves to illustrate that you don't really believe that in a tradeoff between liberty and safety, we should always decide in favor of safety. All we're arguing about is where to draw the line.
> Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations.
And it is only very recently that our government was even capable of beginning to block it. Untraceable communication has been the norm for all of human history. We survived. You act like law enforcement is powerless without it, but of course that's not the case.
> That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish.
Would you say that there are material, qualitative differences in the way electronic communication increases an organizations ability to execute, vs, say, people hiding handwritten notes in their underwear?
> That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish
What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
Would you say that unmonitored electronic communication is an order of magnitude more dangerous to society than unmonitored postal mail?
50 years ago, would you have been this alarmist insisting that the government needs to open and examine every single letter that goes through the mail service in order to make sure that nobody is discussing anything illegal?
> What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
I don't know, I haven't seen such a person.
Instead, I'm someone who says that communication has, gotten easier and easier every generation, throughout history. Today's electronic communications are a small evolution past paper mail.
If the government really, legitimately suspects you of something, they're free to ask a judge for permission to install a keylogger, or arrest you and search your hard drive. These are things that happen, and they work, and it's fine.
And ya know, I'm really interested in hearing your answer to the questions I've already posed, instead of trying to further caricature my position by claiming the state of the art before the digital age was hiding hand-written notes in underwear.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? What's the qualitative difference between the safety boost provided by that, and this world you're describing where we somehow re-bottle the pandora's box of cryptography?