It makes sense for the NSA to run exit nodes for the same reason it makes sense for the U.S. Office of Naval Research to have funded its creation and for the U.S. State Dept. to heavily fund its upkeep. There is a vested U.S. national security interest in residents of hostile regimes to be able to freely access the Internet without being traced, even with the knowledge that it may be used to make it more difficult for the U.S. itself to meet other security goals.

If you look at the history of anonymity networks, you'll notice that tor totally replaced mixing networks. Considering the fact that mixing nets are more secure against government, with regards to email, it is interesting that the u.s only invests in and promotes tor.

But in a world where individuals have access to extremely powerfull tech, something has to be done.

I think the solution for privacy might look like something different. Maybe the government could read everything, but there would be some good transparency tools, ensuring proper usage.

Mixing networks (especially for email) died for a lot of reasons, not really fair to blame Tor forthat.

And I agree -- high latency systems are far more secure. Something with 5-10 day latency should be secure under a lot of assumptions. Sadly the old mixmaster code is lame, and mixminion never really took over.

There you go injecting sanity into the discussion again mpyne. Tinfoil hats are the latest hipster fashion accessory and you are ruining all the fun.

Can you cite your source regarding the NSA operated Tor exit?

I do not mean this to be snarky -- if you have a legitimate source other than hearsay, I'd love to see it.

No I cannot, because this individual stated that "a 3 letter federal agency" operates the node. Thus never really saying it was the NSA. Given the recent news though, one can only guess it was the NSA.

Is it really that hard to believe? Considering that the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) gets mostly DoD contracts and research grants and a lot of those contracts are for classified projects.

When I was in college, we always heard rumors of CIA doing this and NSA doing that... with the exception of the few NSA mathematicians who took sabbaticals in our math department, I generally assumed it was BS. (They were really nice guys, by the way. I learned elliptical factorization from one of them. Sure wish I remembered it!) This was the late 90s, not the heydey of LSD research and all that crazy stuff. I only wish...

Now, as for DoD funding institutional research, absolutely (they funded me last year for something completely benign and outside the scope for "info wars"). They fund research at a lot more places than GT. So, yes, plausible. But, unlikely IMO that NSA has an active presence on your campus doing intelligence work.

BTW, I challenge your claim that GT gets "mostly DoD". I'm sure your school is primarily funded by NSF (the preferred government tit to suck on). DoD is actually a pain in the ass to deal with because they don't go away after the money changes hands. Same is true for SBIR/STTR.

Finally, DoD classifies everything. Don't let that label fool you into thinking the work is sensitive (or even interesting). Within academia, this is less so because the objective of funding institutional research to produce publications. Contract R&D is not something that is popular with faculty (or the school, since depending on the IP ownership, it can put their tax exempt status at risk.)

That said, keep snooping and let us know what you find in that room labeled "no personnel permitted without super-duper top secret clearance".

It all makes sense now.

No it is not hard to believe that NSA doles out a lot of research money to schools across the country. Information Assurance is one of NSA's core missions.

The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) is a three-letter agency...

What node? I am not seeing any nodes in:

  128.61.0.0/19
  128.61.32.0/19
  128.61.64.0/18
  128.61.128.0/17
  130.207.0.0/16
  143.215.0.0/16
  204.152.10.0/23

Does GaTech have another ASN?

I'm not sure where you got that list form, but GTRI does a lot of DoD contract work and probably has quite a large range of addresses it can use.

I got that list from Hurricane Electric[1] site. Those are the prefixes for Gatech. I am sure they do get a lot of research work. The same goes for all the other NSA centers of excellence.[2] Academia is the third tab on NSA's home page.[3]

[1] http://bgp.he.net/AS2637#_prefixes

[2] http://www.nsa.gov/ia/academic_outreach/nat_cae/institutions...

[3] http://www.nsa.gov/academia/index.shtml

> You probably have more privacy by not using Tor at all.

This statement is beyond absurdity. Controlling a few exit nodes doesn't compromise Tor, it's designed to resist that. Tracing someone is possible, but it is extremely difficult and/or unreliable unless you've managed to compromise nearly all nodes on a chain.