Knowing that "global passive" might include the FBI is still valuable.
Global = can view all network traffic. Partial = can view some portion of network traffic, but not all.
Active = willing/able to modify data as it transits the network. Passive = unable/unwilling to modify data as it transits the network.
The gold standard here would be breaking a specific user's anonymity without modifying the data, i.e. a passive attack by a partial adversary. The smaller the percentage of overall traffic that the system needs to observe, the better.
Could Lizard Squad have executed this attack? (I assume anybody with a botnet could start new Tor relays, so yes.) Is Lizard Squad a global adversary?
The "global" adjective is just used, I think, because cryptographers presume a production deployment of the cryptosystems they discuss would be something like the Web: large enough (millions of nodes) to require globe-spanning resources (millions of other nodes owned by a single group) to execute the attack successfully.
Seen under that lens, neither Tor nor Bitcoin nor any other modern cryptosystem needs a "global" passive adversary to break it. Just a regular "passive adversary."
Imagine if China (used for population reasons) managed to send 300 million spies to the US to socially-engineer their way into all US citizens' personal lives. Now imagine India (again, for population reasons) simultaneously trying the same thing: now, one half of the time, the Chinese are just spying on "American citizens" who are really Indian spies, the Indians are just spying on Chinese spies, and one half of Americans go unmonitored.
It's sort of the same game-theoretic advantage you get from participating in a battle royale competition over participating in a 1v1 competition: for each new adversary you face, that adversary is also dragged down by all the other adversaries and becomes that much easier to deal with.
This really only applies specifically to Sybil attacks, though.
Warrants and wiretaps are narrow and selective, but this Tor intrusion potentially damaged the anonymity of everyone on the network.
If that's what happened, it wasn't a wiretap. It was a tip.
This is an especially silly bit of innuendo given that Tor is itself DoD funded.
It's well known that the DoD has funded Tor from the start. But it's at least decent of them to independently fund CMU to compromise it ;)
Well, it taught us that the FBI is capable of carrying out a successful attack against Tor.
Maybe you knew that already - I didn't.
1. The NSA passes along tips to FBI.
2. The NSA regularly passes along tips.
3. The FBI relies on NSA tips to do its job.
The FBI putting it to the test provides us with valuable information both about the FBI and about Tor.