I mean, there are a couple of major points against it: it was originally developed by the CIA, the US government still funds quite a bit of its development and upkeep, and it’s intrinsically vulrnable to de-anonymization of traffic if a bad actor manages to control or spy on enough nodes (namely, if they are simultaneously spying on all of the nodes in your circuit), and the vast majority of Tor nodes are based in the US and EU, specifically the 5/9/14/69/420 eyes countries. Tor seems mainly intended for US intelligence use and also for political dissidents against socialist countries (or just any country the US hates). It’s no coincidence that Tor traffic spikes from whatever country a colour revolution is taking place, like Iran and Russia as two recent examples, which is very apparent if you download Snowflake (which creates a small Tor entry node/bridge on your computer) and monitor which IP addresses are connecting to it.
At the same time, we’re also very explicitly political dissidents and therefore we absolutely need ways to protect our data privacy and security. So… Should communists, especially ones actively campaigning for socialism/communism, be using Tor to anonymize their traffic? I’d instinctively say no but thinking more about it I actually don’t know for sure. Is there a risk it can be booby trapped for us. Are there any alternatives? Anyone familiar with Tor’s architecture who’s able to weigh in on how big a risk it is for us compared to benefit?
That’s what I assume, too. And to reiterate a few other points…
We should be very careful in suggesting that any software is safe. Even besides human error, comms can be hacked, with tech or by infiltrators. And there will be no indication that this is happening; they’ll let revolutionaries plan and even act, then arrest them after, with a huge file of evidence to either flip them (the ideal, as now they don’t even need to code break encryption or to send an undercover agent) or lock them in solitary forever (less ideal, but effective).
This isn’t to say there’s no advantage in taking precautions. Nobody should be making it easy for e.g. Google and Facebook to harvest data, etc.
But even if communists can’t protect their own comms, there’s a broader picture. Sakai talks about people who say ‘I’ve got nothing to hide, so I don’t mind talking to police’. The problem is that if the ‘innocents’ talk, the list of suspects narrows considerably.
Secret services have files on everyone. If they know of 100 people who go to protests, five of which are very tall, and they’re looking for someone very tall who was cheeky to a police officer and they have train records showing that two of the five were out of town, they only need two others to say ‘it wasn’t me’ to find the person they’re looking for.
All intelligence is intelligence, whether it’s positive or negative. It’s safest to assume that all secure channels are being watched and assume that negative data (about non-actives) and positive data (about actives) will be used to create a clearer and clearer picture of the world, which will be used to fight communists.
Even ‘benign’ data has it’s use. E.g. if it is known who rents and who has a mortgage or owns their place outright, it will be known who is more likely to go to a protest about rent controls, and once this is known, it is also known where to position the undercover agent who is tasked with smashing windows to make it look like the protesters are violent.
I remember seeing that Snowden severely reworks his phones to make him as untraceable as possible. He made a whole twitter thread about it, though I’m having trouble finding it, but I do recall him saying to take out certain hardware out of the phone, using a special microphone, never using wifi (especially at home), and many other things. Anyway I mention this because one would have to do a lot of physical adjustments to a phone to be able to communicate privately and even then it’s no guarantee…