On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Paul Syverson <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:39:56AM -0700, Jim wrote: > > > > > > arshad wrote: > > > hi all, > > > forgive me for my ignorance. > > > may i know why governmetns fund TOR. i read 49% funds coming from > > > government. TOR is usually considered for passing government > restriction > > > by journalists and activists. so why should governments fund this? > > > > I can't speak for all governments but it might be relevant to point out > > that onion routing started (as I understand it -- anybody, feel free to > > correct) as a project of the U.S. Navy and was used by the various > > branches of the U.S armed forces to use the Internet anonymously. > > Trouble was, that although their targets could not tell *exactly* who > > was visiting their website, they could tell it was U.S. military. So, > > as I understand it, they released the technology so they could hide > > among the civilians. > > > > Even within a particular govt you can have conflicting goals. Part may > > wish to prevent its citizens from being anonymous while another part may > > find it useful to use civilians for cover. > > > > Just my speculation ... > > I'm not speaking for any government, including my employer or my > funders, but I can say something about why we, the inventors of onion > routing and designers of Tor, did what we did. We were as explicit as > possible as to what we intended and why with funders, management and > others. Presumably some of it was agreeable since we received support. > The above is largely correct, so I am only clarifying where I thought > there was room for misinterpretation. The primary purpose for which > we proposed and designed onion routing networks (including Tor, which > started life in some of my NRL onion routing projects) was to separate > identification from routing, as we note in the first onion routing > publication "Hiding Routing Information" in 1996 and at > www.onion-router.net. Jim's speculation on the above cited motivation > was not something we ran across through experience but rather a design > motivation from the very beginning. We argued fifteen years ago that > to protect private traffic when going to and from a public network you > needed to carry traffic for others not just yourself, which meant that > they had to trust the network, which meant that you had to diffuse > trust by letting others run part of the infrastructure and that you > had to let them see the code. I think this is essentially stated in > our early onion routing publications. This was also part of the reason > we sought and received our first publication release for public > distribution of onion routing code in 1996. We were open source before > that phrase was in general use. My comments apply only to the funding > I received and the motivations we had. Other later goals of, e.g., > censorship resistance and other funding of Tor I have not been part of > and should let others comment. > > HTH, > Paul > *********************************************************************** > To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to [email protected] with > unsubscribe or-talk in the body. http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/ > I like hearing the history of this project, and wouldn't mind hearing more about the challenges you faced back then, who the challengers were, and what their point of view and/or concerns were. Paul, thank you for all your hard work! - K
