Nobody in San Francisco will be "held accountable for" what happens through
her TOR node. Judges are not stupid. Yet, the USA may become the new Syria
within 10 years. Who knows? Actually, I believe any activist/journalist (and
any other people governments love to watch) should take care right now of
communicating in an anonymous way. For instance I definitely recommend you to
use TOR to "stand by your views" if any powerful entity, say a government,
may dislike those views.
And, again, I am not only talking about China (where many political activists
are in jail) and Russia (where journalists are murdered). The CIA, for
instance, can know far too much about anybody. Beyond their own means, they
can ask Amazon what books people read, they can ask Facebook what are their
friends, they can ask Google what they are searching for, they can ask
Microsoft to remotely spy their on computing activities, etc. There will be
abuses... if this is not already the case. You do not have to worry about the
governments being powerless. Quite the contrary: anonymous communications
must be easy to get. @SirGrant: thank you.
Watching the BBC through TOR (what you consider acceptable) saturates the
nodes and worsen the bitrate of those who really need it.
