I find it curious hoe many big corpos maintain .onion services such as reddit and meta (with facebook)

Also, many nodes pass through countries such as the US, UK, DEU, NL and so on.

My rule of thumb is that if something is allowed to operate and exist in the imperial core that goes a bit counterintuitive to bourgeois class goals (specially today with surveillance) then it must have another purpose not easily discovered by the public.

  • Mantiddies@lemmygrad.ml
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    I do think that the CIA (and any other secret service orgs in other countries) operates on multiple layers of the web.

    Its also very common knowledge at least for the German secret service, that secret services are currently recruiting people who are skilled in IT, and hacking. They also train them. Also Data, is such a rewarding business for many. So never think you are alone on the world-wide-web (not to cause hysteria)…

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    One reason they maintain nodes is for their infiltrated agents; They also maintain websites for that. I don’t know if that means they don’t also track you but they have self interest in having tor and keeping it alive.

    It might be more likely if you own a node that you get CIA traffic on it…

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    they can theoretically do deanonymization attacks on tor if they control enough of the nodes.

    and as you said, most nodes are suspiciously located in western five eyes countries.

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    theoretically they can probably deanonymize you just by monitoring your input node and exit node and correlating the timings. an average webpage load takes thousands of packets on the low end, so it would make sense to me that by correlating the time a packet enters the network to the time it exits the network, they could pretty reliably deanonymize users. maybe that’s more difficult in practice but idk

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    4 days ago

    Maybe not maintained in a literal sense but TOR was created with the help of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies and they more than likely still operate nodes.

    To go further, the internet itself was designed for mass surveillance and narrative control.

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      the internet itself was designed for mass surveillance and narrative control.

      Not saying this makes your point null or anything but I find it funny that despite this the first “online transaction” was for marijuana.

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    Anything that seems “too radical”, is notable enough, is “allowed” to exist because it benefits the empire somehow - this is true of media, people and networks such as this.

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    Tor was created by the Navy and is promoted by the American establishment. Embrace old style and non-electronic tactics to avoid tracking.

    A Marine general led a fictional Iran (Red Team) against US military (Blue Team) during a war game exercise, Millennium Challenge 2002.

    “Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, simulating using old methods to evade Blue’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper simulated using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications in the model.”

    “Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue’s fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces’ electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of Blue’s six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue’s navy was “sunk” by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue’s inability to detect them as well as expected.”

    “After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory.”

    https://yewtu.be/watch?v=g9b1DG86a4k

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      Electronic warfare and C&C military technologies are leagues better than they were in 2002, so I’m not entirely sure that a lot of the asymmetric tactics Van Riper used would be of much use, especially in light of immense leaps in satellite imaging, radar tracking, and telecommunications technologies. The reason Riper discarded his electronic technologies was because his forces were expected to deploy antiquated Soviet C&C and radar systems, which in comparison with modern electronic warfare equipment wasn’t only a hinderance, but a liability.

      The opposing general was also incredibly stupid and Riper exploited said stupidity excellently. Especially by pressing Blue team forces up against shipping lanes which prevented the fleet’s CWIS, Sea Sparrow, and other close-in weapons defense platforms from tracking incoming ordnance as the chance of locking neutral shipping or passenger liners was high.

      • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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        against shipping lanes which prevented the fleet’s CWIS, Sea Sparrow, and other close-in weapons defense platforms from tracking incoming ordnance as the chance of locking neutral shipping or passenger liners was high.

        Realistically, wouldn’t those shipping lanes be diverted/closed? I dunno if a cruiseliner is floating along an active war-zone but I could be wrong, honestly.

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    The most plausible theory is that they don’t maintain it in its entirety because that is impossible* since anyone can join in as a node. But three letter agencies probably host and watch some nodes. I can’t say what the implications of that are since there are so many layers of encryption these days I can’t keep up.

    * I say impossible with some caveats. I am not capable enough to understand the source code but seeing how there hasn’t been any scandal around it for the duration of its existence the popular assumptions must be true.