Interesting Paper: Survey of the Dark Net

[Zen]

You guys might find this paper interesting,...it's basically about encryption and the Internet, and discusses the TOR DarkNet as a worst case scenario,...
Survey of the Dark Web, Schneier on Security, Feb 15, 2016
...The comments are interesting,...

[hutch--]

I am probably suspicious by nature but I would never use Tor, my bet is its run by US Homeland Security, NSA or another related security agency.

[anunitu]

I have read suggestions that TOR has been compromised by the NSA and other groups..So I agree with Hutch in his assessment. 

[dedndave]

I am probably suspicious by nature but I would never use Tor, my bet is its run by .....

i have a huge suspicion that the same may be said for windows 10
why else would they be so motivated to bump everyone off windows 7 and 8 ?
i understand that they profit from sales - duh
but, this time it was completely different
they actually tried to force everyone to upgrade long before those OS's were old
with the state of the world, i am guessing there's more to it than meets the eye

[K_F]

I occasionally use TOR but sometimes it's a bit slow compared to seamonkey.

From my experience, when something really bugs Gov agencies (or when they're trying to create paranoia) they tend to make a noise about their intended 'target'.
I think that seeing the focus this time is TOR... would they be making such a noise  about it when they could quietly monitor it.
It's most likely TOR is becoming a pain in the preverbial ...., for them, even with that large computing centre they recently built.

While I'd never dismiss the possibility that the agencies have cracked TOR... I would always be careful about internet usage.
 ;)

[anunitu]

Thing is they would want people to think they did not have a Backdoor,so people would just say and do things without trying to cover it up with code talk kinda. Better for the NSA if people thought they were safe from spying.

[K_F]

Another thing also is that the 'empires' within the gov depts have to pitch for more funding, and justify their existence.
So nothing like fear and terror to get a few $$$s more.

Having worked before in funded research, it's amazing what stories are sold at the hat in hand time.. when it would be so much easier to show/prove what has previously been done with funded money.... that's if they've done some work, that is... 
Leading up to the begging session.. there's a glint of gold teeth and the long knives come out... amazing thing to watch.
You thought academia was a peaceful place, no ways, those creeps make polititians look like children at kindergarten ;)

[Zen]

I am probably suspicious by nature but I would never use Tor, my bet is its run by US Homeland Security, NSA or another related security agency.

...I've read in several reliable references that Tor was developed by the United States Department of Defense (see below),...initially, to allow foreign dissidents to post anonymous status updates from authoritarian countries that have pervasive surveillance of citizens to identify and censor information that contradicts the official news media,...
...I have no doubt that the Tor network is riddled with honeypots, traps and Internet protocol black holes,...

Here is a comprehensive Wikipedia page about Tor: Tor (Anonymity Network), Wikipedia
This is from the Tor Wikipedia page mentioned above:

The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997.

[xanatose]

...I've read in several reliable references that Tor was developed by the United States Department of Defense

Just as Bitcoin was created by the NSA as a test if people would accept a cyber currency. If you own the major internet nodes (which they do), you can know who traded bitcoins with whom. Which makes their job far easier than with cash.