The Sectarian Nature of Crypto Anarchy

The constant pursuit of online privacy and anonymity drives us to use tools like Tor, which might provide a false sense of security. Is Crypto Anarchy only for the few?

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The quest for online anonymity is as challenging as the search for the Holy Grail. Does it exist or not? And if it does, how can it be achieved?

The discussion often shifts to using tools designed to obscure browsing, such as Tor, which many of you might be familiar with.

For those who don’t know, the Tor protocol allows browsing traffic to bounce through a network of decentralized servers, called nodes, before reaching its destination. Essentially, when a computer connects to the Tor network, the traffic is routed through an entry node and then redirected to random intermediary nodes before arriving at the exit node, which then connects to the destination server.

These features make the Tor protocol particularly attractive for those seeking a minimum level of anonymity while browsing. It is indeed complex for an adversary monitoring Tor traffic to determine the origin or destination of the connection and identify a specific user.

Tor, therefore, represents an easy solution for the masses: easy to use (thanks to Tor Browser) and already integrated into various services.

Government connections and intelligence ingerence in Tor

But can Tor be trusted? Is it possible that if it were that simple, our governments would allow us this tool, along with many others?

In truth, Tor was initially developed by the government. More precisely, by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, and then taken over by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Pentagon.

Since then, it has been almost entirely funded by U.S. government through the Open Technology Fund — an entity connected to Radio Free Asia (RFA) and funded by the United States Congress.

As noted by

Kit Klarenberg

in his article, Tor has long enjoyed significant funding from the U.S. government, and it is thanks to the United States that it is such a widespread tool today.

Again, as mentioned by Klarenberg, the public spread of Tor was planned precisely to enhance the so-called “anonymity set” of users: by expanding the user base, the U.S. government could mitigate the risk of identifying its assets (spies, informants, military, etc.) who used Tor to browse and communicate anonymously.

The Open Technology Fund has financially supported many technologies over time with the same purpose as Tor. Among these is Signal, which, however, has recently lost funding (and is, in fact, struggling).

And if this alone should raise our eyebrows, there’s more. Klarenberg also informs us of the existence of a document titled “Tor: Overview of Existing Techniques” leaked with the Snowden revelations, which reveals the joint activities of GCHQ (UK) and NSA (USA) to direct Tor traffic to nodes controlled by them, as well as to actively influence the development of the Tor protocol.

The Lesson of the Cypherpunks

This does not mean that Tor, or any other tool funded by the United States (such as Signal), is inherently malicious and unreliable, but that there are some considerations to be made.