How Perceived Privacy Is Part of the Propaganda
- Tor was developed by the U.S. Navy to protect intelligence operations, not empower criminals.
- The CIA promoted its use publicly to blend their traffic with civilian users and bait criminal activity.
- Despite media fear-mongering, Tor is widely used for good—but don't expect it to hide you from the CIA.
Weapons, drugs, and assassins are the usual pop-culture representation of what Tor stands for. And that’s been infinitely convenient for the CIA who funded its development. But why would a US intelligence agency fund the production of a privacy-based tool designed to “stick it to the man” and create digital privacy from the government so opaque weapons and drugs could be trafficked through it freely?
Well for one the dark web is a convenient honeypot for gathering those criminals. And their confidence in the tool creates a false sense of security that intelligence agencies can exploit. But it didn’t start out that way. How did Tor get the reputation it has today, and why is it still around if it’s being used for CIA surveillance?
Cyberpunks vs. Technocrats
What Hacktivists and Oligarchs Are Fighting Over Cyberpunks vs Technocrats0:00/1222.0342861× * A long-standing battle exists between decentralization advocates (cyberpunks) and centralized power (technocratic oligarchs), shaping the future of privacy, democracy, and digital freedom. * From the 1960s to today, hacktivists have fought against corporate and government surveillance through encryption,
Derek GuzmanDerek Guzman
Like everything that seems brilliant, the dark web was born as an innovation to a small but important problem.Tor’s story begins with Paul Syverson in 1995 on the Potomac in southeast Washington, DC.
Two things were happening at the same time. Everyone was hooking up their operations to the internet like banking, phones, power plants, universities, military bases, corporations, and foreign governments. Hacking was also taking off as foreign threats from Russia and China began infiltrating US network to pry secrets from the nation.
Of course, the US was doing the same thing. But anonymity was becoming a big problem. A CIA agent under deep cover can’t very well login to their operative email on a public network without blowing their cover. A US army officer can’t exactly infiltrate Al-Qaeda recruitment forums without leaking an army base’s IP address. As foreign adversaries became more technologically literate low-level infiltrations became infeasible for the US.
To solve this problem Syverson teamed up with the mathematicians and computer system researchers in the navy to uncover new privacy tech to cloak US military and intelligence operations. That’s where “the onion router” or Tor was invented. They organized a bunch of servers linked in parallel that sat on the normal internet. Covert traffic would be sent through this parallel network, bounced, and scrambled to obfuscate where it came from and where it’s going.
Doing spy shit is no fun if anyone can tell you’re a spy. Which led to their next problem. If they’re the only ones using onion routing, then anyone watching traffic who sees a signal run through a parallel network like that could easily point a donut at the screen and say, CIA agent, right there. The greatest anonymity tech counts for nothing if you’re the only person using that cloaking tech because it kind of identifies your brand of clandestine operation. Really defeats the purpose. Motivated by making their use of anonymity tools anonymous, the CIA moved forward to change the narrative around Tor to suit their needs.
Thanks to a beautiful rebranding technique called propaganda we now associate Tor with criminals, weapons, drugs, child pornography, and assassins for hire. But the truth is more complicated that either the assumption or the color history is painted in.
The Blind Spot in Psychedelic Libertarianism
From Woodstock to Wall Street: The Hippie Sellout Nobody Talks About * 60s hippies opposed surveillance tech but later embraced libertarianism, favoring corporate power over democracy. * Libertarians falsely believe technology inherently liberates, ignoring its role in oppression and corporate dominance. * Neoliberalism turned hippies into pro-tech libertarians, dismantling worker protections and economic
Derek GuzmanDerek Guzman
Today Tor is used for a variety of use cases domestic and foreign. Often with good or great intentions. Journalists and activists around the world have used the technology to create net positive change for their people while protecting themselves from the oversight of their oppressive governments. And Tor can certainly protect you from undeveloped governments or low-level hackers globally, but I wouldn’t count on it to protect you from the CIA. Especially not if you draw too much attention to yourself.
“While law enforcement and the media have painted a picture that Tor and the dark net are nefarious tools for criminals, it is important to understand that they are largely used for good by government agencies, journalists and dissidents around the world,” --Keanu Reeves (Deep Web by Alex Winter)
