The claim is nothing more than propaganda. The DOJ knows the truth, and the people who are part of the technical community know the truth.
Saying this is just using false information to sway the public, and looking to badge things that are just tools as inherently evil tools, or tools only used for evil.
Disclaiming the lie is a good step - but I'd like to see the rebuttal coming from a more mainstream media source. Wired writing this article is preaching to the choir.
It's the "save our children" argument -- the very same argument the UK's Cameron et al are using to propel new legislation like banning all non back-doorable encryption, and so-called "porn filters" a la blanket censorship of whatever the gov't deems censor-worthy (sometimes even political content).
They spread fud and fearmonger the general population into believing something must be done to prevent all of this "law enforcement circumventing" encryption and anonymity (aka. privacy)...
You know... because only criminals use encryption and anonymity tools. Only criminals have anything to hide; that they don't want other individuals and criminals (and government) to obtain.
Forget all the good and valid reasons for encryption and privacy! Like protecting your medical records... protecting your financial records... your private correspondence... or the very ability to enter your credit card information on a website and trust it can't be MITM'ed. Only criminals want any of that.
In essence it's a false flag operation. They are having problems getting support for corrupting the Tor network so they are making things up.
I wish someone in Congress would ask and investigate the DOJ and FBI on how much of the kiddie porn is actually generated and associated with and originating from DOJ and FBI operatives who are trying to attract those who would want that kind of thing. I know it's not 0.
I have a tough time imagining that they would generate (taking this word to mean "create") child porn. I could easily see them taking what they've found and publishing it however.
I gather that various conservative cultures see much of Western popular culture as child porn. Even to arguably dissolute Americans, aspects of popular Japanese culture look a lot like child porn.
Who gets to set standards on the Internet? If the least-permissive standard won for each category, the Internet would be boring.
I have absolutely no difficulty imagining the ruling elite using their heinous secret society to produce material that can be used to repress us all. One only need look at how well the Franklin Affair was managed to see that the elite do indeed have their inner society, and that they can get away with the most heinous crimes, given enough secrecy and deceit; something our ruling masters are getting better at as the years go by.
Most damaging, I think, is the ability of governments to keep secrets - this is the most destructive force in governance, I believe, and we the people have to realize that the right for governments in power to keep secrets is a form of violence upon the body politic. But unless we yank the chain by revoking that power on occasion, I think it gets abused all too well.
In fact, I think the only valid response to the governments new calls to remove public encryption is to demand that the right for governments to keep secrets be revoked, by the people. Let us answer their call for intrusion into our private lives with the response: no more secrets in government then, either!
>Most damaging, I think, is the ability of governments to keep secrets
Hear, hear! But propose that the government be open and transparent and people complain about all of our military secrets being public. Fucking good, that's the point.
The source of the confusion here is obvious and pounding on it won't help. From the DoJ's perspective Tor is hidden services. Criminal abuse enabled by proxying to the open web is not high up on their radar. Regular web sites can easily block Tor. But hidden services are unique. When Tor is mentioned in the media, it's almost always because of hidden services. When it's involved in large scale FBI investigations, it's almost always because of hidden services.
So whilst Andy Greenberg's article is correct, it's correct in a nitpicky technical sense that isn't going to have any political impact as an argument. Tor has chosen to support hidden services very strongly, so the fact that it's a relatively small amount of their total traffic doesn't matter much.
The Tor project needs to take this kind of thing seriously. Alarm bells should be ringing. They are getting (apparently credible?) tipoffs about plans to seize directory authorities. Relays actually are getting seized. DoJ officials are publicly saying they perceive Tor as being dominated by crime. Meanwhile they are doubling down and making blog posts that describe police operations as "attacks". This has the feeling of a slow motion train wreck in the making.
It doesn't matter. You can't use in-group specialized vocabulary when talking to out-group audiences. You must either use common vernacular or somehow give new, commonly accepted definitions to the words you want to use.
Saying this is just using false information to sway the public, and looking to badge things that are just tools as inherently evil tools, or tools only used for evil.
Disclaiming the lie is a good step - but I'd like to see the rebuttal coming from a more mainstream media source. Wired writing this article is preaching to the choir.