Yasha Levine writes about the ties between the internet, the US government, and surveillance, including the Tor Project's funding.
HN commenters cite it as a book recommendation and for claims on Tor's government ties, though some say the details need closer scrutiny.
Well Bitcoin is completely unsuitable for handling transactions for many reasons (transaction time, energy consumption, just to name a few). Btw. until you are going through internet devices (routers) with your transactions government surveillance is there, so it does not solve that either. The reason why even security aware people think that cryptocurrency guys are nuts is exactly this reason, you think that you can outsmart an adversary that has unlimited resources (at least compare to you). If you look at recent developments in Australia you would understand that you cannot do anything against a government than vote the right people into power and apply pressure to politicians to end unlimited surveillance that is granted with laws like the Patriot Act.
"Coupling Tor with a trusted coin tumbler, any serious criminal can hide his tracks"
They absolutely cannot. Their tracks are in the the NSA database in Utah. Tor is great for one thing mark yourself suspicious so it is easier to track you down.
https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/interview-in-german-magazine-konkret-about-tor-and-the-cult-of-crypto
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nzemvg/dont-just-rely-on-tor-security-advice-from-an-alleged-dark-web-veteran
https://boingboing.net/2016/07/01/researchers-find-over-100-spyi.html
TL;DR version for the inpatient
"It all depends on who you are trying to protect yourself from. The biggest forces of surveillance in the world are not governments, but private…
>This is not true, and you will not be able to cite evidence that it is.
https://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance_the_terrifying_deals_between_silicon_valley_and_the_security_state/
https://surveillancevalley.com (review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/06/surveillance-valley-by-yasha-levine-review)
>The first search result for [google disable ad targeting] is a support page linking directly to that toggle. "Labyrinthine" is not the word I would use to describe this state of affairs.
Interesting, because the first result I get when I search those exact terms is a support article about how to make sure ad targeting is turned on:
https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662856?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en
"Control the ads you see
You can make the ads you see more useful or get ads that are specific to you. You'll see Google ads on:
Google services, like Search or YouTube.
Websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads."
It is built by an anarchist person who always refused to give out personal info of people to the point where his company was taken from him, and he ran away to France. He and his brother hired a ton of PhDs and made lots of paid challenges that no one could break their encryption. Their software is open sourced. The encryption Moxie Marlinspike uses was conveniently funded by the very US government agencies interested in breaking encryption.
https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/government-backed-privacy-tools-are-not-going-to-protect-us-from-president-trump
https://twitter.com/durov/status/872891017418113024?s=21
Or if you want just a track record of the most RECENT bugs and backdoors that were exploited, look two months ago:
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/01/21/bugs-video-chat-apps/
Find me the same for Telegram!
This link should explain it:
https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/fact-checking-the-tor-projects-government-ties
The author of this book did FOIA requests to various entities but most of them got predictably shot down for national security concerns. This one obscure government agency, Broadcasting Board of Governors, wasn't covered by these exemptions.
So the author read the emails between BBG and the Tor Project maintainers and found that when they received a bug report, rather than fixing it they reported it to their sponsors. The government would then exploit the bug for years before the Tor guys got around to fixing it.
As does Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley.
https://surveillancevalley.com/
And I realize anti-establishment innuendo is taboo here, but if yc is focused on bringing forth more products and services to the world, then doing so without understanding what things the world may honestly want or need, without some pretext of empathy for the source of those wants and needs, is as reprehensible as it is ineffective. When nobody today is satisfied, to the extent the richest man Bezos feels the need to upgrade his life partner, then we are not doing ourselves any justice in thinking technology can either save or replace dying virtue.
Yasha Levine has been promoting this view for years now. He doesn't appear to have a complete understanding of the technology he writes about, but still makes these accusations that anything the USA spends money on must be compromised.
See: https://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/
another: https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/government-backed-privacy-tools-are-not-going-to-protect-us-from-president-trump
and another: https://pando.com/2015/03/01/internet-privacy-funded-by-spooks-a-brief-history-of-the-bbg/
He brings up some good points, but then jumps to conclusions which don't actually seem reasonable.