"... First, the pedo site saw magnitudes more traffic than the counterfeiting or drugs websites – in the order of 100 times more traffic than the other two combined. ..."
BTW I wasn't arguing that Tor itself is bad, just refusing to engage in the common denialism one sees among crypto and Tor advocates in claiming it has no bad uses. The truth is that many things have negative uses: guns, knives, security systems, Bitcoin, crypto, fireworks, spray paint, alcohol or virtually any drug, explosives, drones, cameras, etc. All those things have positive uses as well, and it's ultimately the user who is responsible for how they are used. Pedophiles use SSL too, should we ban that?
As far as police and intelligence agency use of Tor, look up some of the talks by the Tor founders in which they cite examples of these uses. In addition to undercover use, Tor is useful for law enforcement to hide their network location while investigating potential criminal sites online. Otherwise a site might easily see that the traffic is coming from a police or .gov site.
Traffic to hidden services makes up a tiny fraction of the overall use of the Tor network.[0] Any conclusions drawn from that use is highly skewed, and cannot be used to draw conclusions about Tor itself.
http://geekslop.com/2015/catching-pedophiles-running-secret-...
"... First, the pedo site saw magnitudes more traffic than the counterfeiting or drugs websites – in the order of 100 times more traffic than the other two combined. ..."
BTW I wasn't arguing that Tor itself is bad, just refusing to engage in the common denialism one sees among crypto and Tor advocates in claiming it has no bad uses. The truth is that many things have negative uses: guns, knives, security systems, Bitcoin, crypto, fireworks, spray paint, alcohol or virtually any drug, explosives, drones, cameras, etc. All those things have positive uses as well, and it's ultimately the user who is responsible for how they are used. Pedophiles use SSL too, should we ban that?
As far as police and intelligence agency use of Tor, look up some of the talks by the Tor founders in which they cite examples of these uses. In addition to undercover use, Tor is useful for law enforcement to hide their network location while investigating potential criminal sites online. Otherwise a site might easily see that the traffic is coming from a police or .gov site.