[kmeisthax]

Tor was originally written by US intel agencies specifically to provide cover for spies. The release of the software to the public was specifically to provide plausible deniability for those spies. So there's always going to be some level of control and knowledge the US has about the network.

If your threat model is anything weaker than a hostile nation state then Tor is still probably good enough to use as a darknet. If you're doing anything illegal over Tor then you probably should be more worried about OPSEC failures or rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

[hereforphone]

Are you sure it was supposed to provide "cover for spies"? AFAIK onion routing was an invention of the US Naval Research Laboratories and was public from the beginning. If you want "spies" to use it, you don't want them connecting to known gateways. High anonymity (simplex) is why number stations are still a thing.

[rickdeveloper]

> If you want "spies" to use it, you don't want them connecting to known gateways.

The best place to hide a tree is in a forest.

If you have both 'normal' users and spies connecting to this host, who will tell who's the spy?

[0xFFFFFFFFF]

Do number stations still a thing? Here in Europe there are just some beacons that broadcast the same message daily but no other activity whatsoever.

[hereforphone]

They're still a thing as recently as a year or two ago when I looked into it. They're "perfect" in that the receiver can't be identified from the message or its channel (other than catching him with his radio), and that the message cannot be reversed (encoded w/ a one time pad). So they're hard to replace.

[DarylZero]

One time pads aren't perfect. The same secret has to be stored on both sides and can be compromised from either side.

OTP has to be delivered preserving secrecy. Transmitting a public key only needs to preserve integrity.