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Where did Tor come from, again?



Created by the US Navy and currently majorly funded by the US Department of State, for those unaware.


"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (Not sure a rhetorical question to make some vague accusation counts as a substantive comment)


It's not a "vague accusation", onion routing was developed by the US Naval Research Academy ("NRL", a 3 letter government agency).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)#History for more detail.


The vague accusation is that because "onion routing"[1] has roots in the military, it must have a backdoor that we haven't uncovered in decades. If the person had posted this Wikipedia link with the info you mentioned, for example, I wouldn't have thought it unsubstantial per the guidelines (even if the claim/accusation itself is unsubstantiated by the evidence, that's a difference of opinion and not a guidelines thing).

[1] Not the cryptography, not even the code implementation, but just the general concept: having a message packed in several layers of encryption such that intermediate routers don't know the contents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing


The entire Internet has its roots in the US military, as does ASCII.




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