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Tor Project Claims FBI Paid University Researchers $1m To Unmask Tor Users

Posted by timothy on from the beats-a-wrench-to-the-knee dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Have Carnegie Mellon University researchers been paid by the FBI to unmask a subset of Tor users so that the agents could discover who operated Silk Road 2.0 and other criminal suspects on the dark web? Tor Project Director Roger Dingledine believes so, and says that they were told by sources in the information security community that the FBI paid at least $1 million for the service. From the article: "There is no indication yet that they had a warrant or any institutional oversight by Carnegie Mellon's Institutional Review Board. We think it's unlikely they could have gotten a valid warrant for CMU's attack as conducted, since it was not narrowly tailored to target criminals or criminal activity, but instead appears to have indiscriminately targeted many users at once," noted Dingledine. "Such action is a violation of our trust and basic guidelines for ethical research. We strongly support independent research on our software and network, but this attack crosses the crucial line between research and endangering innocent users," he pointed out.

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:News At Eleven by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Consultants' perform wide-scale, warrantless, attack against large number of individuals not even suspected of wrongdoing on behalf of FBI under the guise of 'research'(probably not IRB approved); FBI thanks them for their assistance and introduces the fruits of an operation that would have been dubiously legal in scope even with a warrant; much less without one.

    News at 11:30.

  2. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, the FBI paid someone to unmask TOR users, just like anyone could have paid anyone else to unmask TOR users. So what?

    There are two issues here and neither of them are really with the FBI.

    1. It is possible to unmask TOR users. This means that TOR is not fit for purpose. No further use or discussion of TOR is necessary. It is not capable of delivering what it promises on the tin.

    2. CMU "researchers" are willing to be bad actors for a price. If you want to take issue with them, you would be justified.

    The FBI paying someone to do what the FBI does, is not the fucking point. Don't allow yourself to be misdirected away form the fact that TOR is not fit for purpose.