DOJ Official Tells 100 Federal Judges To Use Tor (vice.com)

The director for the Cybercrime Lab at the Department of Justice urged a roomful of 100 federal judges to use Tor to protect their computers, remembers judge Robert J. Bryan. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vice: While the US is the biggest funder of the non-profit that maintains the software, law enforcement bodies such as the FBI are exploiting Tor browser vulnerabilities on a huge scale to identify criminal suspects. To add to that messy, nuanced mix, one Department of Justice official recently personally recommended Tor to a room of over a hundred federal judges...

"I almost felt like saying, 'That's not a good way to protect your stuff, because the FBI can go through it like eggshells,'" Bryan continues. Of course, this isn't really true: although the FBI has had some notable successes at identifying criminal suspects on the dark web with technological means, it is not the norm. It's worth remembering Carroll is not the only Justice Department or US law enforcement official to endorse Tor...one FBI agent was also an advocate of Tor.

Comments

Re:FBI approved eggshells

[lgw]

TOR seems really good at preventing mass harvesting of data by the government. Everything we've seen requires them to make a special effort to hack someone they're interested in, so maybe it's not so useful for high-profile criminal activity. But for doing things today which may be made illegal one day in the future, and your browsing history used against you, it seems to work fine.