Re: Commercial tor offering?

[OgnenD <ognen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 05 December 2008 15:53:59 Arrakis wrote:
> Robert,
>
> One problem with the idea of "independent analysis" when applied to
> technology,  is that it requires that there is an independent analyst with
> equivalent or superior knowledge to the system provider and tools with
> which to measure a test, and a metric for measurement. Anything less and
> you end up with an estimation that is less matched to the analyst's
> ability, and more synchronized to the analyst himself.

I think peer review exists in science (and technology) for a purpose. If there 
is only one analyst, maybe your claim holds. However, results in general need 
to be testable and reproducible by anyone, so that everyone can convince 
themselves in the validity of claims being made. Anyways, this is just my 
philosophical remark, it is not the main interest of why I asked the original 
question.

> > - Isn't the use of a small number of privately, centrally owned servers
> > to provide an anonymity network inherently problematic? Doesn't the
> > anonymity of the client on such a network depend almost completely on the
> > integrity of the network operator (i.e. xerobank)?
>
> The network node ownership and operation is completely decentralized and
> distributed. Nodes are owned and operated by different corporations in
> unique jurisdictions, differing from the location of the nodes they
> operate.

This is, however, much more interesting to me. You seem to imply that a 
company in one jurisdiction owns/operates nodes in another jurisdiction. Am I 
understanding this correctly?

Thanks!
OD