I've heard a lot of people on the left argue that Tor is likely backdoored because it was created by the U.S. Navy for spies to communicate and is still funded by the government. Yasha Levine has written a lot about this:
- https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/tor-files
- https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-crypto-keepers-levine
He also appeared in TrueAnon episode 50 to talk about this.
On the other hand, a lot of people in the crypto and tech community disagree with this. They believe that Tor is not backdoored for one or both of the following reasons:
- Tor is open-source and has been audited.
- The U.S. Government would never do such a thing.
They also point to a leaked NSA presentation from 2007 that admits the NSA can't deanonymize Tor users.
What are your thoughts?
Strong disagree. The crypto open source people are almost all libertarians (left or right). They strongly distrust the state even if they agree with some of its actions.