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?
I think it's not backdoored precisely because it was created by the US Navy for spy communications. The US government knows full well that any backdoor they put in for themselves could (and, eventually, would) be found and exploited by other intelligence agencies, rendering the whole project useless for its original purpose. I'm not saying the US government has some ethical objection to lying and spying, but it's in their best interest here to make tor as secure as they say it is.
That's not to say it's flawless, but I doubt the flaws are deliberate.