Anyone can run a relay or exit node without asking permission. I've done both from a VPS with a complete anon account. No arrests have happened thus far from a Tor compromise. Users usually slip up in their opsec and privacy in some other way. Plenty of "illegal" services persist as tor hidden services, certainly not because the US intellegence allows it. Claiming they can "shut it down" or "subvert it" just because they invented it, is like claiming they can do it to the Internet itself since thet also invented it.

No one said anything about stopping someone trying to contribute a relay/node. However, do you understand how the 9 directory servers work and how they alone choose the circuits? Thereby, being able to drop your relays/nodes, if they wanted? They've already done it before with relays they deemed malicious/unwanted. My comments weren't even about that part, but at an even higher-level of the Tor network, which is the brain of the network (the directory servers).

According to the view of Mike Benz (who I've recently discovered), the US government was pro free speech until 2014. Free speech and things like Tor helped America to topple governments around the world, by subverting the views of their citizenry via free speech. I thought that was perfectly OK to do, as long as they were just convincing those citizens that democracy and human rights were worth fighting for (without dirty tricks) and those citizens then overthrew their oppressive government to get democracy and free speech. But since 2014 things took a major turn against free speech. Crimea, through free speech, discovered the CIA coup and decided they didn't want to be involved in this new Western government, and did a counter-coup with the assistance of Russia which ended up in Russia annexing Crimea. The US was not pleased. They changed their policy going forward. Now speech couldn't be free, speech had to be aligned with US goals or else the US would find reasons to censor or block it. The election of Trump and Brexit just hardened their resolve. So Tor is not quite so welcome anymore, and I wouldn't be suprised if it gets shut down exactly as you describe.

It would certainly take a major coordinated effort for all of the countries to fall in line in order to shutdown the directory servers, no question. The likelihood of it ever happening? It's certainly plausible, but I'm still mixed on if realistically feasible. Though, that's exactly the point of my earlier note. The fact that it is even possible, should be alarming. And as you bring up, the West is now increasingly becoming anti-free-speech, often targeting activists. Which I acknowledge the correctness in @sommerfeld saying in most cases those arrested were due to bad OpSec. That's absolutely true. However, as far as I know, the likes of fiatjaf couldn't one day decide which Nostr relays/nodes he likes/dislikes and effectively shut down any of them by having some centralized directory servers signal to "nostr browser" that they should no longer use those relays/nodes, unlike what the Tor Project can do. So, there is an element of centralization that folks should be more aware of with Tor. What they do with this information is up to them. At no point have I said people should stop using Tor, simply by knowing said information.

Revolution is certainly plausible as well.

You'll be hard pressed to find literally anything that's not under some kind of surveillance or intelligence sharing agreement like the 14 eyes or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. When you consider that, the fact the servers are operated by some good people, and understand the role of the directory servers then it's not a huge deal. moria1: MIT tor26: Karsten Loesing gabelmoo: Leibniz Universität Hannover dizum: Peter Palfrader tonga: The Tor Project dannenberg: The Tor Project maatuska: CCC (Chaos Computer Club) faravahar: Amini Ghafoor bastet: Nicholas Merrill, The Calyx Institute Instead, you should consider the other problems with Tor. It's susceptible to a variety of attacks. Client Attacks: Induced Tor Guard Selection: Manipulating a user's selection of Tor guards to increase the chances of using compromised nodes. Low-resource Routing: Forcing traffic through low-bandwidth nodes to facilitate timing analysis. P2P Information Leakage: Exploiting peer-to-peer applications to reveal a user's real IP address. Plug-in Based Attacks: Using browser plugins to bypass Tor protections and expose user identity. Raptor Attacks: Analyzing traffic patterns to identify hidden services. Torben Attacks: Monitoring and manipulating guard relay selection to deanonymize users. Unpopular Ports Exploitation: Targeting less common ports to track specific traffic. Server Attacks: Caronte Attacks: Using false circuit-level information to intercept and manipulate Tor traffic. Cell Counting and Padding: Analyzing the size and timing of Tor cells to deduce user activity. Off-path MitM Attacks: Intercepting communication between Tor nodes without being directly in the path. Tor Cells Manipulation: Injecting or modifying cells within the Tor network to track users. Network Attacks: Denial of Service: Disrupting Tor nodes or the network to degrade service. Malicious Relays: Operating Tor nodes with the intent to spy on traffic. Sniper Attacks: Overloading specific relays to take them offline. Tor Bridge Discovery: Finding and blocking Tor bridges to prevent bypassing censorship. Traffic Analysis: Examining patterns and volume of traffic to infer user activities. Timing Attacks: Correlating the timing of traffic entering and exiting the Tor network to track users. Website Oracles: Website Oracles: Using various public infrastructure and data points to infer the websites visited by Tor users.

Okay, earlier I responded without this context. That's certainly a reasonable and fair criticism. That's the downside of centralization but its also what makes the Tor network somewhat stable. Suppose they were shutdown though, could the Tor Project just roll out an update to the Tor Browser with new hardcoded directory servers?

The directory servers select the entry, relay, and exit nodes. Tor doesn't work without them.

Bitcoin does not work without seed nodes Bittorrent does not work without trackers Welcome to P2P!

You still need a tracker to get the initial peers. Try publishing a torrent without a tracker and see if someone picks it up...

I'm done it (successfully), but only once, and then, only because I could dump the torrent out to around 500 peeps, some of which ran with it etc.

You were the defacto tracker