Jimmy Wales wrote:
You have a point, but I like to think of people in mainland China being able to edit [[Falun Gong]] without feeling a cloud of worry. Even NPOV editing might be misconstrued by some authority somewhere, and people have kids, jobs, families, and might prefer to just stay away rather than take a risk.
You cannot edit [[Falun Gong]] from China using Tor and feel safe. The Chinese government is in a position to conduct an exhaustive end-to-end timing attack on Tor, allowing them to trace Tor traffic from a compromised destination server or network back to its origin. See the Tor FAQ, section 7.9:
http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#head-0b1add301f9743cd3...
Perhaps this is why the Chinese government has not yet blocked Tor -- the false sense of security it gives may well make repercussions more likely, rather than less.
Tor is even easier to attack in small countries with few Internet users.
That's why I say: Tor doesn't have the moral high ground. A low-latency anonymous network allows juvenile bad behaviour but is useless to protect against government snooping. To hide from the government, you need a high-latency network.
Of course, hiding from the government carries negative ethical connotations as well as positive ones. Witness the use of Freenet for the dissemination of child pornography. It's a controversial matter, I for one am not convinced of the overall value of unassailable Internet anonymity.
-- Tim Starling