This implies the browser is pretty sold, but what about the network itself? How do we know all of the traffic isn't deanonymized due to a big company or government having control of a large number of nodes?
Apologies for not bothering to research this question in advance.
> How do we know all of the traffic isn't deanonymized due to a big company or government having control of a large number of nodes?
It absolutely is. This is known and explicitely called out in Tor's design:
> A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency systems, Tor does not protect against such a strong adversary. Instead, we assume an adversary who can observe some fraction of network traffic; who can generate, modify, delete, or delay traffic […]
Thanks,I have read this concern before but was not aware it was part of the design specification.
What gives people, especially in the west, the confidence to use it at all, given all of the fusion centers and likelihood of parallel construction? Perhaps this is a rhetorical question...
Apologies for not bothering to research this question in advance.