I have been waggling my jaw about this type of stuff since 2013. While we are inundated with discussions about "encryption" and "security software" and how this one is better than that one and how this company has made a product that is safer, more high tech, more "unhackable"..... I refer back to a conversation I had in 2013 with a programmer I was friends with who said to me that no matter what encryption is on a platform/program/app... no matter what security service you use.... your device is only as good as the hardware its on- and EVERY piece of hardware has a(deliberate) back door.

I remember when friends started switching over to TOR and they kept waxing eloquently about how they are stickin' it to the man, how they are freeing themselves from government oversight and meddling. I said then, the same thing I do every time something like this comes up: how do you KNOW?

The Short Answer is: You DON'T

The Tor Project - a private nonprofit known as the "NSA-proof" gateway to the "dark web," turns out to be almost "100% funded by the US government" according to documents obtained by investigative journalist and author Yasha Levine....the Tor project and its primary source of funding; a CIA spinoff known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which "oversees America's foreign broadcasting operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe."
By following the money, I discovered that Tor was not a grassroots. I was able to show that despite its indie radical cred and claims to help its users protect themselves from government surveillance online, Tor was almost 100% funded by three U.S. National Security agencies: the Navy, the State Department and the BBG. Following the money revealed that Tor was not a grassroots outfit, but a military contractor with its own government contractor number. In other words: it was a privatized extension of the very same government that it claimed to be fighting.

Tor Project "Almost 100% Funded By The US Government": FOIA

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