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You can just hack into existing nodes. There are few enough nodes that accessing a large proportion of them is easily within the budget of a state security agency.



And so can all the other agencies, same consequences.


I don't understand: How does it protect end-user privacy if multiple state agencies, rather than just one, can access their identity and metadata?


No, no, at most one can obtain such dominance.

Multiple state agencies can fight over control of nodes and, if one of them somehow controls enough nodes they get such information.

If you're right that such agencies can afford to, I dunno, expend zero days to seize control of nodes, they're all going to do that. That doesn't magically create more nodes, just makes it harder to decide who (if anyone) controls them.

The most likely outcome isn't that multiple state agencies can get this done, but that none of them can despite their fervent wishes otherwise.


With repetition and italics - well that's more convincing!

They don't need to control the node; good hacking and spying doesn't reveal your presence unless that is beneficial. Nothing stops multiple attackers from having access unless they want to interfere with each other.


During the Blitz and through the V-weapon attacks, Germany relied heavily on field agents to let it know what it was really hitting in England. If the agents consistently reported that attacks were striking outer North West London for example, German targets would be adjusted South East to compensate. Like when target shooting.

Except, those agents didn't actually work for the Germans. Twenty Committee (because twenty = XX in Roman Numerals, a Double Cross) had identified all the German agents and offered them either indefinite imprisonment for Espionage, or service as agents feeding bogus information to their German masters (and we can infer, the third alternative was death). You can guess what most of them chose.

Twenty Committee in effect ran German Espionage in WWII. If they had destroyed all these agents the Germans would have known and perhaps, in time, the Germans would have replaced them, but instead the Germans believed they had a working on-the-ground network of agents in Britain.

The point of the story is: "Just" having accurate information when actually somebody else controls your source of intelligence isn't actually having accurate information at all, it means you're a fool. Either you have control or you do not.




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