by Adrienne Rockenhaus
The federal government’s hatred of Tor in 2019 is why they are letting my husband die in 2025. Learn more by clicking here.
Tor Exit Nodes and the FBI
Why is the U.S. Department of Justice punishing disabled Navy veteran, Conrad Rockenhaus, for supporting a U.S. Navy invention?
Encrypted Communications and the U.S. Navy
The technology that federal agents treated as suspicious was, in fact, invented and funded by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to protect American intelligence communications online.
The Tor network is a fundamentally American invention, designed to shield spies, soldiers, and diplomats operating in hostile territories. Today, it has also become a vital lifeline for journalists, human rights activists, and citizens fighting for democracy against oppressive regimes worldwide. This page explains what Tor is, how it was created to serve U.S. national security, and why volunteers, like Conrad Rockenhaus (before his arrest), are essential to protecting both American interests and global freedom.
What is Tor, and Why Does it Matter?
At its core, Tor is a solution to a fundamental vulnerability of the internet: all traffic can be traced from its source to its destination. Tor provides anonymity by breaking this link, separating a user’s identity from their online activity. The technology that makes this possible is called “onion routing,” which wraps a user’s data in multiple layers of encryption, like the layers of an onion.
A simple way to visualize this is to imagine sending a secret message through three couriers. Instead of one person knowing both the sender and the final recipient, the job is compartmentalized:
- The first courier knows who sent the message but has no idea of its final destination.
- The second courier knows only that they received the message from the first courier and where to send it next. They know neither the origin nor the final destination.
- The third courier knows the final destination but has no idea who the original sender was.
This is how Tor works. When a user connects, their traffic is routed through a random circuit of three volunteer-run servers, called relays or nodes. No single relay in the chain ever knows both the user’s identity (IP address) and their final destination online, providing robust anonymity.
Debunking the “Dark Web” Myth
Perhaps the most damaging misconception about Tor is that it is synonymous with the “dark web” and used primarily for crime. This is factually incorrect. The “dark web” is a very small, intentionally hidden part of the internet, whereas Tor is a tool that can be used to access any part of the internet with anonymity, including regular websites.
While some criminals do exploit Tor’s anonymity, this represents only a fraction of the network’s total use. The overwhelming majority of users are legitimate and diverse, including:
- Journalists and Whistleblowers protecting their sources.
- Human Rights Activists circumventing censorship in countries like China, Iran, and Russia.
- Law Enforcement and Military Personnel conducting undercover investigations and communicating securely from abroad.
- Ordinary Citizens protecting their data from corporate tracking or exercising their fundamental right to privacy.
The security of Tor relies on the principle of “anonymity in a crowd.” The more diverse the crowd of users, the safer everyone becomes. When legitimate users are scared away, the “crowd” shrinks, making it easier to identify the high-risk users, like dissidents and intelligence agents, who depend on that cover for their safety.
From National Security to Human Rights – The Patriotic Angle: Made in the USA
The Tor network is an American invention, born at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in the mid-1990s. Researchers, funded by the Pentagon’s research arm (DARPA), recognized that while encryption could hide the content of a message, it couldn’t hide the metadata—who was talking to whom. They needed a way to protect U.S. intelligence operatives, soldiers, and diplomats who were using the internet to communicate from foreign countries.
The NRL researchers quickly realized a key paradox: a privacy network used only by spies isn’t private at all. To provide effective cover, the traffic from a CIA agent in Tehran needed to be statistically indistinguishable from a student in Toronto. Therefore, the decision was made to release the software to the public for free, allowing it to grow into the global, diverse network it is today. This public nature is a core design requirement for Tor’s original national security purpose.
The Human Rights Angle: A Tool for Freedom
While born from a military need, Tor has evolved into one of the most important technologies for defending democracy. Its value is recognized by the world’s leading human rights and press freedom organizations.
- During the Arab Spring, activists used Tor to bypass government blocks on social media to organize protests and share information with the world.
- For years, activists in Iran, China, and Russia have used Tor to circumvent state-sponsored censorship and access the global internet.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) runs its own Tor relays and states that using Tor is “one of the best and easiest things a person can do to preserve privacy and anonymity on the Internet”.
- The ACLU frames anonymous speech as a “fundamental component of our right to free speech” and a “shield from the tyranny of the majority”.
- Amnesty International launched an official “.onion” version of its website specifically to ensure its research on human rights abuses remains accessible to people in countries where their main website is blocked.
The Volunteer Angle: The Civilian Backbone
The Tor network’s strength comes from its thousands of global volunteers who run the relays that form its backbone. This is not just an ideological choice; it is essential to the network’s security. While running an exit relay carries potential risks, it is a legal activity in the United States, and these volunteers are the reason the network functions.
When an American intelligence officer, soldier, or diplomat uses Tor from a hostile foreign territory, their safety depends entirely on their internet traffic being indistinguishable from the millions of other users on the network.
Every individual who volunteers to run a Tor relay is directly contributing to the size, speed, and diversity of the digital crowd that provides cover for those in high-risk situations. In this sense, supporting the Tor network is a form of grassroots, civilian contribution to U.S. national security, fulfilling the very mission for which the U.S. Navy first conceived of the technology.