I am not disagreeing with your point of view, but how is Tor different from anything else that can be used by criminals, which includes pretty much ... everything? By that analogy, and again I am not being dense, the use of any encryption can be justified as helping criminals?
> By that analogy the use of any encryption can be justified as helping criminals?
That is certainly the view of the security services: anyone using encryption we can't break is a potential enemy hiding something we want to know.
That is why there were export restrictions on encryption technology until it became obvious that was detrimental (crypto developed elsewhere wan't covered, so the restrictions put allied commercial users at a disadvantage to other countries in the industrial espionage stakes without actually affecting the people the restrictions were aimed at at all).
It is also why services that offer encryption are pressured into giving authorities access to the private keys, and those that refuse (or can't due to the design meaning the keys are only in their users hands) tend to get shut down.
The difference here is that with Tor it is me who is providing the bandwidth for them to use. I want to see Tor succeed, but I just can't get past the fact that the people running .onion directories seem to feel that since it can be used for anything that everything should be promoted equally.
