"A few weeks ago, the German political magazine Panorama and STRG_F reported that law enforcement agencies infiltrated the Tor network in order to expose criminals."
Does this mean Tor cannot anonymize people on the internet any more?
"The reporters had access to documents showing four successful deanonymizations. I was given the chance to review some documents. In this post, I am highlighting publicly documented key findings."
September 12: "Frankfurt District Court orders Telefónica (O2) to surveil its customers for up to three months."
September 16: Tor project makes a statement, "Pinpointing Tor entry relays of onion services to successfully deanonymize Tor users."
September 18: Journalists detail one case, "Operation Liberty Lane is referenced."
Operation Liberty Lane is "the alleged name of what is believed to be a joint operation of the United States, UK, Germany and potentially other countries with the goal to expose Tor users of illegal onion services."
September 18: Tor Project makes statement, "gives the impression that only Ricochet is affected."
Ricochet is a replacement for TorChat and Tor Messenger, two previous messaging services built on the Tor protocol. Ricochet messages never leave the Tor network as both the sender and receiver work by starting a Tor hidden service on their respective computers. Ricochet does not use any central servers to coordinate communication, thus is a genuinely decentralized instant messenger.
September 25: Interview with Daniel Moßbrucker. "More and more Tor relays in Germany are under surveillance for longer and longer periods, in such a way that apparently data has been used for timing analysis."
Page has links to many media reports and online discussions: tagesschau.de, tor-relays mailing list, Panorama, STRG_F, Tor Project, Hacker News, Tor Project users forum, and Deutsche Welle.
