Who controls anonymity? Control point analysis of the Onion routing anonymity network (TOR)

Abstract

Anonymity networks have played major roles in censorship circumvention and various benign or malicious activities in the cyber domain. Hence, those networks became well defined targets of repressive regimes or law enforcement. In this research, we attempt to infer the various control capacities over the operation of such networks and we take the Tor network as an example. We decompose the operation and process of Tor network across the Cyberspace layers. Then we do survey of existing literature about possible control mechanisms over various locations in the network. Then we extrapolate from the control actions to infer possible political actors who would be able to exercise each control action. We use Tor network model as the subject of this investigation due to its distinctive pervasiveness. We conclude with a comprehensive model that depcits distribution of control capacities across the actors at different political levels of analysis.