Quote from: metropolitancow on July 12, 2012, 11:15 amSupposing this went ahead, or that they already had some of this info without our knowledge, off the record, would they be able to reverse-engineer or straight up view the torrified data as if it were plain? Suppose they already know about a given users tor web activity to a T, and are just waiting for the legitimate way to spring the evidence without it being wiped out, is there ever any way to know about it before it's too late?Traffic analysis of a link will identify Tor, VPN, SSL and SSH transmissions, but won't be able to crack the encryption. Not in real time at least (well, maybe the SSL traffic depending on how sneaky they get, there was a report on this in one of the Oz PC mag websites a couple of years ago). If they capture all the data for an entire session they might, depending on the protocol and encryption algorithms be able to crack it at a later date.The advantage to people here is that VPNs are used all the time, mostly by corporations and governments. Although there are enough Australians and Kiwis using them to get past geolocation blocks (usually to stream US TV shows).Finding out what intelligence agencies actually know is a guessing game. A good way to drive yourself nuts, though. Law enforcement might be a little easier, depending on which part of it, but they've been known to keep some secrets from time to time.If you're going to use Tor directly (as opposed to through a VPN connection), I'd suggest using it for non-SR stuff as well so that they can't link every time you've used Tor to an event on SR or the forums. Non-SR Tor activity doesn't need to be on the same system/installation as your SR stuff, though, because from an intercept perspective they'll just see the traffic from your Net connection.