The British Parliament was told why not to try to block Tor

Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke out against the ability of Internet users to encrypt their traffic, thereby avoiding government surveillance. In connection with this issue, the Parliamentary Service for Science and Technology (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, POST) has prepared a detailed report . In the document, the service lucidly explains to politicians what Tor is and what it will have to face if there is a decision made about its blocking.

The report directly says that locking Tor is technically very difficult to execute. Even in China, with its canonical “Great Firewall”, Tor continues to work through a so-called system. "Bridges" created specifically to bypass locks. And although in the past some attempts of special services to track down network users were successful, this was often due to user errors, and not because of problems with anonymity on the network itself.

In addition, the report tells why the Tor ban does not make sense politically. For example, the problem of pedophiles, the fight against which is now at the peak of popularity among the governments of various states, is exaggerated in Tor - according to the report, such sites make up no more than 2% of all the resources of the “dark Internet”. This may be due to the fact that Tor is not intended to transmit large-volume information.
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Incidentally, the report also mentioned i2p networks (a network of hidden resources without access to the normal Internet) and FreeNet (a network of anonymous distributed exchange and storage of information). But these networks are much less popular and therefore their influence is not even considered at the highest level.

Unfortunately, POST is not an influential structure, and its report can only be considered as one of the factors when making a final decision. Whether Cameron wants to change his attitude towards encryption is still a big question.