The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology decided that banning online anonymity systems, including Tor, in the United Kingdom is neither practical nor acceptable. Back in 2014, David Cameron warned of the rise of the darknet when launching measures to remove digital hiding places. Today, Tor remains the most popular anonymous online system, accounting for nearly 2.5 million users per day, with a very small fraction of their activity falling on hidden sites ending with an .onion suffix. The industry experts believe that legislative efforts to preclude such hidden sites from being available in the country over Tor would be just meaningless from a technological point of view. They also argue that the service is not only used by pedophiles, criminals and terrorists, but is also useful for whistleblowers, anonymous activists and journalists. Besides, victims of digital abuse, including cyber-stalking, have also used the anonymizing service to protect their personal security and privacy. Despite the claims of David Cameron made in 2014 that Tor was increasingly used by pedophiles, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command of the British National Crime Agency revealed that Tor hidden services play a minor role in suspicious activities such as online viewing and distribution of abusive content. The reports show that Tor is less popular among offenders due to the fact that it normally decreases the speed of image downloading. However, one has to admit that .onion sites may be created by criminal communities to have opportunity to discuss immoral behavior and crimes openly. At the same time, it is known that identifying criminals using Tor takes lots of time and effort. As you may remember, an online drug marketplace Silk Road also operated via Tor.
