> This combined with a overly-enthusiastic do-gooders gaining more and more prominence in the Tor organization has led to the dangerous situation of promoting inherently insecure software as a security solution to vulnerable people.
What is the inherently secure alternative available to these vulnerable people?
> I really hope the new boards steers them back to the academic realm and slaps a big red USE AT YOUR OWN RISK warning on the tin.
What causes you to believe that activists and vulnerable people would stop using Tor if this warning were in place?
Are you asking what they should use instead? Because there is no alternative. My point isn't that they should be using some other specific piece of software, or even that they shouldn't be using Tor, just that they should be aware that Tor is old software with many known vulnerabilities, a poor track record of security including active RCE attacks by governments and private companies, etc. If you go to the homepage, you'll see none of that.
This might not deter people from using Tor entirely, but at least they'd understand the threat model a bit better so they could change their behavior accordingly, for instance maybe not using it at their own home, not using it for Facebook, etc.
As much as we might want to believe that we can code our way out of anything, human rights demands more than software.
Just out of curiosity and for purely educational purposes (I admittedly know very little about the topic), how about something like I2P or FreeNet? Are these at all viable alternatives?
What other choices do we have for "anonymity" outside of the usual VPN/Proxy?
Anonymity isn't binary. Perfect anonymity is, and always will be, completely impossible. Practically speaking, we can only talk about reducing risk in different scenarios.
I like I2P as it has a reduced threat footprint compared to Tor as it's all internal, but it's also a smaller network, probably more vulnerable to Sybil, less audited code, etc.
Again, my point is that there is no perfect solution, it all depends on the situation and the requirements.
What is the inherently secure alternative available to these vulnerable people?
> I really hope the new boards steers them back to the academic realm and slaps a big red USE AT YOUR OWN RISK warning on the tin.
What causes you to believe that activists and vulnerable people would stop using Tor if this warning were in place?