So was the Internet at DARPA (or its modern foundation). And the WWW at CERN.

Tor's development team aren't on the payroll of the US gov't, and their funding comes from many sources.

If having received funding from a government agency is enough to earn your distrust, you'd quickly become a paranoid schizophrenic.

> Tor's development team aren't on the payroll of the US gov't, and their funding comes from many sources.

That's not serious. From the Tor official blog:

> U.S. Government (53.5% of total revenue)

> Individual Donations (28.5% of total revenue)

> Non-U.S. Governments (7.5% of total revenue)

> Foundations (6.4% of total revenue)

> Corporations (3.4% of total revenue)

> Other (0.6% of total revenue)

https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-20...

It's true that a majority is from the US government through various funding schemes and grants. They're very transparent about their funding and ongoing efforts to diversify. But a little over half coming from US government sources isn't the same as their devs literally being on the gov't payroll; people often talk about Tor as if the developers themselves earn a government salary.

(Funnily, Signal also received major funding from US government sources but very few people seem to question that when lauding Signal.)

Neither the Internet nor the Web were designed for anonymity.

And I cannot name an organization I would trust to tell me the truth if doing so will jeopardize its funding.

Even if you had your own SMT how can you be sure no one fiddled with your lab? If you can't trust your own stack 100% how can you trust ANYTHING else then?

So my answer to your sincere question: no reason to believe it is safe, no.