And this is why privacy advocates try to push for pervasive cryptography. If everyone's traffic is encrypted, then use of crypto doesn't bring suspicion on you.
This is why I'm somewhat dubious about Tor. While it can be a valuable tool, by it's nature it routes you between 3 other machines, which may be spread all over the world, thus substantially impacting performance. It can't really be used by the general population, as opposed to, say, encrypted email which if implemented well would have negligible impact.
It can't really be used by the general population for some web browsing, but it can easily be used for a variety of other applications.
Most mobile traffic, for example, could probably go over Tor. All background data syncronization could go over Tor. Email and IM could go over Tor.
Assuming you still use a general-purpose computer, and try to execute code on your own CPU rather than someone else's whenever possible, it's easy to have most of your applications (email, RSS, IM, data sync) go over Tor without your noticing.
3-5 anonymous hops wouldn't be a bad thing in the future, say ~5yrs assuming continued investment in better broadband infrastructure as well as investment in Tor nodes.
The performance drop could hypothetically be unnoticeable to the user. Just as most TCP handshakes are.
This has to become a movement indeed towards pervasive cryptography. Tor's design isn't the real problem. The lack of Tor nodes/efficient broadband is the real problem.
This is why I'm somewhat dubious about Tor. While it can be a valuable tool, by it's nature it routes you between 3 other machines, which may be spread all over the world, thus substantially impacting performance. It can't really be used by the general population, as opposed to, say, encrypted email which if implemented well would have negligible impact.