I really doubt it would become a one-click privacy measure: If you like to participate in an onion-routed, privacy enhancing, anonymity network, why put it in an browser?
A browser accesses that network, it is the weakest and least point in that setup.
There are so many ways to track an individual, independent of the network, with java-script, extensions, addons, plugins, client-side-caching that even if tor becomes a feature in firefox, the slightest unmitigated problem, even your behavior may compromise your privacy.
The article fails to make a good distinction for the different challenges of adhoc, infrastructure and privacy enhancing or censorship circumventing mesh networks.
Several others and I run a small (50 nodes) mesh network in my area, and it works fine for:
- enhancing WiFi access for all contributing nodes to an area which has limited or no coverage.
- providing fallback uplink connectivity for contributing nodes.
Infrastructure mesh networks are easy split into interconnected groups to avoid performance problems, and are still mesh networks, were a metropolitan area is covered by one ore more meshes to add redundancy and avoid scaling problems.
The core-argument is that the Windows 8 way of using, implementing and enforcing TPM and establishing a so called feudal security approach isn't considered good security practice any longer.
For most contacts you just move away from people who don't use secure communication and may compromise you in the future, no need to convince someone. Works for me.
A different, very cynic approach would be that germany had a history of involving journalism into politics and the uk and the us trying to have it exactly that way nowadays.
Germany achieved it once with Gleichschaltung (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung) and the us seem to achieve similar results with it's 9/11 nationalism and advertising.
If the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung are on it, the Spiegel has to be on it too.
Bildzeitung will try to spin it down, like the chancellor tries to play that topic down. Every incident related to Snowden, NSA, intelligence agencies or the violation of rights in europe will fuel the whole discussion again and again.
If you are somehow in a german nerdsphere, the whole Snowden, NSA affair is really a big topic. Best way to explain is, the older german generation feels betrayed by their former allies and the younger generation is really scared about the impact of global surveillance.
The article forgets to mention it is close to the Bundestagswahl (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013), on September 22nd. Some major news outlets confront the german government open in a very aggressive way, especially when it comes to intelligence agencies, and how the chancellor tries to play the problems down.
The freedom of press which is part if the german grundrecht (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repub...) would be violated in very harsh way, if something like the guardian story would happen in germany. It adds fuel to the whole discussion how the uk and us treat their citizens and their allies.
Just for the record, the german government disapproves the usage of windows 8 for government usage, and has approved bitcoin as an currency-derivative.