have a flag for Tor relay location, if a relay is hosted in a data center, cloud or physically secured
Tor relays should have a chance to express where they are hosted. Perhaps with some setting that can be set in Tor config. Similar to the NodeFamily setting. A request that depends on the good will of the relay host. (Yes, could be faked, vulnerable to sybil attacks and whatnot. Yet, useful. Similar to NodeFamily setting.)
Basically hosted,
- in a data center or,
- in private hosted area.
One one hand Tor relays hosted in data centers have great advantages. Some legal advantages, good uplink, good uptime and whatnot.
However, we know from the leaks, that may data centers have a backdoor and front door. So the security of these relays is under attack, since the host cannot control the security and NSL status of the data center / cloud provider.
Once such as Location flag exists, researchers that work on improved Tor routing algorithms could make use of that information.