A fair amount in many cases isn’t enough and sometimes is less than a VPN. If he used a multi hop VPN without tor he PROBABLY wouldn’t have been caught. OPSEC often relates to what a user can control, bare tor users can’t control network monitoring and bridge users can only control it until that bridge IP becomes known as part of tor network. This pass the buck mentality is an easy way of avoiding truths, this probably helps spooks since nobody is willing to admit that good personal OPSEC ± tor == ultimate privacy.
And “doing bad things” is an extremely idiotic reason to wish people get into trouble through tor. The CCP think that breaching their firewall is a bad thing, do you hope all them get caught? What about the people in countries involved in conflict? Lets hope they all get caught too. If Chat Control came in then all of Europe deserves to get caught too. Herpity derpity doo.
I know you are going to say “I meant illegal things”
Keep in mind the biggest batch of true information ever released came through breaking of laws by both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, they broke laws as did news agencies who obtaines the files.
Many things submitted to SecureDrop will come about through breaking laws. You can’t selectively say Group A deserve to get caught but Group B shouldn’t because its a different type of crime on the same network.
Ironically I just passed through a node which is doing SSL stripping too.