It's interesting, but I'd be surprised if anyone with the know-how to overwrite their router's firmware with Tomato (or DD-WRT, which would work too) didn't know how to SSH-tunnel their traffic.
As a side note, I'd personally recommend using a Linode (or another equivalent external hosting service) for this. A lot of ISPs get grumpy about reverse connections, assuming they don't use VPNs for their users in the first place, and beyond that, you have to deal with a dynamic IP most of the time. But that's just my personal experience.
Like rfugger, I also had Tomato installed, but had never known about its SSH daemon. After Firesheep was released, I went looking for a cheap way to secure my computers' traffic. Originally, I intended to use EC2, since Amazon is giving it away for free for a year, but this solution seemed like a better route for me. If the ISP (Cox Communications) does get grumpy, I'll probably go the EC2 route.
As for the dynamic IP issue, Tomato can also be setup to work with a DynDNS account.
I had tomato installed, and like to keep my wifi open for neighbours to use casually (bandwidth limited for non-trusted connections). I hadn't thought of doing this. Thanks for the article.
As a side note, I'd personally recommend using a Linode (or another equivalent external hosting service) for this. A lot of ISPs get grumpy about reverse connections, assuming they don't use VPNs for their users in the first place, and beyond that, you have to deal with a dynamic IP most of the time. But that's just my personal experience.