Tor Project Aims To Eclipse US Government Funding

An anonymous reader writes Developed by the U.S. Navy and the recipient of millions of dollars of government grants, the Tor Project is now aiming to ween itself off dependence of U.S. government funds "including setting a goal of 50 percent non-U.S. government funding by 2016." The initiative comes after months of discussion over what some vocal critics deemed a contradiction in funding and purpose.

Comments

Conflict of interest?

[Anonymous Coward]

An outmoded privacy technique hosted on US servers, developed by the US military, and mapped by US intelligence agencies shouldn't get so much money from the US government? I'm all for reduced government spending but as an issue of principle it seems like bailing water out of a sinking canoe with a thimble.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

An outmoded privacy technique hosted on US servers, developed by the US military, and mapped by US intelligence agencies shouldn't get so much money from the US government? I'm all for reduced government spending but as an issue of principle it seems like bailing water out of a sinking canoe with a thimble.

I'd make a slightly more specific distinction: As best we can tell, architectural development of TOR went fairly well as a fed project. It hasn't been wholly without issues; but it has a track record that many projects would envy, and it appears to vex the NSA.

Operations, though, is a dangerous sore point(even if there were no visible fed money at all): It isn't news that TOR becomes markedly more vulnerable if the adversary has control of a sufficiently high percentage of nodes, nor is it clear that such a flaw can be corrected even in principle. It also isn't news that the TOR network is not terribly large by the standards of somebody with actual money to spend on hosting. The fed money I'd be deeply worried about isn't the Office of Naval Research, or whoever was funding it as a way for diplomats and CIA agents to access the net less obviously, paying a few programmers, it's the potential for a relatively modest amount of spending on boring commercial VPS instances through an array of suitable shell companies bringing the whole place down by brute force.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[Aighearach]

You're just engaging in low-information thinking.

Tor wasn't created for "privacy," it was created to help political dissidents in authoritarian regimes to communicate with each other and the outside world without their government being able to identify and punish them. Which I guess is a type of privacy. But politics was the goal, not privacy; specifically, encouraging representative government in places where it is banned and discussion of it stifled.

I'm for privacy, but looking for it in the wrong places is your own fault. Just like, if you have contraband in your pocket that you want to keep private, and you accidentally drop it in front of a cop: that is your own fault, your privacy wasn't violated, you simply didn't defend it rigorously.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[Jane Q. Public]

Also, while I'm not inclined to be a grammar Nazi, the word in OP should be "wean". Ween is something altogether different.

Conspiracies

[Sarten-X]

...what some vocal critics deemed a contradiction in funding and purpose.

The project is funded by these guys, to protect those other guys, who are separated by a large number of bureaucratic layers from those different guys, who want to undermine the project so they can snoop on yet-another group of guys.

Am I the only one who thinks "the government" is actually made up of lots of independent minds, each with their own idealism and morality? A functional conspiracy to secretly undermine a project like Tor would need to involve a significant portion of the American population. Heck, Slashdot's hivemind isn't even that consistent.

Re:Conspiracies

[shaitand]

"Am I the only one who thinks "the government" is actually made up of lots of independent minds, each with their own idealism and morality?"

That is the exact argument always levied against government conspiracies. It has been debunked thanks to the work of wikileaks, Mr. Snowden, and CIA revelation dumps. Anyone who didn't buy that argument, worked from the assumption you could trust those individuals to behave like any random stranger from the private sector showing up at your door at night, was sane, and intelligent would have come to the conclusion that these organizations were likely guilty of just about everything they turned out to be guilty of.

Government agencies might be populated with lots of independent minds but they are all basically structured like military or corporations with an executive structure. Every single day, every for profit corporation in the US is strategize to save costs, which translates in saving every penny at the expense of their workers they think they can spin without pushback. Year on year companies manage to slash health benefits for example. You don't need a conspiracy, the organization has interests which conflict with those of it's individual members and it's a significant portion of the population that is generally required to distrust the organization and it's spin in order push back against those interests.

So, get back to me when it proves to take a significant portion of the American population conspiring to prevent the illegal and unconstitutional spying revealed by Snowden from continuing. At this point the government is so corrupt that even the vast majority of the American population finding out about their conspiracies and being pissed about it has had ZERO impact beyond blowing some wind.

Also, the Navy and the NSA are one government organization. There is a reason the NSA director is always a high ranking military officer. How exactly does it take a significant portion of the American population to undermine a project built by a small group of people and paid for by the organization with interests that conflict with the rest of us?

Re:Conspiracies

[Aighearach]

If I never see the word hivemind again, it will be too soon. Grow up.

The Green Brain by Frank Herbert is one of the great works of modern fiction. When you're old enough, you should read it. I'll warn you though, there is a hive mind involved.

Re:Conspiracies

[Aighearach]

They don't even need flaws, since it wasn't designed to offer the privacy people are wishing it provided. They simply need access to enough of the network, and they can see who is doing what.

The purpose is to facilitate political dissidents under repressive regimes, the design is based on the idea that the repressive regimes are somewhat isolated, and they'd never have the global access in order to figure out who is doing what. Cheap cameras and hard drives probably have tipped that balance, though, since a repressive regime can easily afford to record video in all cyber-cafes and store it indefinitely.

Re:Conspiracies

[Shakrai]

It doesn't matter how the government is structured. You will never find one agency working at cross purposes with another for very long.

Ah, if only Government was half as organized as you think it is....

Wow, that's a lot of money

[wonkey_monkey]

Tor Project Aims To Eclipse US Government Funding

That's quite an aim, considering how much funding the US Government gets.

Re:Wow, that's a lot of money

[davester666]

Not really. The gov't doesn't actually "get" that much money. It prints new money for most of what it spends.

Ween?

[scottme]

the Tor Project is now aiming to ween itself off dependence of U.S. government funds

I think you mean wean.

Re:Ween?

[Detonia]

Ween on the other hand...

Re:There's no souch thing as a free lunch

[Aighearach]

The purpose isn't secret and never was. The objective is to allow political dissidents under repressive regimes a method of communicating politically online without getting in trouble by their governments. Hopefully this would lead to grass-roots "regime change" around the world.

That is called "politics," and altruism isn't the purpose, or the claimed purpose. The claimed purpose is that it is in the national interest of the United States for other countries to adopt similar concepts of democracy and free expression. That it is also believed to be good for the locals is nice, but not the objective.

Why did some people ever think it was about anything else? I'll bet the slashdot articles about Tor during the time period you signed up explained it just the same way I did; as a thing to enable political speech and encourage Democracy.

People are sure soft in the head to have just somehow decided it was for some other purpose, with no source document saying it was that other thing. Some guy on the internet says, "it is for privacy, you know, so you can hide from the gubermint." Vaguely true, yes, but not generally true. Which government, and for what purpose? That is the critical part. People who want to avoid the US government should probably avoid projects sponsored BY the US Government for the purpose of spreading American values. ;)

Re:Spelling fail!

[bigfinger76]

True, but then again, nothing quite equals Ween.

Re:There's no souch thing as a free lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to know what the US Gov's real objectives are in funding Tor in the first place.
Call me cynical but I have a hard time believing its truly altruistic.

Its not altrustic. Tor was created to provide cover for spies. The fact that other people can get benefit out of it is actually good for the spies, if only spies used Tor they would stick out like a sore thumb. The more 'normal' traffic, the easier it is for them to blend in.