Slashdot Mirror
Carnegie Mellon Denies FBI Paid For Tor-Breaking Research (wired.com)
New submitter webdesignerdudes writes with news that Carnegie Mellon University now implies it may have been subpoenaed to give up its anonymity-stripping technique, and that it was not paid $1 million by the FBI for doing so. Wired reports: "In a terse statement Wednesday, Carnegie Mellon wrote that its Software Engineering Institute hadn’t received any direct payment for its Tor research from the FBI or any other government funder. But it instead implied that the research may have been accessed by law enforcement through the use of a subpoena. 'In the course of its work, the university from time to time is served with subpoenas requesting information about research it has performed,' the statement reads. 'The university abides by the rule of law, complies with lawfully issued subpoenas and receives no funding for its compliance.'"
No direct payment.
All in all, it's hard to understand what all the fuss is about for this, it seems pretty much in line with the goals of an FFRDC to do this type of research.
What doesn't seem in line is the the way the research was "disappeared."
As for the debate of "direct" funding, I read it as "halt the disclosure or FBI will see to it that future funding is cut." Reminded me of the way they fucked over Qwest back before 9/11 by halting a bunch of unrelated classified contracts after Qwest refused to participate in a meta-data program.