Virgil Griffith- Research Scientist in Singapore Sep 4 Tor’s Branding Pivot is Going to Get Someone Killed Aka, human rights activism meets the Cobra Effect
Three weeks ago, The Tor Project, Inc. published their Tor Social Contract. The contract was covered by the media, but the media focused on the policy not to backdoor software (as though that were surprising?), and regrettably, missed the real story carefully hidden in the first bullet: 1. We advance human rights by creating and deploying usable anonymity and privacy technologies. ... ... ... Tor’s branding pivot is misguided, damaging for global privacy, and ironically, harmful to Asian human rights. Anonymity requires not just company, it requires diverse company, yet Tor has increased the barrier-to-entry for all non-HR Tor users. This something Tor has brought upon itself, and they are knowingly throwing their most vulnerable users under the bus. After seven years of proud service to Tor including: founding Tor2web, Roster, and Toroken, as well as writing a Tor Tech Report and running several high-performance relays, I am resigning because: •Given my residency in Southeast Asia, Tor’s pivot creates nonnegligible risk for me personally. •I do not trust an organization which prefers reaping modest public relations benefits within comparably cozy jurisdictions over the security of its neediest users risking imprisonment. Tor is carefully positioning itself away from the efficacious privacy promotor it used to be.
