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John and Deborah exaggerate sometimes and do sound like "conspiracy theorists" but before Snowden, how much of what he documented would be considered such? So t
by acqq 11y ago
John and Deborah exaggerate sometimes and do sound like "conspiracy theorists" but before Snowden, how much of what he documented would be considered such? So their claims should be taken with a reasonable grain of salt, but the facts they mention are apparently facts and deserve to be discussed, like, who finances Tor is apparently clearly visible in the tax reports? Or what are the intersts of Omidyar.
And if they claim something that's not true, it should be provable that they are wrong.
- smcl 11y agoThat is not what the GP post is taking issue with. They are saying that it looks like someone got a new Thesaurus for their birthday and went wild trying to sound smarter than they were. FWIW I agree with the GP- there's no reason for anyone to talk this way.
- acqq 11y ago> That is not what the GP post is taking issue with Well, "that" is the answer to GP's: > Do people take Cryptome seriously? And I consider it much more important than which specific words were used. Don't shoot the messenger, let's talk about the substance or the truthness of the message.
- smcl 11y agoFair point
- belorn 11y agoThe claim is that "massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state." The first part is based on the fact that University of Minnesota, Georgia Tech and Princeton University, and Georgetown are funding the tor project. The argument is that all of them are receiving their money from the U.S. Government, and even if they claim that they are independent organization they are just fronts used by the government when it comes to funding the tor project. One could also get the impression that the U.S. Government are the only source of funding for those universities, and that the universities gets no research funding elsewhere, demand no tuition from students, and so on. The Pentagon claim is likely derived from statements that SRI international is a sponsor of the tor project, and they receive funds from US Department of Defense. Again, one must assume that SRI international only gets fund from a single source. I can only guess that the national security state is a reference to either the U.S. (ie, the above), or the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, or US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The cited Guardian source is based on 2013 financial report, and the list of sponsor today is naturally quite different, but I guess thats not an issue.
- acqq 11y agoAnd Radio Free Asia as the financier, mentioned even by the interviewer? Open technology fund? What's the story?
- acqq 11y agoSpecifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia > RFA is funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an independent agency of the United States government responsible for all non-military, international broadcasting sponsored by the U.S government (such as Radio Free Europe), which appoints the board of RFA. https://www.opentech.fund/project/tor-project https://www.opentech.fund/project/tor-project @torproject Funding to date: 2013 $600,000 2014 $900,000
- x5n1 11y agoSnowden can just as easily be a pressure value, to allow this sort of things to normalize in the public consciousness in a certain way with a certain narrative. And it has normalized perfectly. Stuff that would make everything seem scary and relatively totalitarian is now normal day to day mater of fact sort of thing.