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From the article: > You propose running a Tor node or using Tor internally. Before, this was just something you could do. After Tor’s pivot, you now have to ju

From the article: > You propose running a Tor node or using Tor internally. Before, this was just something you could do. After Tor’s pivot, you now have to justify why the company should explicitly associate itself with banned HR activism and draw the government’s ire. Using Tor is now an additional mild liability for all of its non-HR users. Using Tor already marks you as suspicious depending on who's looking, regardless of why you use it. The ideals or mission statement of the Tor project don't change this. Tor suffers from the same impediment as the Bittorrent protocol; it is used a lot for illegal purposes, so a stigma of illegality surrounds the tool itself. By focusing on the legitimate use of Tor (e.g., as a human rights facilitating tool) the Tor project might actually improve adoption rather than frustrate it.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Using Tor already marks you as suspicious depending on who's looking, regardless of why you use it Is this based on experience or assumption? I've had minor issues with Tor and VPNs abroad, when questioned about them. Brushing them off as a "security tool" usually worked. A "human rights" tool, on the other hand, makes Tor dangerous to be caught using in many parts of East Asia. I find most Westerners (myself included until recently) don't understand the cultural and political sensitivity around the term in certain countries. OP's analogy to the Western treatment of anything rhyming with drugs is spot on.
subway 10y ago
Sure, Tor traffic has always been suspicious, but that suspicious traffic has traditionally been without an attached political label. By branding Tor as a tool specifically for HR campaigns, you risk drawing additional ire from regimes considered to have a poor HR record.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Wouldn't a regime with a poor human rights track record consider any use of technology which hides who you are communicating with as warranting further investigation regardless of the ideals behind it? I don't think they are that naive.
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    Have you ever been to China? There's a plenty of people who work there and have to use various proxies to do so, is the Chinese government cracking down on them? Nah, they'll just mess with those connections a little to keep up appearances. But hey, if you decide to use a proxy that screams "I'M A POLITICAL DISSIDENT" with every packet you send they might just get interested. It's really not as naive as you think.
    - romanpoet 10y ago
      > But hey, if you decide to use a proxy that screams "I'M A POLITICAL DISSIDENT" with every packet you send they might just get interested. Hit the nail on the head my good sir.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  That was the author's argument, that Singapore is against the Western view of human rights, so running human rights software would be seen as subversive by the government. He then undermines his argument to instead promote the privacy aspect of Tor by saying that the Singaporean government is fanatically anti-corruption. Privacy hides corruption, so promoting that aspect of the tool doesn't make sense either.
  - romanpoet 10y ago
    Author here. In short, Singapore authorities view Privacy as a double-edged sword. They recognize it's power for anti-corruption (which they love), but dislike the human-rights angle and possibility for breaking the law. Realistically they'll do a balancing act. As long as one can convincing argue that weight of the things they like about Tor exceed the weight of the things they dislike about Tor, you're good. Tor's pivot to emphasize human rights makes that comparison much harder to win.
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      In what way is privacy anti-corruption? My point was that having better privacy makes corruption easier, which is why saying the Singaporean government is taking aim at corruption undermines your argument. If you can untraceably accept payment for a deal that was set up and negotiated without the possibility of eavesdropping, you've got the perfect tools for corruption.
      - romanpoet 10y ago
        Good point. To answer you directly---in short they like whistleblowing. More long-form they like some of the protection features---e.g., protection against corporate espionage from China/USA. They probably also like to use such technologies to spy on their neighbors in efforts to leverage that information to negotiate better trade deals.
- ramblenode 10y ago
  Governments that have a reason to be concerned about Tor are already concerned about Tor. And governments that are concerned about Tor won't be more or less concerned because of its mission statement.
  - 1ris 10y ago
    I don't think so. You are probably from the west. Image what your government would do against tor if tor changed it's missions statement to be about circumventing drug laws. I'm very sure serveral liberal democracies where hell-bend to ban tor. /edit: We had a massshooting in germany recently. We currently have a debate about police tool against the "dark web" as a source of firearms. Before that the goverment was not concerned about tor at all. After that it was very. The narrative about tor changed only slightly, and the governments stance changed rapidly. And the missions statment is a very strong source of narrative. Goverments are not either good (supporting Freedom) or evil (supressing it's people), but do both things to some extend. It's not like Singapore wants a little freedom as possible for it's citizens. It just has very un-western values. If it though that tor does not get to much in the way it won't do much. OTOH German goverment might attac tor.
    - romanpoet 10y ago
      Thank you 1ris! Yes, that is exactly the point.
  - subway 10y ago
    I'd argue the chances China cares about Tor being used to attack US based firms is an order of magnitude lower than when it is used to circumvent HR restrictions. If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool. Remember, these policy makers and enforcers aren't typically the most technically savvy.
    - ramblenode 10y ago
      > If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool I would be surprised if the Chinese government cared about how Tor was being marketed. The change might help with propaganda but it won't change internal policy. What they care about is how it is actually used in China, and I'm sure they understand this better than anyone else except for perhaps the Tor Project.
rhizome 10y ago
Using Tor already marks you as suspicious depending on who's looking, regardless of why you use it. This is a curious construction, one that I can't pin down to any kind of secondary-language issues. "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. So, some people see Tor as suspicious. Who are those people, and why is it a problem? Law enforcement...anybody else? What does it mean for Tor traffic to be demeaned by law enforcement (or $chosen_group) as by-default suspicious, and is this a good use of their time and resources? Is it a good way to solve crimes? History tells us that law enforcement, and by extension the government, will use bigotry to effect prosecutorial goals at least as readily as they will shoe-leather investigation. Defining Tor as suspicious-with-exceptions operates in the same sphere as asset forfeitture: prove you ain't. Point being, I think it's important to be clear what is happening with Tor as a character in the wider world of politics and policy, and "using Tor" is something that I don't think needs to be justified. Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity.
- firethief 10y ago
  > "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. "Using [Tor]" actually is the subject of that sentence. "Who's looking" is not the subject even of the dependent clause in which it occurs; "depending on" is introducing an adverbial clause, in which "who" is the subject, "is" is the verb, and "looking" is the predicate. > Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity. The passive voice is not used in the sentence quoted. I recommend preferring rhetorical techniques other than grammatical analysis; even for someone with a solid understanding of a language's grammar, picking apart the way something is said tends not to advance the discussion as well as repling to content would, however dubiously it may be expressed.
- Sniffnoy 10y ago
  > This is a curious construction, one that I can't pin down to any kind of secondary-language issues. "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. > Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity. No, no, no. Firethief has already largely covered this, but: "Subject" and "passive voice" are grammatical terms. They have to do with the syntax of a sentence. Not with who performed an action, or whether that agency was clearly expressed in the sentence. There is nothing necessarily agency-hiding about the passive voice; conversely, one can hide agency quite well without using it. Basically, go read some Language Log, they talk about this all the time. Hell, they've got a whole category for people complaining about the passive voice while not actually being able to identify when a sentence uses it: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=54 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=54 (Edit: One particular post on the subject I should point out, I think -- http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1227 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1227 ) Or here's a whole paper by Geoff Pullum on the subject, with more examples than you can shake a stick at in section 3: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf
1ris 10y ago
In the west tor was (or is) seen as a tool access child pornography. I had to explain multiple times why i would support such a evil thing. This is a very high social cost in the west, and you can't pose with a tor t-shirt (like the dude in the photo) if that the narrative. You will be expelled from your students union instead of celebrated for supporting it. So, a typical westener tor-supporter does not want this image. But the typical westener is no the person that needs tor mosts. Such a label in east asia would probably help. If the Singaporean police would assume that all tor users a looking for child porn (or just porn, that's illegal there) uses would fall in the vast bin various criminals. But not a political opponents, that are targeted with much more energy. The social cost of consuming (child) porn might be lower than being a dissident. And the prosecution might be less serve.
- csydas 10y ago
  > This is a very high social cost in the west, and you can't pose with a tor t-shirt (like the dude in the photo) if that the narrative. You will be expelled from your students union instead of celebrated for supporting it. So, a typical westener tor-supporter does not want this image. I suggest this is overstated, at least as far as Tor is concerned. While there are occasionally news reports about various crimes that utilized Tor as part of the process, more often the generic term "encryption" or "anonymizing software" is used in news reports. I think the general reaction to anyone wearing a Tor T-shirt would be indifference, save maybe one or two curious talkative parties. I will admit this is anecdotal, but overwhelmingly when Tor has been brought up in the past in my workplace or during discussions, overwhelmingly the response has either been "what's Tor" or "oh Tor. I've heard of that. What is that exactly?". The idea of "expelled from student union" for being a Tor Supporter is completely outside of my understanding of what people in the US even know about Tor. Even so much as having a casual two-way conversation with a non-tech person about Tor seems like a foreign concept. Tor might catch headlines once in awhile, but when it comes to things like online privacy and anonymity, I don't think this is what the lay person thinks of. I mean, just page through news.google a bit searching for "Tor". The news outlets covering it are pretty much tech-oriented; going just a few pages deep, only politico really mentioned Tor, and that was literally only to say it was used by the hackers during the Clinton email breach, calling it an anonymity tool. I just don't think there's enough evidence to really say that the general public or even law enforcement really knows what Tor is, much less form an aggressive opinion towards supporters.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> Using Tor already marks you as suspicious depending on who's looking, regardless of why you use it Is this based on experience or assumption? I've had minor issues with Tor and VPNs abroad, when questioned about them. Brushing them off as a "security tool" usually worked. A "human rights" tool, on the other hand, makes Tor dangerous to be caught using in many parts of East Asia. I find most Westerners (myself included until recently) don't understand the cultural and political sensitivity around the term in certain countries. OP's analogy to the Western treatment of anything rhyming with drugs is spot on.

subway 10y ago

Sure, Tor traffic has always been suspicious, but that suspicious traffic has traditionally been without an attached political label. By branding Tor as a tool specifically for HR campaigns, you risk drawing additional ire from regimes considered to have a poor HR record.

Freak_NL 10y ago
Wouldn't a regime with a poor human rights track record consider any use of technology which hides who you are communicating with as warranting further investigation regardless of the ideals behind it? I don't think they are that naive.
- ryanlol 10y ago
  Have you ever been to China? There's a plenty of people who work there and have to use various proxies to do so, is the Chinese government cracking down on them? Nah, they'll just mess with those connections a little to keep up appearances. But hey, if you decide to use a proxy that screams "I'M A POLITICAL DISSIDENT" with every packet you send they might just get interested. It's really not as naive as you think.
  - romanpoet 10y ago
    > But hey, if you decide to use a proxy that screams "I'M A POLITICAL DISSIDENT" with every packet you send they might just get interested. Hit the nail on the head my good sir.
lern_too_spel 10y ago
That was the author's argument, that Singapore is against the Western view of human rights, so running human rights software would be seen as subversive by the government. He then undermines his argument to instead promote the privacy aspect of Tor by saying that the Singaporean government is fanatically anti-corruption. Privacy hides corruption, so promoting that aspect of the tool doesn't make sense either.
- romanpoet 10y ago
  Author here. In short, Singapore authorities view Privacy as a double-edged sword. They recognize it's power for anti-corruption (which they love), but dislike the human-rights angle and possibility for breaking the law. Realistically they'll do a balancing act. As long as one can convincing argue that weight of the things they like about Tor exceed the weight of the things they dislike about Tor, you're good. Tor's pivot to emphasize human rights makes that comparison much harder to win.
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    In what way is privacy anti-corruption? My point was that having better privacy makes corruption easier, which is why saying the Singaporean government is taking aim at corruption undermines your argument. If you can untraceably accept payment for a deal that was set up and negotiated without the possibility of eavesdropping, you've got the perfect tools for corruption.
    - romanpoet 10y ago
      Good point. To answer you directly---in short they like whistleblowing. More long-form they like some of the protection features---e.g., protection against corporate espionage from China/USA. They probably also like to use such technologies to spy on their neighbors in efforts to leverage that information to negotiate better trade deals.
ramblenode 10y ago
Governments that have a reason to be concerned about Tor are already concerned about Tor. And governments that are concerned about Tor won't be more or less concerned because of its mission statement.
- 1ris 10y ago
  I don't think so. You are probably from the west. Image what your government would do against tor if tor changed it's missions statement to be about circumventing drug laws. I'm very sure serveral liberal democracies where hell-bend to ban tor. /edit: We had a massshooting in germany recently. We currently have a debate about police tool against the "dark web" as a source of firearms. Before that the goverment was not concerned about tor at all. After that it was very. The narrative about tor changed only slightly, and the governments stance changed rapidly. And the missions statment is a very strong source of narrative. Goverments are not either good (supporting Freedom) or evil (supressing it's people), but do both things to some extend. It's not like Singapore wants a little freedom as possible for it's citizens. It just has very un-western values. If it though that tor does not get to much in the way it won't do much. OTOH German goverment might attac tor.
  - romanpoet 10y ago
    Thank you 1ris! Yes, that is exactly the point.
- subway 10y ago
  I'd argue the chances China cares about Tor being used to attack US based firms is an order of magnitude lower than when it is used to circumvent HR restrictions. If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool. Remember, these policy makers and enforcers aren't typically the most technically savvy.
  - ramblenode 10y ago
    > If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool I would be surprised if the Chinese government cared about how Tor was being marketed. The change might help with propaganda but it won't change internal policy. What they care about is how it is actually used in China, and I'm sure they understand this better than anyone else except for perhaps the Tor Project.

rhizome 10y ago

Using Tor already marks you as suspicious depending on who's looking, regardless of why you use it. This is a curious construction, one that I can't pin down to any kind of secondary-language issues. "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. So, some people see Tor as suspicious. Who are those people, and why is it a problem? Law enforcement...anybody else? What does it mean for Tor traffic to be demeaned by law enforcement (or $chosen_group) as by-default suspicious, and is this a good use of their time and resources? Is it a good way to solve crimes? History tells us that law enforcement, and by extension the government, will use bigotry to effect prosecutorial goals at least as readily as they will shoe-leather investigation. Defining Tor as suspicious-with-exceptions operates in the same sphere as asset forfeitture: prove you ain't. Point being, I think it's important to be clear what is happening with Tor as a character in the wider world of politics and policy, and "using Tor" is something that I don't think needs to be justified. Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity.

firethief 10y ago
> "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. "Using [Tor]" actually is the subject of that sentence. "Who's looking" is not the subject even of the dependent clause in which it occurs; "depending on" is introducing an adverbial clause, in which "who" is the subject, "is" is the verb, and "looking" is the predicate. > Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity. The passive voice is not used in the sentence quoted. I recommend preferring rhetorical techniques other than grammatical analysis; even for someone with a solid understanding of a language's grammar, picking apart the way something is said tends not to advance the discussion as well as repling to content would, however dubiously it may be expressed.
Sniffnoy 10y ago
> This is a curious construction, one that I can't pin down to any kind of secondary-language issues. "Using Tor" is not the subject of that sentence, "who's looking" is. > Passive voice also elides these serious issues by pinning results on nebulous activity. No, no, no. Firethief has already largely covered this, but: "Subject" and "passive voice" are grammatical terms. They have to do with the syntax of a sentence. Not with who performed an action, or whether that agency was clearly expressed in the sentence. There is nothing necessarily agency-hiding about the passive voice; conversely, one can hide agency quite well without using it. Basically, go read some Language Log, they talk about this all the time. Hell, they've got a whole category for people complaining about the passive voice while not actually being able to identify when a sentence uses it: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=54 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=54 (Edit: One particular post on the subject I should point out, I think -- http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1227 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1227 ) Or here's a whole paper by Geoff Pullum on the subject, with more examples than you can shake a stick at in section 3: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf

1ris 10y ago

In the west tor was (or is) seen as a tool access child pornography. I had to explain multiple times why i would support such a evil thing. This is a very high social cost in the west, and you can't pose with a tor t-shirt (like the dude in the photo) if that the narrative. You will be expelled from your students union instead of celebrated for supporting it. So, a typical westener tor-supporter does not want this image. But the typical westener is no the person that needs tor mosts. Such a label in east asia would probably help. If the Singaporean police would assume that all tor users a looking for child porn (or just porn, that's illegal there) uses would fall in the vast bin various criminals. But not a political opponents, that are targeted with much more energy. The social cost of consuming (child) porn might be lower than being a dissident. And the prosecution might be less serve.

csydas 10y ago
> This is a very high social cost in the west, and you can't pose with a tor t-shirt (like the dude in the photo) if that the narrative. You will be expelled from your students union instead of celebrated for supporting it. So, a typical westener tor-supporter does not want this image. I suggest this is overstated, at least as far as Tor is concerned. While there are occasionally news reports about various crimes that utilized Tor as part of the process, more often the generic term "encryption" or "anonymizing software" is used in news reports. I think the general reaction to anyone wearing a Tor T-shirt would be indifference, save maybe one or two curious talkative parties. I will admit this is anecdotal, but overwhelmingly when Tor has been brought up in the past in my workplace or during discussions, overwhelmingly the response has either been "what's Tor" or "oh Tor. I've heard of that. What is that exactly?". The idea of "expelled from student union" for being a Tor Supporter is completely outside of my understanding of what people in the US even know about Tor. Even so much as having a casual two-way conversation with a non-tech person about Tor seems like a foreign concept. Tor might catch headlines once in awhile, but when it comes to things like online privacy and anonymity, I don't think this is what the lay person thinks of. I mean, just page through news.google a bit searching for "Tor". The news outlets covering it are pretty much tech-oriented; going just a few pages deep, only politico really mentioned Tor, and that was literally only to say it was used by the hackers during the Clinton email breach, calling it an anonymity tool. I just don't think there's enough evidence to really say that the general public or even law enforcement really knows what Tor is, much less form an aggressive opinion towards supporters.