2 ms·
> Wait; I'm not even entitled to software not doing anything blatantly illegal on purpose, or perpetrating a privacy violation without my knowledge and consent?
by sbuttgereit 4y ago
> Wait; I'm not even entitled to software not doing anything blatantly illegal on purpose, or perpetrating a privacy violation without my knowledge and consent?
Tor is an open source project and I very well expect that, in some jurisdictions, what Tor is explicitly trying to do... on purpose... would be considered illegal. I expect that the people running the Tor Project know that. I could even speculate that some Tor Project team members are hopeful that their effort facilitates private communication in the very places where such communication is likely to run most afoul of the law. Worse than that, laws are often ambiguous, fuzzy, and contradictory within a jurisdiction, let alone between different jurisdictions.
So what does that mean to the entitlement that open source software does nothing blatantly illegal? I guess you can claim it, but I wouldn't expect much to come of it even assuming the project is being run with good intentions, nor would I count on it matching my expectations for same. I think it's better to not only discount legality as an entitlement, but not even hold it as an expectation. Legality is a decision point for the potential user, not a user entitlement the developers are duty bound to deliver to any one user.
- kazinator 4y ago> Tor is an open source project and I very well expect that, in some jurisdictions, what Tor is explicitly trying to do... on purpose... would be considered illegal. But that's something the user wants, as a feature. It may be the user who is deemed to be doing something illegal.