[tor-project] The Tor Project Social Contract

[Virgil Griffith]

This looks very lovely.  Thank you Alison for drafting it!

The only part that concerns me is explicitly defining "We advance human
rights" as part of Tor's core mission.

The problem is that many people who need Tor the most live in countries in
which Tor's active alignment with liberal human rights advocacy would
substantially (certainly non-negligibly) increase the chance of Tor being
banned.

Focusing on human rights gets you on the shit-list for most countries in
both Southeast Asia and Africa.  (Combined with China, this comprises ~44%
of the world population per Wolfram Alpha.)  Presumably, privacy naturally
dovetails with human rights, but by explicitly stating we are primarily
focused on human rights, Tor is likely to be banned in many countries in
which it is sorely needed.

For example, in Singapore they were discussing banning Tor but I was able
to sway them to refrain because Tor is not just "human rights" (which the
government does not care for), but is a privacy technology for many things,
such as whistleblowing (which the government likes).

By pigeon-holing Tor into chiefly the human-rights category, it makes the
argument to not ban Tor much more difficult.  And Tor being banned is
counter-conducive to human rights in these regions.

So here's the question:

** Would people support Tor Project aligning itself with explicit human
rights advocacy even if that alignment is likely to obstruct the most-needy
users' capacity to use Tor software? **

-V

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 9:22 PM, Isabela <isabela at riseup.net> wrote:

> I am with pikachu! +1
>
> Thank you for the great work community team! Like Teor said, it does a
> good job describe what we value.
>
>
>
>
> On 07/29/2016 04:09 AM, isis agora lovecruft wrote:
>
> Alison transcribed 2.8K bytes:
>
> If accepting: your florid prose about why you love it and think it's an
> astonishing work of art that reflects the diligence and care exercised
> by the authors is quite welcome. A show of hands (writing an email that
> says +1) is also fine. Questions are welcome.
>
>                               ----------------------------
>                               |                          |
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>                                    '''''
>
>
> Thank you for your feedback, and thank you to all of the Tor folks who
> worked on this, especially Lunar and Roger, who got it started.
>
> Also +1.
>
>
>
>
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