[tor-project] Teaching lawmakers about Tor for rule 41 amendment

[Kate Krauss]

Roger:
> On Wed, May 04, 2016 at 05:32:24AM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>> Hi Alison, Kate,
>>
>> Check out
>> https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/supreme-court-gives-fbi-more-hacking-power/
>>
>> I think this is a really important outreach topic.
>>
>> A) We should reach out to the senators who are planning to fight
>> the changes, to offer to teach them more about Tor and more about the
>> Internet, see if they have any questions or concerns, etc.  I bet there
>> are some staffers somewhere who are working on exactly this topic, and
>> everything they know about Tor they learned from one scary video about
>> the dark web. We should teach them how Tor works, why people need it,
>> and why a diversity of types of users is key to its security.
>>
>> B) At the same time, we should learn what their talking points are, so
>> we can be better at educating people about the issue. In particular, one
>> of the quotes in the article says it's "possibly the broadest expansion
>> of extraterritorial surveillance power since the FBI's inception",
>> but at the same time, I can totally picture people saying "Oh come on,
>> it's just Tor, how can that be such a big change?" We would be smart
>> to have concrete non-Tor examples of what these new powers would allow,
>> so everybody can understand that these changes aren't just about Tor.

This is exactly what public policy is. I am enthused that Roger is
enthused that we should work on this.

I would say that job #1 is not to call the Senate but our allies.

More tomorrow,

Katie--

ps: Paul--very good question that I think requires an actual attorney,
or someone at the ACLU.

Kate Krauss
Director of Communications 
and Public Policy
kate at torproject.org
@TorProject
1-718-864-6647 (works for Signal also)
PGP: CC0D 9B42 DE89 D4D0 619B A606 DDEB 3937 7D18 973B