[tor-relays] Feedback wanted: letter to my university's library

[Alison Macrina]

Hi AJ,

Thank you for supporting Tor! I think it's a great idea to try to work
with your university library to run a relay. I run the Library Freedom
Project which helps libraries understand and use privacy tools
(libraryfreedomproject.org). I can give you some advice based on my
experience.

William Denton:
> On 1 October 2017, AJ Jordan wrote:
>
>> However I've just started college at the University of Rochester,
>> which obviously presents a great opportunity to set up a relay on a
>> really great network. I'm planning to reach out to the library with
>> the following email and would love some feedback:
>
> Scott Bennett had excellent advice,

+1

> Academic libraries can be very experimental in some of their work, but
> they are generally risk-averse.  (This is good, because they're in the
> business of preserving knowledge and cultural artifacts for decades and
> centuries.)  There is, I'm afraid, close to zero chance they would let a
> non-employee student run a server on their network---and running Tor,
> even a non-exit relay, makes the chances even lower.
>
> However, don't give up.  I suggest thinking about this as a long-term
> project that could get you involved with the library, faculty and campus
> IT.  There must be people on campus interested in privacy issues, who
> know about Tor, and perhaps who have been thinking about running a
> relay.  These people could be librarians or they could be professors or
> grad students in political science, communcations, journalism, computer
> science, privacy studies, etc.  Find out who they are and approach
> them!  Perhaps there is a student club interested in the same
> issues---if not, you could start one.  Students and student groups
> advocating for a Tor relay or exit, while demonstrating the importance
> of Tor and how it fits in with the library's and university's mission,
> would very much help the project be successful.

William's advice is good. You definitely need to begin by building a
relationship with the library. Don't be discouraged by the amount of
work this may take; the payoff might end up being a cultural shift
wherein the library, university IT, and CS departments all work on this
as a project together!

You'll want to approach the library by showing that Tor is an excellent
way to uphold the values of librarianship, which are privacy,
intellectual freedom, and access. Really, be explicit about it; don't
assume that they'll just get why you think it matters. Here's something
I wrote about intellectual freedom + Tor Browser a while ago and you can
borrow the arguments I've made:
https://www.scribd.com/document/272919852/Alison-Macrina-The-Tor-Browser-and-Intellectual-Freedom-in-the-Digital-Age

As William said, libraries are mostly risk-averse, so you also need to
be ready to answer their questions about legal and technical concerns.
LFP has collected some resources to help with all of that here:
https://github.com/LibraryFreedom/tor-exit-package/blob/master/resources.md.

Before you email the university librarian, I'd start by talking to some
of the regular academic librarians about your ideas and gauge their
responses. Ask them if they've heard of the Library Freedom Project and
feel free to send them any of our resources. See if they think the
administration would be receptive to you offering a presentation about
Tor to library staff (even better if you can make it open to students
and faculty, too, because that can get you more support). You are
welcome to adapt these slides for that presentation:
https://libraryfreedomproject.org/allabouttor/. Make sure to show them
this academic library that has used their Tor relay as a teaching tool
for students:
https://boingboing.net/2016/03/16/first-ever-tor-node-in-a-canad.html.


LFP is fairly well known and respected in libraries and so if it can be
beneficial to involve me further, I'm happy to assist!

Alison