Tor Project 2008 Tax Return Now Online

[Julie C]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Mike Perry <mikeperry at fscked.org> wrote:

>
> Yes. The larger threat is that funders can stear funding in a general
> direction. Say, by prioritizing performance over censorship
> resistence, or censorship resistence over anonymity research.
>
> So far however, it appears that everyone involved is on the same page,
> and believes that performance, usability, censorship resistence, and
> general anonymity research are *all* important to our goal.
>
> <snip>
>

The larger threat that I see is the Tor Project is absolutely ... dare I say
it? ... PATHETIC AT MARKETING ITSELF.

Something has been bugging me the last couple days about the bigger picture
of the funding issue that came to light with the cryptome posting a couple
days ago. It became clearer to me today as I was driving through my
neighbourhood (yes, I am a Canadian) - only $500,000 in funding for all of
2008 for the Tor Project?!

Good grief, my neighbourhood homeless shelter gets 5 times that much funding
each year. And there are likely 15 shelters in my city that get that much or
more - per year. And this is in just 1 city in 1 country!

Sorry, Roger and Andrew, but as talented as you are, I think you have to
make it a priority to get some professional fundraisers on board. Anonymity,
privacy, free speech, and stuff are absolutely more important than a few
thousand homeless people in my home town. Somebody is not getting the
message out, and all of the volunteers who believe in these bread and butter
moral and ethical issues deserve more.

Think bigger, please! Who is holding the project back from not thinking
bigger? Why isn't the UN sending you $50M a year? Big enterprises need your
software. All law enforcement needs your software. All governments need your
software. All journalists, all bankers, accountants, lawyers, researchers -
everyone who needs to have at least some of their communications off the
record.

This is the way to solve the US-centric perception, the fear of big
government - get everyone to be funding your work. And keep it all open
source so no one needs to be fearful of anyone else controlling it. Get
100,000 servers and relays and bridges out there - why aren't Google and
Amazon and Microsoft and IBM and others throwing serious weight behind you?

That's the challenge that I see is vital for right now.

--
Julie C.
julie at h-ck.ca
GPG key 06D32144 available at http://keys.gnupg.net
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