[tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

[Kasimir Gabert]

Hi Joe,

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk <joebtfsplk at gmx.com> wrote:
>
> Please, please - everyone (probably including me) is making the topic  way
> more complicated than my main question.  No one's addressed the main
> question.  If there's no answer, that's fine.  Forget conspiracy theories.
>  If you have a plausible, possible explanation to one question, great.
>
> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt
> has absolutely no control over it?  It's that simple.  It would seem a very
> bad idea.  Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint & consider it as
> a common sense question.

The US government is a very large group of individuals which extends
beyond the DoD / CIA / etc borders that I believe you may only be
considering.  For example, consider the NSF.  The NSF is a US
government agency that will fund large amounts of research which have
nearly or entirely no return to the US government directly[1]. I'm
very certain that many of the NSF projects can in fact be used by
anyone---the resulting research is published
internationally---regardless as to whether they are working in the US
government's classified world or whether they are working for US
enemies.

Tor is funded in part by the NSF[2], but obviously not extensively.
The NSF is just a counter example to your claim.

I'm only discussing your use of the word ``[US] government'', but the
same idea will apply to nearly every relatively large subtree within
the US government.  Of course, if Tor was only funded from one
subtree, say the imaginary "US Monitoring Internet Communications
Agency" then you might have some reason to be concerned.

Take care,
Kasimir


[1] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf99172/nsf99172.htm
[2] https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en

-- 
Kasimir Gabert