[tor-talk] Tor and solidarity against online harassment

[Andrea Shepard]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 12:07:19PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> "Educating new users" must not be allowed to be seen the same as
> "hurting tor", I'm sure Juan would agree here.
> 
> "Hurting tor" might not be the best term, but perhaps we can say
> 'scare-mongering' may cause potential users to run away, thereby
> reducing our community, and that this is undesirable; I'd hope Juan
> would agree with this.
> 
> But I have to agree that whenever we see "omg tor is so ponies and
> freedom", that Juan's voice of "whoah, slow the fuck down guys, Tor
> and TBB cannot save you from nation-state monitoring, and make sure
> you're aware of potential problems a b and c" is much better than no
> genuine voice of caution.
> 
> And I have to say - every newcomer that appears here, must be the
> beneficiary of our best efforts in communication, for we simply cannot
> know if -this-particular- newbie is in need of the most careful advice
> to be cautious or not.
> 
> So -because- Tor is the currently most viable "privacy of some level/
> some sort" newtwork today, we particularly owe it to be diligent and
> -never- fail to impress upon newcomers what they may need to keep in
> their minds.

*Caution* about the as-yet-unknown exact attack capabilities of powerful
spook agencies is rational and reasonable.  Disseminating paranoia about
'looking him up in .mil databases' is enabling an atmosphere of abuse and
harassment which has recently been receiving some very suspicious-looking
promotion.

-- 
Andrea Shepard
<andrea at torproject.org>
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