[tor-teachers] Selling Tor outside the anglosphere

[Kenneth Freeman]

On 10/18/2015 07:50 PM, Virgil Griffith wrote:

> Tor is a swiss-army knife technology that offers different things to
> different people.  And the more people that use Tor for different things
> the better everyone is protected---this is the old adage that anonymity
> requires *diverse company*.  And in this context, "Selling Tor" is
> shorthand for emphasizing the swiss-army blades of Tor that your audience
> likes, and de-emphasizing the blades your audience dislikes.

To abuse the metaphor, Tor is a double-edged Swiss Army knife. I don't
think anyone (particularly any agency) naïvely presumes that Tor only
suits their purposes X and not nefarious purposes Y, but everyone who
understands the matter appreciates that Tor benefits greatly from hybrid
vigour.

> To be more concrete: "selling Tor" to chinese activists would be selling
> Tor's benefits for human-rights/democracy (which they like) and
> de-emphasizing buying drugs (which they dislike).  On the other hand,
> "selling Tor" to the Singapore authorities would be emphasizing Tor's
> benefits for anti-corruption/whistleblowing (which they like) and
> de-emphasizing democratic movements (which they don't like).

Know your audience. In the case of Tor everyone in your audience is
Spartacus (and it behoves them to be so). A diverse ecosystem is a
robust ecosystem.


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