Dear Virgil:
I doubt our social contract is going to trigger international legal battles around Tor. What governments really don't like about Tor, despite what they might say, is that we prevent them from spying.
However, let's think a moment about human rights.
Here is Tor's official mission statement:
"To advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding."
Governments like to paint the idea of human rights as "Western" -- but that's not the opinion of people in those countries pushing for basic freedoms.
For example, Chinese activists working on health, legal, and environmental issues have told me, "The government says that human rights are a western value, but don't believe them. Human rights are universal." That was one of the first things one particular activist, a doctor, told me just after he was released from prison for advocating for healthcare for sick people in rural China.
Many people have risked their lives on this proposition--for instance, the original signers of China's Charter 08: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_08
Lu Xiaobo, the Nobel Laureate, is in prison in China for signing Charter 08 (and he signed it knowing that it would likely trigger his imprisonment). Many other people also went to jail for signing Charter 08.
The point of Charter 08 --which is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--is to say--"Despite what you have been told by the government--people in China demand and deserve their human rights. Even now."
Lots of awful people hate human rights and so do the secret police. Tor must be an organization that doesn't accommodate them, but instead finds ways to side with and support the people they would like to oppress.
--Kate
Virgil Griffith:
This looks very lovely. Thank you Alison for drafting it!
The only part that concerns me is explicitly defining "We advance human rights" as part of Tor's core mission.
The problem is that many people who need Tor the most live in countries in which Tor's active alignment with liberal human rights advocacy would substantially (certainly non-negligibly) increase the chance of Tor being banned.
Focusing on human rights gets you on the shit-list for most countries in both Southeast Asia and Africa. (Combined with China, this comprises ~44% of the world population per Wolfram Alpha.) Presumably, privacy naturally dovetails with human rights, but by explicitly stating we are primarily focused on human rights, Tor is likely to be banned in many countries in which it is sorely needed.
For example, in Singapore they were discussing banning Tor but I was able to sway them to refrain because Tor is not just "human rights" (which the government does not care for), but is a privacy technology for many things, such as whistleblowing (which the government likes).
By pigeon-holing Tor into chiefly the human-rights category, it makes the argument to not ban Tor much more difficult. And Tor being banned is counter-conducive to human rights in these regions.
So here's the question:
** Would people support Tor Project aligning itself with explicit human rights advocacy even if that alignment is likely to obstruct the most-needy users' capacity to use Tor software? **
-V
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 9:22 PM, Isabela isabela@riseup.net wrote:
I am with pikachu! +1
Thank you for the great work community team! Like Teor said, it does a good job describe what we value.
On 07/29/2016 04:09 AM, isis agora lovecruft wrote:
Alison transcribed 2.8K bytes:
If accepting: your florid prose about why you love it and think it's an astonishing work of art that reflects the diligence and care exercised by the authors is quite welcome. A show of hands (writing an email that says +1) is also fine. Questions are welcome.
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Thank you for your feedback, and thank you to all of the Tor folks who worked on this, especially Lunar and Roger, who got it started.
Also +1.
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