Hacker News Reader

Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission.

If Tor hems and haws about political speech, they 100% lose any rhetorical cover against (fallacious but politically compelling) arguments like "so you're OK with CP, but you draw the line at Swedes being against African immigration?" (which is the political issue in question re. Mullvad)

View on HN

It's a false equivalence. If I design a censorship-resistant network, it doesn't imply that I endorse everything flowing through that network. And just because I'm in favor of free speech doesn't mean I can't criticize the speech of others as a private citizen or organization.

Surely this depends on the channel you are using to communicate those endorsements and criticisms.

A. Is Tor openly accepting donations from child porn networks?

B. This isn't "Swedes being against African immigration", this is a party asking to renege on the citizenship of part of the population. "Remigration" isn't stopping immigration, it's looking at people's ancestry to strip them of their actual, present citizenship.

If we look at the origins and funding of the Tor network, it's pretty clear that CSAM is not the priority, although it is a priority. But mostly it's about preventing terror groups like ISIS from freely organizing massacres in France, Germany and maybe even the United States.

Tor funding has nothing to do with any of those things. It’s about providing a secure and hidden way for intelligence assets to communicate. Likely for espionage, and for covert communications with external assets, as these areas are where it would be most needed.

Given the history of ISIS, it’s likely that we had people teaching them how to use it at some point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com