A New Tor Bridge Authority | Hacker News Reader

A New Tor Bridge Authority

blog.torproject.org

76 pointsashitlerferad23 comments

I feel like all the news around tor recently has to do with people leaving. Is this a cause for concern?

I don't know about that. The only one I've heard of is Jacob Appelbaum, and that was more of an ousting than him leaving.

If anything, Tor seems to have gained quite an impressive board of directors recently:

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-project-elects-new-boar...

It's not quite that simple:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/dissent-and-distrus...

Seriously HN, 5 top-level comments and every single one is off-topic.

Anyway, it's great that they managed to get up and running in such a limit time at this scale.

It's obvious that there are challenges decentralisation and status monitoring, but I personally have high hopes and in general with I2P it's great to have multiple players working for censorship-free internet.

Kudos

It's like everyone knows why he left but no one wants to talk about it.

Why did he leave?

In his statement of resignation he says that given recent events the Tor Project no longer meets his ethical standards, and that he will be ceasing all support, including financial and technical.

Full statement:

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/19690

"Dear friends,

Given recent events, it is no longer appropriate for me to materially contribute to the Tor Project either financially, as I have so generously throughout the years, nor by providing computing resources. This decision does not come lightly; I probably ran one of the first five nodes in the system and my involvement with Tor predates it being called "Tor" by many years.

Nonetheless, I feel that I have no reasonable choice left within the bounds of ethics, but to announce the discontinuation of all Tor-related services hosted on every system under my control.

Most notably, this includes the Tor node "Tonga", the "Bridge Authority", which I recognize is rather pivotal to the network

Tonga will be permanently shut down and all associated crytographic keys destroyed on 2016-08-31. This should give the Tor developers ample time to stand up a substitute. I will terminate the chron job we set up so many years ago at that time that copies over the descriptors.

In addition to Tonga, I will shut down a number of fast Tor relays, but the directory authorities should detect that shutdown quickly and no separate notice is needed here.

I wish the Tor Project nothing but the best moving forward through those difficult times,

--Lucky"

Do we know what the "recent events" he's talking about are? Do they in someway threaten the security/anonymity of Tor?

If this is more fallout from the extra-legal witch hunt applied against Jacob Appelbaum then it really is a shame to be losing project leaders over something not in anyway related to Tor tech.

I believe there was also some issues with management outside of the Appllebaum stuff.

From https://blog.torproject.org/blog/statement-0:

> Many people inside and outside the Tor Project have reported incidents of being humiliated, intimidated, bullied and frightened by Jacob, and several experienced unwanted sexually aggressive behavior from him.

Given this thread, I think these extra-legal accusations are part of the ethical concerns the OP had with the new Tor leadership. They started a witch hunt against Applebaum.

You don't need legal action to exclude someone from a community. Many people in the community are anarchists of various kinds, and some have been targeted by governments, including Jake himself. They would really rather not involve the state (any state). Here is what one of the victims wants: https://medium.com/@flexlibris/theres-really-no-such-thing-a... It's not a witch hunt.

That definitely reads like a witch hunt as does this: http://jacobappelbaum.net/

Anarchist tendencies aside, I wouldn't be comfortable working with people who initiated this type of vigilante justice. Doesn't sound like Lucky Green was either.

Shava Nerad has a particularly good explanation of the situation:

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/jacob-appelbaum-tor-developer-a...

(or all "shava23" posts in that thread)

> It's not a witch hunt.

This is the very definition of a witch hunt. Vague accusations were made to provoke emotional us-vs-them tribalism. The problem with that is not only how it unfairly pre-judges the accused; it also obscures and confuses any legitimate accusations.

Not wanting to involve a state is fine, and very understandable when the situation involves organizations that the state considers a threat. However, not involving a state doesn't mean anything-goes anarchy is the solution either. An alternative system should have been used, if the goal was justice instead of vengeance and witch hunts. The accused needs to be able to face their accuser and rebut the accusations.

> targeted by governments, including Jake himself

Regardless of everything else, that alone should be enough of a reason to be particularly careful with any accusations and follow a formal judicial process (which may not involve a state) with pedantic accuracy.

> what one of the victims wants

There is a lot of talk about justice and creating new systems to handle social problems. Unless I'm missing something, there is zero discussion about verifying the accusation.

Nobody likes the state judicial system, but there's a reason it exists. Without some method of fairly handling accusations, we are left without closure and a divided community filled with suspicion and mistrust.

"We have found our Kobiyashi-Maru."

edit:

I'll interpret multiple unexplained down votes as yet more evidence of a witch hunt. Hint: I haven't take a position on anybody's guilt or innocence.

It's not a witch hunt because it's not looking to destroy someone. The end goal is reconciliation, not punishment. In fact the blog post doesn't advocate for any punishment at all. It's hardly us-vs-them when she says that Jake's friends should form a support group for him! Obviously the victims want him kept away from conferences for a time, which is only prudent given the nature of the accusations. It's a little more than "administrative leave pending investigation" but not by much.

Here's another account, followed by a more detailed description of the process the victims are asking for and how that's gone so far. https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/the-forest-for-the-trees.... Again, no "vengeance" or punishment.

> It's not a witch hunt because it's not looking to destroy someone.

Is this some sort of a joke? Maybe some people wanted a more limited result, but that isn't what happened. Did you miss the twitter account named @TimeToDieJake? (now renamed to @VictimsOfJake) How, exactly, is publicly shaming someone and calling for them to be excommunicated from their community anything other than "looking to destroy someone"?

> doesn't advocate for any punishment

    Jake must be excluded from all community activities
    as a precondition for healing.

I would describe that as not only advocating for a very specific punishment, but demanding that the punishment must happen. Do you want to pretend that being excluded from your community isn't a punishment? Really?

> It's hardly us-vs-them

Yes, it is, until a formal process occurs where the accusation and rebuttal are heard and an independent judgment finds the accusation is true. Again, you're completely ignoring the process of verifying the accusation.

> Obviously the victims want him kept away from conferences for a time

That's fine as a temporary measure until a form judicial process either confirms the accusation or finds that the accused is innocent.

> Again, no "vengeance" or punishment.

You must have read another document, as your new link repeats several items and advocates for punishment in much stronger language.

Again, i don't know what happened and make no claims about the validity of the accusations. I'm trying to point out that this kind of witch hunt based on pre-judging someone from only an accusation should terrify you. Guilty until proven innocent is a dangerous precedent to set... even if the accused really deserves it.

You might try reading the links I provided previously. Even if Jake did the terrible things he's accused of, ignoring the principles of justice and simply judging him guilty sets a precedent where you might be judge guilty on a mere accusation in the future.

Can someone tell me why this post has a rel="nofollow" in the link?

Same for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403138

and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405328 (which seems to be a sponsored/in-house post with no comments allowed?)

CSS selector for stylish:

    .storylink[rel~=nofollow] {
        color: red;
    }

edit: further down behind the front-page it becomes more, but for "new" there are none such links at all.

We're happy to answer such questions if you email hn@ycombinator.com, but please don't create distractions in the discussion threads by posting them here.

thanks, sorry to bother, I sent a mail. (though slight function abuse in the name of curiosity should be allowed on a site called hn, no? ;)

"Nonetheless, I feel that I have no reasonable choice left within the bounds of ethics, but to announce the discontinuation of all Tor-related services hosted on every system under my control."

One can only assume this statement was made due to the somewhat recent Appelbaum debacle, but why pussyfoot around the subject? Lucky either believes numerous members of the Tor project are lying or there is something more nefarious going on here. Has he expanded on what ethical standards he is in disagreement with?

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