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Comment by MaupitiBlue | Hacker News Reader

Given that its hard to figure out how they could be profitable, should we assume private internet access is a NSA honeypot?

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Seems very unlikely to me.

Both the founder (Andrew Lee) and the CEO (Ted Kim) are known in the industry, have made their views on encryption and authoritarianism pretty clear in interviews, articles, and even full-page ads in the NYT and WaPo to argue for broadband privacy[0] and encryption.

PIA also seems pretty profitable; they certainly have enough to contribute to various open source projects, join pro-net-neutrality lobbying efforts like Fight For the Future, saved the Linux Journal from death (considered an "extremist forum" by the NSA's XKeyScore), and pay to keep Freenode ticking over (they also do loads of glitzy events for the Korean-American community).

You could argue that all of this is an elaborate hoax of course, but you could do that with anything.

[0]: https://twitter.com/Hunckler/status/846204241731575808

What's your take on the recent releases that claim that the US government is funding the Tor network and its development? Information obtained from FOIA requests.

They created Tor, and have been funding it from the start. This is not news.

Yasha Levine has been on a tear ‘exposing’ this for the last few years, but it’s not personally shocking to me.

Did you know that the US government funded Signal, too?

The US Government has a legitimate reason for creating and supporting mechanisms anonymous Internet use by those under the control of oppressive regimes.

Other parts of the US Government appear to have a desire to know everything about everyone all the time.

The "US Government" is not one thing, it's an enormous collection of agencies, bureaus, and humans, who sometimes have desires that are at odds with one another.

It's likely quite profitable, they don't buy bandwidth from Amazon, they get a few colo'd machines or dedicated servers in many DCs - you can get dedicated gigabit lines in several DCs for a few hundred a month. Most subscribers only use the service occasionally and won't place that much load on it.

I don't understand this. Is profitability the only metric for if a service can be trusted or not?

It's also not even mentioned in the article linked, not sure why you brought it up at all tbh.

Profitability (or the possibility of profitability) is absolutely a measure of whether something can be relied on. And if it can't possibly be profitable, then it means there is likely a non-obvious revenue stream or funding source, which means a ulterior motive.

So yeah, if a service can't be profitable, it can't be trusted.

A decent emergency medical response service is never profitable.

It requires a vast amount of hospitals to ensure that there is one local enough to wherever you get ill or injured and they all have to be staffed by lots of different highly qualified specialists who are in as regular practice as possible.

If you were going to require that they be profitable, there simply are not enough rich people for the doctors to work on in order to stay in good practice, or to pay for enough suitably equipped hospitals to ensure a short travel time in an emergency.

In the US, we essentially do require that they all be profitable or else not exist at all. This is "solved" by just charging you (or your insurance company) tons of money if you actually need to use it. A medical emergency requiring an ER and an ambulance can easily cost as much or more than an ordinary person will earn in their whole lifetime.

> A medical emergency requiring an ER and an ambulance can easily cost as much or more than an ordinary person will earn in their whole lifetime.

The majority of hospitals with E.R. in the US are non-profits that receive federal subsidies to help them exist.

But not enough subsidy that they are remotely affordable, hence the outrageous bills foisted upon individuals.

Good point. I should have been more clear about "non-obvious" funding sources. If a service isn't profitable, but has a clear funding source (philanthropy, government, etc), that is a little different. But the motive for that funding would need to be clear as well.

So yeah, charities can be ok.

I can see where you are coming from, I just think obvious profitability is a poor heuristic for trust, not only due to altruism, but also because some people like showing off, some people are pure hobbyists, some people are trying to make art and many people are just downright weird, though not necessarily in a way that is going to really do much damage.

It isn't always as simple as looking for an obvious motive, though I would agree to always keep an eye out for where the money comes from and if there is a game and if you are a mark. However that should apply whether or not something looks profitable on the surface, otherwise you drop all cynicism the moment someone tells you the right story.

Makes total sense -- if they aren't making money on the service they sell they will naturally have to do something else to keep the lights / servers on.

I worked at a well-known civil rights advocacy nonprofit for a long time and Private Internet Access was one of our major supporters. The owner is a huge ally of Internet freedom and privacy - a very good person who is an activist in their own way and using their success to make a positive impact.

So perhaps I'm biased (even though I'm not in nonprofit anymore), but I would put the chance of an NSA honeypot at close to 0%...

Krita’s 4.0 release was on here recently, which reminded me of this https://krita.org/en/item/krita-foundation-update/

PIA put up £20,000 to keep them going after a tax mixup dropped a large bill on the foundation.

Of course, it could conceivably all be government funded philanthropy to make them look like the good guys, but there’s no evidence to suggest that.

Bandwidth is cheap, massive overcommitment. Why wouldn't it be profitable?

What you say concerns me as PIA user. What do you base your allegations on? It seems that PIA sponsors a lot of organizations [0], which I don't think they would if they were not profitable.

[0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-spo...

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