Tor isn't saying 'This speech should not be allowed', they're saying 'This speech is speech we disagree with, and don't want associated with TOR'.
Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
> Members of the Tor community have asked us to explain how continued collaboration with Mullvad fits with the Tor Project's human rights mission.
> Our decision followed a thorough due diligence process that involved extensive discussions with community members, staff, and the board, a staff survey, and detailed financial analysis and scenario planning.
Tor is not a democracy and doesn't purport to be. The article outlines the due diligence they have already done, and they're writing this as notice to their community, in response to questions from it.
Privacy, surveillance, and censorship are political debates. According to your logic, Tor shouldn't choose sides on those either.
I don't understand this view. Tor is inherently a political project.
So they can be political in more things and actually when they make an honest public statement we should be happy since we know clearly what's their standing on important issues of today. I think that should be important to all of us.
The best way to fulfill their mission is to advocate for protecting all rights.
* Focus on more public surveillance
* Leverage the full intelligence capabilities of the state to detect and identify individuals involved in or associated with organized crime.
* Law enforcement authorities have the right to employ wiretapping, surveillance, extensive undercover operations, and preventive detention in cases involving an individual flagged as active within or around [organized crime].
* proactively blacklist and red-flag criminals, preventing them and their relatives from committing crimes altogether, restricting their ability to contact other criminals, access their assets and transfer/receive money (and a bunch of other things)
Does this seem compatible woth TOR and it's values?
(hilauriously the same party, as they're populists, are completely against Chat Control)
That mission might be political - but the politics follow from the mission not the other way around.
The mission I’d personally like out of a product that fits Tor’s space is: the ability to unconditionally communicate securely and privately over the public Internet.
Saying that mission is inherently political, sure, you’re going to exclude people who disagree with the mission. That’s kinda the point.
But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
I don’t know how that follows.
> But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
They're not really excluding anyone. If you read the blogpost, they're not even stopping their technological partnership. They are just stopping co-branding themselves to avoid being seen as directly associated with Mullvad. That doesn't exclude anyone. Co-branding is a position of added trust on top of the baseline of being aligned with anyone who shares your views, isn't it expected that an organization might be pickier if it has to sign under another organization's brand?
> Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
This is addressed in the announcement.
> Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Tor didn't stop taking the donations nor did they stop cooperating with Mullvad on development.
What they did is pause "joint promotional activity" and review the language of what they had published about Mullvad to avoid implying an endorsement or alignment of values.
What problem do you have with that? This seems like precisely the avoidance of side taking that you are advocating.
Developers are not machines. They are human as well and can have stances. That’s natural.
This is esp. true for Tor. They are providing privacy services to begin with.
When big players don't choose sides, it doesn't mean they actually dont support a side, it means we don't know or they wanna hide it.
So my point is we might not agree with Tor at this, but I know, I guess to a reasonable degree, now what Tor stands for, and that is rare today.
Also lets not forget that, at least for many people, Tor is a heavy mission driven project. So what it chooses matters to people that worry about big issues of our generation.