Those of you who've read Assange's recent interview with The Rolling Stone<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the-rolling-stone-interview-20120118?print=true>may have noticed this claim (in response to a question about forms of pressure that US government exerted on WikiLeaks and their supporters): The Tor Project, which protects people around the world from being spied on
or censored, lost some $600,000 to the U.S. government, as a result of one of their people, Jacob Appelbaum, having filled in for me once at a conference in New York. This type of indirect pressure has been applied to a great many people.
I was a bit puzzled by it. So were people at Cryptome<http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0053.htm>, who asked Tor about it. Here is what Andrew Lewman (who's on this list) wrote to them: I read this statement as well. It is news to me that we were penalized for Jacob. Maybe wikileaks has unreleased information from one of our USG funders. If so, they should publish it for all to review. Now, Andrew's statement is carefully worded, i.e. it does allow for the possibility that Tor lost the USG money but they think it was not Jacob/WikiLeaks-related. So it would be good to know whether a) Tor did lose some or all of USG support between late 2010 and early 2012? and b) there is any evidence to link this to WL, as Assange did? Whatever the motivation, USG cutting support to circumvention tools is a big news item all in itself, regardless of the link to Assange. I wonder why it wasn't more widely reported, if true - perhaps, by Tor project itself?- because ultimately this would all be visible on Tor's financial statements. Evgeny _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE