Re: [liberationtech] Not another Haystack right?

I was intrigued by two issues on this thread: 1) Brian Conley's question about why BBG's support to Tor does not seem to undermine Tor. 2) Jillian York's statement that the Berkman Center has only received funding for research, which, pushed one step further, means that research of circumvention tools is somehow inconsequential to the broader debate about USG's support of such tools. To Brian's question: I'm also very intrigued by this. The common explanation that I heard many times is that Tor was conceived as a tool for protecting one's online anonymity , not for circumventing government censorship; the latter was something that users discovered and embraced on their own. While I found this explanation plausible in the past, I'm no longer sure I can buy it without some further evidence. Were Tor's developers really that narrow-minded as not to understand that the tool can also be used for circumventing censorship? We are talking some of the smartest guys out there - and they couldn't anticipate it? Something here doesn't compute. Or was the anonymity talk just a strategic rhetorical device to deflect attention from the intended use? I haven't read all the relevant mailing lists and am just articulating common wisdom so it would be good if some people who have been involved with Tor for a long time would comment. Secondly, there is another common explanation for Tor's resilience: the fact that instead of going after a particular country, they try to be comprehensive and guard against any threats to users' online anonymity regardless of their location (this is obviously my understanding - please correct if I don't get it right). By this logic, tools that take USG funding and go after a particular country (as, say, Haystack did) make themselves vulnerable to certain conspiracy theories. But this argument, too, doesn't convince me anymore now that Iran has been going after Tor quite systematically and the Tor team have been modifying their product to ensure it works there. My question is: for how long can Tor continue being seen as neutral and not targeting country X if so much of their resources is spent on making sure their tool works in country X? As for Jillian's assertion that research of circumvention tools is somehow conceptually and ethically different from tool-building or training, well, allow me to disagree. One doesn't need to get in bed with Foucault to grasp that a detailed study of circumvention tools - e.g. ranking of their security features and their choice of tools that they won't study or speculate upon (hello, Haystack!) - is not only performative but is also intricately implicated in the *production *of those very tools (and I'm using the word production here rather loosely). Are we really naive enough to believe that a "Tool X, as certified by Harvard University" is the same as a "Tool X, as certified by The State University of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan"? I'd venture that, all things being equal, a tool that is funded by USG and endorsed by Harvard is likely to be less suspicious (to local users) than a tool that is funded by USG and not endorsed by anyone. (There are, exceptions, of course). So I'd rather not spare the well-meaning researchers the scrutiny deserve Please note that this is not some meta-point about the ethics of taking (and offering) USG money to activists and NGOs; my views on this quite complex. It's simply an expression of my continued besument at some folks at the Berkman Center who keep pretending that none of this matters and that "they are only here to help". Evgeny On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Brian Conley <brianc@smallworldnews.tv>wrote:
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Evgeny Morozov