[liberationtech] Assange's claim about Tor losing US government support due to WikiLeaks

[liberationtech at lewman.us]

: 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:

To be clear, two other news organizations were as well, but only Cryptome
published something.

: 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.

Yes, it was carefully worded. It was cryptome after all. Generally, the
journalists were looking for some drama-filled story where there is none.

: 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?

Tor did not lose existing funding. We applied for some funding right
around the time when Jacob's volunteer activities with wikileaks were in
the news. We did not get the funding. The lack of funding the proposal
was not attributed to 'wikileaks', but rather lack of sufficient funds.

I'm taking it at face value that we applied for some funding near the
end of a fiscal year and were denied because there wasn't enough money
in the budget to fund the project.

: 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.

We just started our 2011 audit, so in a few months we'll have something
for public release.

-- 
Andrew
http://tpo.is/contact
pgp 0x74ED336B