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

[Evgeny Morozov]

thanks, this does answer all my questions. It seems that Julian just has a
way with words.

Evgeny

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:37 AM, <liberationtech at lewman.us> wrote:

> : 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
>
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