
Covid-19’s impact on Tor - netsec_burn
https://blog.torproject.org/covid19-impact-tor
======
Renaud
They are too dependent on government sponsorship. 80% of their funding comes
from the US government in some shape.

I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be
self-sufficient. A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making
their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.

Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important. Maybe they
need marketing help more than anything else?

~~~
Quanttek
> _(m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor
> the project._

The thing is: When you're the kind of person that is able to amass
m-/billions, you're unlikely to be very altruistic. Most of these people had
to, excuse my language, fuck over people (workers, customers, investors, the
larger public) along the way in various ways. You simply can't be a
billionaire without some kind of severe exploitation and it is unlikely that,
when you have no qualms doing so in one area, it is unlikely you care about
people's livelihoods etc. in other areas (there are some exceptions ofc, Bill
Gates comes to mind). Jeff Bezos is a perfect example: The richest person on
earth has donated what amounts to a few cents for an ordinary person but with
great public fanfare. Not even during the COVID-19 pandemic, he views it as
necessary (cf. with Jack Dorsey, donating 1/3 of his wealth).

~~~
yencabulator
> Bill Gates comes to mind

I'd argue that Bill Gates is regretting his previous actions and trying to fix
his "karma" in his retirement. He was just as bad as the rest of them.

~~~
Quanttek
Oh no, I agree! He was definitely ruthless during his reign as the head of
Microsoft. Generally, when one can show such disregard than one has an overall
character allowing for that, so it's rare that people would behave differently
when it comes to their wealth. But, of course, people can change - even if it
is out of a feeling of guilt.

------
nbar1
I feel for the people at Tor who were let go. My company was in the same
position and I was unfortunately on the list of people who had their position
terminated. While I am upset that I am now unemployed I also can understand
how a company can be put in a difficult position during this time. I will
survive, and I hope they do too.

~~~
wegs
I feel bad for the spiral here. We're now seeing the second-order of the
depression spiral.

* First step was laying off people without jobs which could be done remotely.

* Second step is laying off people who could still be productive from home, but where there's less demand.

Unless we act with boldness and resoluteness, this will just continue to feed
in on itself as the nation collapses.

~~~
nbar1
Unfortunately for me, I was a remote worker already (worked there for a month
shy of 6 years). Hopefully, my position (React/Node FS Dev) is in high enough
demand after all this to resume working remotely with a comfortable salary.
I've already had offers for remote but they require me to relocate after the
pandemic is over, which is really clogging up the job boards.

~~~
chucky_z
Why not accept a job and simply decline to move?

I understand it's a shitty thing to do, but at the end of the day your
health/sanity is more important than some companies. If you have a good
manager/coworkers you can even get them to bat for you to stay, as a remote
worker.

~~~
nbar1
Because, as you said, it's a shitty thing to do. I have the skills,
experience, and finances to find a job where we can have a mutually beneficial
relationship without trying to pull one over on them.

------
mc32
This got me to think about the ACLU and what they are doing.

I see some issues about accommodating justice and other issues affected by the
pandemic and the intersection with liberties... it's more about looking at the
compounding effect than protecting against fundamental change and fundamental
threats to civil rights.

But I don’t see any take on any measures governments have taken to kerb civil
rights in the time of the pandemic as well as talk about tracking and contact
tracing. Also kerbs on the right to assembly and to go out and about, etc.

Yes this would abut against the fight against the disease, but that’s not
their job. They usually don’t contextualize liberties. But here they seem
silent and it’s a bit puzzling.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The ACLU has largely transitioned away from civil rights absolutism towards
progressive advocacy. They haven't entirely tossed it out the door, and still
sometimes defend the civil rights of non-progressive groups, but the modern
ACLU definitely feels it's important to contextualize liberties.

~~~
goodrubyist
Woah, took me some time to digest this -- "contextualize liberties" must be
the most Orwellian phrase in existence, only thing that might come close is
another phrase you used, "civil rights absolutism."

~~~
modwest
The famous “yelling fire in a crowded theory” test for free speech is an
example of contextualizing liberties. There is nothing truly Orwellian about
it.

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins” is
another example.

Society is a context where we exercise our liberties.

~~~
nisuni
The yelling fire example is an extreme edge case, and it’s usually used by
people who would like to limit freedom of speech much more than that.

I’ve never heard it being used genuinely not even once.

I find it irritating: you don’t want freedom of speech? State than openly and
tell me why.

~~~
ksml
Yeah, I don't want unlimited freedom of speech. Some types of speech are
harmful with little benefit, from my perspective. I don't see the
justification for making it permissible to yell "fire" in a movie theater.

~~~
nisuni
As I have already told you the yelling fire thing is essentially a rhetorical
device, that has been used to promote suppression of free speech to a much
larger extent.

I don’t think I even care, but please be honest about it and tell people why
and what you would ban.

I am sure that, like every one using the arguments you are using, you would
suppress free speech much more than that!

Be open and direct, we still have free speech my friend!

No need to hide between rhetorical devices.

~~~
valvar
It always comes down to censoring those you disagree with. Everyone loves free
speech when it expresses views they agree with. If it's about silly edge
cases, no-one really cares - the only reason to care is if it has political
implications, regardless of if you are for or against suppression.

------
LyalinDotCom
For a project that is about freedom of information they sure kept this vague.
Why not share more details of why you had to fire people, what funding sources
dried up, etc?

~~~
tempestn
For a project about privacy it seems appropriate though!

~~~
Thorrez
To protect the privacy of the users you want the organization to be as
transparent as possible about everything not involving user data. If the
organization is hiding something, that something could be user-hostile.

------
cbsks
I’m confused by this... why are layoffs happening so suddenly? Did they
recently lose some large corporate sponsors? How many donations have been cut
off over the last few months? Do they not have money in the bank?

From my perspective it looks like they have had ongoing financial problems,
and are using this as a convenient scapegoat to cut expenses.

~~~
baby
It doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Imagine if your company was
going through a financially difficult time, and firing becomes the only path
forward. This can greatly impact the team's moral and trust in management.
Using the crisis as a scapegoat makes it easier to accept the event.

~~~
cbsks
I’m not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing, just that blaming a few
months of decreased donations for laying off 37% of your employees doesn’t
pass my sniff test.

Why not state the real reason?

~~~
brewdad
If your donations were only covering ongoing expenses with nothing left for a
reserve fund, then losing a third of your funding and laying off a third of
your workforce doesn't seem unreasonable.

------
jzb
I’m sorry to hear this, also surprised. Is the funding for Tor going to be so
immediately affected they had to cut staff without a public appeal or
anything?

~~~
whoisjuan
It can totally happen. Funding commitments are gone fast when a crisis hits.
People start cutting costs and start trying to find ways to reduce expenses.
Giving away money it's definitely a bad idea during an economic crisis, so
non-profits are hit hard.

Exhibit from the 2009 Financial Crisis:
[https://publish.illinois.edu/illinoisblj/2009/09/20/the-
impa...](https://publish.illinois.edu/illinoisblj/2009/09/20/the-impact-of-
the-financial-crisis-on-nonprofits/)

A good recent article on the topic: [https://www.philanthropy.com/article/As-
Coronavirus-Threat/2...](https://www.philanthropy.com/article/As-Coronavirus-
Threat/248213)

------
anigbrowl
Why isn't there a public open-source fund to finance open projects (ie one to
which the donors have no clue or control where the funds will eventually go;
they're disbursed on the basis of how widely something is used)?

~~~
EamonnMR
[https://my.fsf.org/donate/](https://my.fsf.org/donate/)

[https://sfconservancy.org/donate/](https://sfconservancy.org/donate/)

[https://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html](https://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html)

[https://opensource.org/donate](https://opensource.org/donate)

[https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate/](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate/)

~~~
anigbrowl
The FSF's total assets are less than $2m. Apache's under $5m. I mean something
with billion $ capitalization instead of peanuts.

~~~
fierarul
I assume you are aware Apache does not pay for any kind of software
development.

They only spend money on some minor infrastructure to have JIRA and the
mailing lists and build servers running; plus administrative / legal
personnel.

All the new "Apache" software is written by volunteers, the mirror system is
provided free by 3rd parties, code hosting is almost all on GitHub.

So, what would they need the extra money for? Another JIRA instance?

By comparison the FreeBSD foundation does hand out grants to fix parts of
their OS which they deem relevant and in need. Would be nice to see something
similar in other foundations.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm responding to the person who cited it above. Please try reading the whole
thread instead of just the last post.

~~~
fierarul
An open source foundations with billions does not exist, except Mozilla
Foundation but they don't really spread out the money to other projects
compared to what they spend on their own products.

So, the answer is that nothing exist.

Out of the given options a few also don't qualify (like I mentioned, Apache
for sure, opensource.org most likely) because they don't spend money on
software development at all.

~~~
anigbrowl
The original comment of mine that started this thread:

 _Why isn 't there a public open-source fund [...]_

I know it doesn't exist. The non-existence thereof was what prompted that
question. I have no idea what point you're attempting to make.

~~~
fierarul
Clearly you are smart enough to realise what point I was trying to make,
although it was perhaps tangential to your original question.

I do apologise for replying to you. If only HN would have a feature to block
me from replying to you in the future.

------
justicezyx
What's the founding source of Tor project?

I thought people would be more willing to support them in current situations.
Assuming they are on some crowd sourced funding sources.

~~~
bigiain
DARPA, National Science Foundation, and Craigslist - amongst others...

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/half-of-the-tor-projects-
fundi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/half-of-the-tor-projects-funding-now-
comes-from-the-private-sector/) (2017 numbers article)

[https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors/](https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tor_Project#Funding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tor_Project#Funding)

(And people wonder why I'm stocking up on tinfoil millinery supplies...)

------
RedComet
How is their funding in any way affected?

------
totalZero
I was hoping this would be an analysis of changes in usage patterns.

System identification may be easier (and privacy thus worse) now that the
network topology is more static, as people move around less due to the virus.

------
MikeGale
I don't understand the background here.

There is one thing we can all do, if we care about Tor, donate now.

------
DeathArrow
Tor needs two things: more publicity and a public fund. I think many people
would donate if they would find up about Tor and why it is important.

~~~
nbar1
I use Amazon Smile to donate to Tor. It's not much, but it's something.

------
jerheinze
Duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907103)

------
RocketSyntax
why are digital companies impacted? i don't understand. do their customers
have less $ to spend?

------
fierarul
This announcement makes no sense.

You do not have 35 employees without some sort of stable budget. Seems very
unlikely the budget changed so much in the past few months that you have to
reduce your headcount by 40%!

Then they even mention that they expect Tor to be even more relevant in the
coming period. Well, now would be a good time to keep the people, work on the
product and show how relevant it is.

Very little specific detail considering they are a non-profit. Why not post
the numbers?

~~~
maallooc
The fact is, they post their numbers every year. You can download their annual
audit reports. They just did not state those numbers on this article.

And this layoff is not because the budget changed now, it’s to prepare for
that.

Don’t demand to be spoonfed, just pay attention little more.

~~~
fierarul
Yeah, right.

One should expect transparency from little startups showing us their monthly
revenue and such. We have to wait for the yearly audited reports to get a
small glimpse into the world of non-profits.

I've read a few of these reports to know they are generally useless or well
hidden.

It's early April. I'll just quietly wait another 8 months to see how their
financials changed.

Or I could hunt down previous reports, see their revenue, infer their
operating costs (assuming they didn't hire any new people), then guesstimate
how their projected revenue is altered to much as to require a 40% headcount
change.

Or maybe, just maybe, a non-profit could have posted this info.

