
Support Tor and Intellectual Freedom in Libraries - fweespeech
https://act.eff.org/action/support-tor-and-intellectual-freedom-in-libraries
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danyork
A key point is this one:

\----

Faced with police and city concerns, library director Fleming agreed to turn
off the Tor relay temporarily until the board could reconsider. “We need to
find out what the community thinks,” he said. “The only groups that have been
represented so far are the Police Department and City Hall.”

\----

The library's board and staff haven't heard from anyone but law enforcement /
government ... so without other viewpoints offering another view they are at
least temporarily bowing to that pressure.

Now, living in NH and knowing how our local politics work, I'm not sure
exactly what a massive online petition is really going to accomplish. If
anything, it may just rouse animosity within the local community. (We take
"Live Free or Die" pretty seriously here - and that includes being free of
outside forces trying to push us to do something!)

What really needs to happen is for some citizens of _Lebanon, NH_ to provide
an alternative view to the library board.

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zmanian
We are trying to encourage a very brave small town library to do something
important, legal and slightly subversive.

It isn't often that signing an internet petition makes much of difference but
this might be the one time.

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dsjoerg
EFF claims that "In mid ­August 2015 the Boston office of the US Department of
Homeland Security contacted the Portsmouth and Lebanon Police Departments to
warn them, falsely, that Tor's primary use is to aid and abet criminal
activity."

Does anyone have a source for this claim?

~~~
utnick
Also to be fair, is it proven that Tor's most popular use-case is something
other than criminal activity? I know there are legit uses for Tor certainly,
but it wouldn't really surprise me if criminals were the primary users

~~~
api
Criminals are numerically the most common Tor users. But the difference is
that what's "criminal" depends on your place of residence.

In America Tor is mostly used (other than as a curiosity) for drugs and child
porn. The former I could care less about, while the latter is indeed creepy.
It's also occasionally used for private communication with journalists, a
numerically less common use but a politically critical one. While I strongly
detest child porn, I equally detest drug prohibition and journalist and
whistleblower harassment/censorship.

In Iran? China? Saudi Arabia? Russia? In places like that Tor is used for
dissident communication and private correspondence with people overseas. In
those places public opposition to the ruling regime can itself be a crime.

There are also authorities including police and intelligence personnel who use
Tor -- very ironically to hide from criminals. For example, an undercover cop
might use Tor to hide their correspondence with the police from digital snoops
in the employ of a criminal organization they are infiltrating. Some organized
crime outfits are very sophisticated, making undercover work actually require
a degree of 'op-sec' on the part of the agent. Compromise can be fatal.

Tor is a gun. Criminals use guns but so do police, hunters, and people
legitimately defending themselves. In America you could probably defend Tor
and other crypto tools on second amendment grounds.

~~~
ironsides
Please provide sources to support your argument.

Edit: Why would I be modded down for asking someone making claims
(questionable ones at best) to provide sources?

~~~
api
Try this:

[http://geekslop.com/2015/catching-pedophiles-running-
secret-...](http://geekslop.com/2015/catching-pedophiles-running-secret-dark-
web-tor-honeypot)

"... First, the pedo site saw magnitudes more traffic than the counterfeiting
or drugs websites – in the order of 100 times more traffic than the other two
combined. ..."

BTW I wasn't arguing that Tor itself is bad, just refusing to engage in the
common denialism one sees among crypto and Tor advocates in claiming it has no
bad uses. The truth is that many things have negative uses: guns, knives,
security systems, Bitcoin, crypto, fireworks, spray paint, alcohol or
virtually any drug, explosives, drones, cameras, etc. All those things have
positive uses as well, and it's ultimately the user who is responsible for how
they are used. Pedophiles use SSL too, should we ban that?

As far as police and intelligence agency use of Tor, look up some of the talks
by the Tor founders in which they cite examples of these uses. In addition to
undercover use, Tor is useful for law enforcement to hide their network
location while investigating potential criminal sites online. Otherwise a site
might easily see that the traffic is coming from a police or .gov site.

~~~
dublinben
Traffic to hidden services makes up a tiny fraction of the overall use of the
Tor network.[0] Any conclusions drawn from that use is highly skewed, and
cannot be used to draw conclusions about Tor itself.

[0] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-statistics-about-
onion...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-statistics-about-onions)

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zcdziura
Holy shit, I live pretty close to Lebanon and had no idea their library was
doing this! I'll have to check out any public hearings (if there are any).

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happyscrappy
Libraries are struggling enough, so I am not sure the inevitable complications
of running a Tor relay will be helpful.

~~~
dublinben
Libraries struggle for relevance in the public eye. Contributing to Tor and
other technical projects helps that.

~~~
ironsides
Exactly. It furthers the spread of information which is a core goal of the
library. Check out the freedom to read statement:
[http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/freedo...](http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/freedomreadstatement)

Further, the Core values of the ALA address these points as well;

"Intellectual Freedom We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and
resist all efforts to censor library resources. ALA Policy Manual, B.9.16 (Old
Number 54.16) ( ALA Code of Ethics, Article II)"

"Social Responsibility

ALA recognizes its broad social responsibilities. The broad social
responsibilities of the American Library Association are defined in terms of
the contribution that librarianship can make in ameliorating or solving the
critical problems of society; support for efforts to help inform and educate
the people of the United States on these problems and to encourage them to
examine the many views on and the facts regarding each problem; and the
willingness of ALA to take a position on current critical issues with the
relationship to libraries and library service set forth in the position
statement. ALA Policy Manual, 1.1 (Mission, Priority Areas, Goals)"

Source:
[http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/coreva...](http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/corevalues)

