
The Tor Project Defends the Human Rights Racists Oppose - zorpner
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-project-defends-human-rights-racists-oppose
======
joelrunyon
> But we can't build free and open source tools that protect journalists,
> human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if we also
> control who uses those tools. Tor is designed to defend human rights and
> privacy by preventing anyone from censoring things, even us.

I feel like this is what cloudflare should have said. I understand they
changed their mind after TDS claimed CloudFlare supported them - but based on
the internal memos it seemed to be more of a "I was grumpy and they're jerks"
decision.

The major problem with that being that once you make one decision like that -
even if you're well-intentioned, the next person that comes after you might do
it to the wrong people.

Maybe letting racists have a platform isn't great, but it's better than hand-
by-hand justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host.

~~~
ajross
> Maybe letting racists have a platform [is] better than hand-by-hand
> justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host.

Or, maybe it's not? I don't see that that follows. Yes, there's the slippery
slope argument that someday a host could make a decision we don't agree with.
But (1) hosts do that anyway, all the time, and (2) if _fucking white power
racism_ isn't on solid, level ground above the slope, then what else could be?

The solution to private sector choice about hosting and distribution of
controversial content can't be a blanket protection for all speech. The first
amendment is about public law, because of the reach of the government and the
potential damage from abuse.

The solution in the end really can only be a case-by-case determination,
individually by every host, as to what they are comfortable seeing on their
systems. Which is exactly what we have here, even if CloudFlare's internal
process was exposed as messier than we'd like to see.

~~~
dcow
Or, the internet has matured enough that we consider it a public utility and
seriously form legislation that protects peoples' constitutional rights even
on the internet. I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically
harming anyone. I've never been to the site, I don't give them my traffic,
money, anything.. If you don't like them and find them so vile it's causing
you mental stress then just navigate away and ignore the vile scum.

~~~
djtriptych
Works for well-adjusted, rational adults (hopefully). Not so much for
children. It's moral pornography.

The idea that public utilities (e.g. public broadcast spectrums) must conform
to a negotiated standard of decency is well-established even at the court
level. It wouldn't necessarily be protected free speech, even if the
publically-accessible internet were a public utility (which it isn't),
especially if private alternatives exist (which they do, e.g. tor).

~~~
dcow
This is why well adjusted rational adults are responsible for raising
children. You teach a child what is right and what is wrong and then hope
beyond all else that when they set out on their own you've given them a strong
moral compass. You don't neglect the responsibility and blame the government
for not censoring all the bad things on the internet from them when they screw
up later in adulthood. Are you really arguing society should be 100%
childproof? We can't put anything on the internet that _someone_ might find
objectionable to a child.

------
bronzeage
Cloudflare lost in the long run. Especially as a host of DDoS protections,
which many websites with significant opposition and threats require. Next time
a controversial site decides to find itself DDoS protection, I hope it will
think twice before going to cloudflare. Because how will you tell if that when
the next internet shitstorm comes and focus on your website, cloudflare will
stand there for you. Internet is all about freedom of speech. Every one will
have his stage, with or without your help. I would've somewhat tolerated
cloudflare if they had never hosted TDS in the first place and just disagreed
to do that. But this is just a disgusting populist U turn, led by the current
internet trend.

I would write a disclaimer about how I think TDS is horrible, but I honestly
have never opened that website once, and I feel like the need to apologize for
defending freedom of speech is absurd.

~~~
91bananas
I read up on this a little yesterday. What do you think about this site
getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google for T.O.S. violations?

I could just be ill informed, but it seemed like Cloudflare could have simply
just done the exact same thing quietly. But instead they at first did nothing,
after some criticism in the press did the CEO wake up in a bad mood to remove
their protection. His blog and email read almost noble, then I caught up on
the days prior and it made me think much less of them as a company, him as a
leader.

Feels like you as a company should be able to do business with whoever you
want, and will face judgment for it in the public eye, I have no issue with
that. I have no idea where I'm going with this so I will stop now.

~~~
ythn
> What do you think about this site getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google
> for T.O.S. violations?

I think it's a little disturbing. On the one hand, I vehemently disagree with
TDS and what they are saying. On the other, what if the political tide turns
against my religion and my church's website is knocked off the web for being
"anti-LGBT"?

I personally would prefer if domain registrars remained politically neutral.
I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide-
scale in the future.

~~~
jacquesm
> what if the political tide turns against my religion and my church's website
> is knocked off the web for being "anti-LGBT"?

Yes, what then? Shall we solve that problem when we have it?

Because you can fantasize and theorize until the cows come home about how your
religion and your church will be knocked off the web but in the meantime that
never happened and it very likely never will and if and when it does you will
find a lot of voices sympathetic to your cause, including mine.

Or are we somehow beyond being able to evaluate things on merit?

> I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide-
> scale in the future.

Yes, it is an extreme case. And no, it most likely - you can't deal in
absolutes - won't be done on a wide scale in the future.

~~~
alethiophile
Slippery slopes are alive and well, particularly in this domain. Go back to
2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be getting sued for
not catering gay weddings.

It is entirely right and proper to consider the likely future implications of
an act before you decide it's a good idea. Even if it feels really good to
stick it to $OUTGROUP just this one time.

~~~
jacquesm
> Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be
> getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

Why would I do that? I'm fine with bakeries getting sued for not catering gay
weddings, that's one of the advantages of living in a normal society: the
ability to petition the courts to seek redress.

------
Proof
This is a brilliant response. We must value Privacy and Security above all
else. Once we open the door to oppress a group's voice we unanimously despise:
we allow our own voices to be oppresssd in the future.

~~~
mozumder
Slippery slope fallacies are not a real problem.

You deal with the problem at hand now, not some problem in the far distant
future.

Greedy algorithms exist and solve plenty of problems just fine.

~~~
21
Why doesn't this also apply the other way?

White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only
talk. The few which actually did kill somebody, like the car driver, got
arrested. So why not let the police deal with the problem at hand instead of
talking about how the white supremacists will kill many in the distant future.

Why is it not a slippery slope to say that allowing marches today will lead to
genocides tomorrow?

~~~
jacquesm
> White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only
> talk.

Do yourself a favor and open a history book. Regions of interest: Germany,
roughly 1932-1945, South Africa, 1948-1991.

~~~
21
I was just applying their argument against their own logic.

The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes.
The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s, even if Trump
would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many
levels.

~~~
jacquesm
> The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Indeed, it is worse in many respects, better in others.

For instance: 70 years ago it took a couple of days to organize something
involving ten thousand people. Now you can do that in 10 minutes with a social
media post in the right spot.

> Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes.

You do realize that the largest participant in such peacekeeping missions has
decided to abdicate?

> The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s

You are significantly under-estimating the strength of pre-war Germany in
spite of having been beaten in World War I. In fact, you could easily argue
that it was specifically this kind of under-estimation that directly led to
World War II.

> even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be
> blocked at many levels.

It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of
genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and
he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on
both sides.

One of my theories about why the GOP does not want to throw Trump out is that
they are - rightfully - scared of what kind of backlash that will cause and
that they hope against hope that they will be voted out in 2018 so others will
be seen as responsible for throwing the lit fuse into the armory.

~~~
21
> It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of
> genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work
> and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing
> violence on both sides.

I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention
where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen. That would require
the police, national guard, army to stand down and allow it.

So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do. We need to
fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest anyone actually
planning such thing, but they are not in the category of genocide, especially
because in a genocide the killers walk away with nothing happening to them
(because they are protected by the state), but in a terrorist attack you
either die or are quickly caught.

~~~
jacquesm
> I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention
> where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen.

Oh, but we already have a small precursor to that, the ICE raids on
immigrants. There will always be people willing to ride the trains and to man
the guard towers, good Christians too.

Let's hope it does not go further than it has already done.

> So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do.

I'm not sure of that. The whole 'unite the right' movement is about connecting
all the little dots into a wave large enough that it would be hard to put down
without the national guard or the army stepping in, who could very well have
sympathizers in their own ranks.

> We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest
> anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of
> genocide.

Yes, that is _exactly_ what they said in 1933 about Hitler and his merry band
of followers.

And then in 1934 the tables were turned and suddenly there was no way back,
from that point forward WWII was inevitable.

Edit: I've taken some time to find this article in Der Spiegel, I read it long
ago and I found it to be quite informative about Hitlers rise to power:

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-fuehrer-
myth...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-fuehrer-myth-how-
hitler-won-over-the-german-people-a-531909.html)

edit2: On another note, please note that Germany at the time was _the_
superpower in Europe.

~~~
21
I don't think this article gives weight to your fears.

It says he had total control over the media, and that he had huge approval.
Neither is true today. The last three presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump), were
around 60% (excluding 9/11) -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating)

Also, what would be the unifying sentiment that the white supremacists would
unite the whole country around, like this:

> For the vast majority of Germans, the restoration of national pride and
> military strength, the overthrowing of the Versailles Treaty and the
> expansion of the Reich to incorporate ethnic Germans from Austria and the
> Sudetenland were goals in themselves

~~~
dragonwriter
> It says he had total control over the media, and that he had huge approval.
> Neither is true today.

This was not the case when Hitler first became Chancellor or, even moreso,
when his faction first took undisputed control of the Nazi Party.

It was true sometime _after_ he'd done both, and used the propaganda power
(and coercive power) of both the state and party to secure his hold on the
public. (One clear difference, whatever parallels there might be, is that
Trump only really started the fight for undisputed control of the GOP after
becoming President; that makes the internal fight much more visible to
outsiders, but also wants _if_ he wins it, he won't have as many other
barriers to cross to implement his plans as Hitler did after taking over the
Nazis.)

------
temp-dude-87844
In my opinion, it's telling that the Tor Project has decided to post about
this.

It's an open secret -- in other words, not even a secret -- that Tor and
various other darknet and overlay networks contain, among other kinds of
material, content that has been driven underground because of the risks it
presents to its promulgators on the aboveground net. Depictions of actual
child sex abuse, one of the most widely condemned sorts of material in a way
that's nearly universal across societies, has been present on Tor-reachable
hidden services for years, and the Tor Project seldom writes about this; it's
simply accepted as a risk of the style of technology, much to the chagrin and
moral unease of people everwhere.

Clearly they are addressing a recent development about a particular website,
with relevance to the United States and its current struggle that was brought
to forefront in the past week. The Project sought to publicize their stance to
leave no doubts, but was this not something that ought to have been abundantly
clear to a sufficiently objective observer? Doesn't the fact that a US
nonprofit tending to a piece of networking software decides to weigh in on the
matter of a single hidden service currently in the spotlight reveal something
troubling about the pressures of public opinion in the US today?

------
briholt
It is a poor reflection on tech's echochamber when Tor has to re-explain the
principles of free speech for the millionth time. We've already had this
debate about Monarchists, witches, real Nazis, Commies, Satanists, Anarchists,
blacks, gays, Muslims, and every other group at the center of a moral panic.
And EVERY time afterward, when the hysteria ceases, we look back and think how
absurd people were for thinking we need to undermine basic liberties in order
to prevent the atheists from turning our kids gay or whatever. Yet every few
years there is a new absurd moral panic that opportunists jump on to grant
themselves authoritarian powers and there is a new set of gullible idiots that
are eager to cede their rights to them. The world will be able to function
fine with a few racist wingnuts writing on their loser blog. The world will
not function when we start arbitrarily silencing people and granting fringe
groups the greatest recruiting propaganda they could ask for.

~~~
dcow
I never understood the restriction on presidents being born US citizens until
recently. What we've observed of late is a perversion of the basic liberties
and freedoms that America was founded on. My hypothesis is that in part this
is due to an influx of individuals who were not raised to value those freedoms
and liberties within quite the same cultural context. (I'm trying to be very
careful here please don't pervert my words.) This is by no means bad but my
point is that it certainly is at odds with our own American cultural values.
It is also supprising how many Americans I've met so easily prefer personal
safety or cater to anecdotal passion and empathy. What's so ironic is ther
it's these very values that have allowed us to become what we are today. Why
are we so eager to throw those out the minute we realize just how powerful
they are? But that's not the point. My point is that it's fine to entertain
and exchange all cultures and ideas, but we've built a system of geverning
people that depends to some degree on our own cultural identity. The key to
true diversity is tolerance--the ability to firmly retain your own identity
whilst co-existing with all the other ones. We cannot value freedom of
expression if we are not willing to tolerate ideas that are different from our
own. There's a word for a shared political/social worldview: uniformity.

------
Torgo
People say roughly the same thing about Tor that they used to say about the
printing press: bad people can use it to spread seditious lies, pornography,
anonymous accusations against upright people. I suppose the defenses are about
the same, too.

------
0xbear
I wonder if they find it in their hearts to denounce the purveyors of child
porn who have been using Tor extensively and for many years. One of the
reasons I will never run a Tor exit node: it is almost certain to at some
point help them access the vilest shit imaginable, with impunity.

~~~
gonmf
Obviously people having opinions in an internet forum is much more important.

On a more serious note, Tor was meant to be used by people that want to say
something that may run counter to the general, approved, discourse. That was a
very ironic statement.

------
intopieces
I support this decision by the Tor Project and also the one made by
CloudFlare. This is an excellent example of the need for both profit-
driven/corporate software and open-source, voluneteer driven software. They
serve different purposes.

~~~
jacquesm
The Tor project made no decision.

------
gexla
Tor has similar constraints with the design of the TOR service as the US
government has with the Constitution. Which I suppose is why you have groups
like ANTIFA ready to trade blows and hackers ready to take down sites. You
have the right to post the message, but then you have to face the response.

~~~
gonmf
You do not have to face the response, if the response is violence or hacking,
because those activities are illegal.

Talking on the internet and organizing legal, peaceful, rallies, is fine in my
book.

The US really doesn't care about freedom of speech anymore, which is spreading
to the internet, and everyone is giddy to deal the last nail in the coffin.

~~~
gexla
As I posted in another response to my comment...

I don't have the right to punch a Nazi, but the law doesn't stop me from doing
so. It may be a deterrent and I may get punished, but the law doesn't create a
physically insurmountable barrier.

------
LukeShu
Between the title-case and the omitted "that", I had a bit of trouble parsing
the title: "The Tor Project defends the human rights that racists oppose."

------
owenmarshall
Looks like TLAs will have an easier time tracking racists, I guess. Not that
they probably care.

------
mozumder
So, what are they going to do about it?

~~~
whatshisface
Why would you expect them to do anything? Racism is one of the least vile
things of the vile things that Tor makes possible, and it isn't even illegal.

(Edit: Wording slightly changed to reflect point raised below.)

~~~
eeks
Tor does not _support_ any vile things. It's a freedom platform. A tool. Honor
is not in the blade but in the hand that holds it.

------
jacquesm
TOR project announces Tor still works as intended and gives more visibility to
themselves and to hidden services.

The fact that Neo Nazis, Journalists and human rights activists all use the
same service (though I suspect that all three of them are drowned out by
copyright violation and illicit pornography) does not say much about the
service itself, especially not when that service has been designed from the
ground up to achieve that effect.

Cloudflare as a corporate entity with shareholders and customers is in an
entirely different position than a not-for-profit entity such as the Tor
project. Both are acting roughly as one would expect given their background.

------
jancsika
> We are disgusted, angered, and appalled by everything these racists stand
> for and do.

Let's back up a second.

What's the mapping of online avatars on that site to human beings?

If it's 1:1 then I should continue reading Tor's statement.

1:1-times-N for any N other than 1 is quite unlikely so we can throw out that
possibility.

1-times-N:1 for N = 10 or even N = 20 are likely and cheap. An echo chamber of
ten racists doesn't warrant a response from Tor, while an echo chamber of
hundreds might.

1:N:1 for N = 20+ is possible especially by state actors. A small group of
paid scammers simulating activites of 1000+ racists is enough to cause
noticeable social disruption.

So the next question is: does Tor devbase have a way to map medusa heads to
torsos?

I think the answer is "no". Not only for Tor, but also Wall Street Journal,
Breitbart News, The Guardian, and possibly even Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat,
etc.

If I'm right about that, then I read Tor's statement as essentially eating the
cost of having no way to effectively separate signal from noise and simply
rolling up their sleeves and treating all noise as potential signal. That's as
wasteful as it was in the 90s & early 2000s to simply eat the cost of reading
everything in the email inbox and deleting the spam manually. But here it's
more than loss of productivity-- its potentially confusing a large portion of
reality with a simulation. And unlike the widespread cynicism that came with
tv broadcast, people seem to have convinced themselves that social media and
random sites/comment sections are an earnest and democratic reflection of some
meaningful segment of the general population.

edit: formatting

