I was curious to see if it is possible to donate funds towards the operation of "safe" (eg, non government controlled) exit/bridge nodes. According to the donation faq for the tor project[1], it appears that funds are not used for infrastructure.
If there were a way to fund exit nodes without running one myself I would definitely be interested in participating. If not, this might be a great idea for a crowdfunding campaign.
[1] The Tor Project spends about $2.5 million annually. About 80% of the Tor Project's spending goes on staffing, mostly software engineers. About 10% goes towards administrative costs such as accounting and legal costs and bank fees. The remaining 10% is spent on travel, meetings and conferences, which are important for Tor because the Tor community is global.
In addition to NoiseTor that @garrettr_ mentioned there is torservers.net [0]. Both are mentioned [1] as ways to support infrastructure by the Tor Project.
I think the Tor project would agree with me in saying that donations are all well and good, but the best way to contribute is to operate a high-capacity node.
This is not about moral philosophy, but practical matters. Tor's anonymity depends on diverse ownership of the running relays. As it stands, the organizations accepting donations to run Tor relays (torservers, noisetor, etc) already control a sizeable chunk of the total relays, and that's why the Tor project would rather encourage people to run their own.
Of course, many people can't or don't want to run an exit node. In that case, it's much better to donate to those organizations than to do nothing. But the Tor exit relays are not soup kitchens, and increased security for the Tor network due to more diversified operator group is not easily convertible to a dollar value.
The underlying hardware of the provisioned nodes would still be under the control of easily-bugged machines in large datacenters from the perspective of government level actors.
Yes, the Tor Project effectively did this for years, since no organization or organizational structure existed to take your sanctimonious "unit of caring" and turn it into geographically disparate non-colluding exit bandwidth. Sometimes the real world, or "territory," is more complicated than the "map" you find over at Less Wrong. Take a minute to ponder this in between the daily Neoreactionary Discussion Group and the hourly Why Aren't More Women Rationalists/Rationalist Pickup Artistry thread.
I almost didn't want to dignify this with a response because of the incredibly unnecessary tone it was written in. (Perhaps my original post came off as more matter of fact and arrogant than it was meant to. It's not a rhetorical question, I'm surprised to hear that nobody has found a way to turn money into diverse exit nodes.)
>Yes, the Tor Project effectively did this for years, since no organization or organizational structure existed to take your sanctimonious "unit of caring" and turn it into geographically disparate non-colluding exit bandwidth.
So this seems like a solvable problem, in one way or another. Some ideas that immediately come to mind:
- Perhaps people could be incentivized to be exit node operators for a small amount of money every month? (Estimated liklihood: Not that great, but it's worth a try.)
- I suspect that many technically savvy people would like to run an exit node, but are afraid of being the first person to have to take the things that happen on their exit node to court. Perhaps any time somebody inquires about donating money for exit nodes to the network, they could be redirected to a legal fund to be set up in advance for anybody who gets sued in a precedent setting case over their exit node. A quick google search shows this doesn't exist and I'm sure it would calm some nerves if it had gained a sizable sum over the years. (Estimated liklihood: Honestly, I think at first it wouldn't do much and might even do damage because it wouldn't be very much money. But over time and depending on how often people are willing to donate money it might significantly help with somebodies hypothetical legal fees.)
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From the Tor FAQ:
"Will EFF represent me if I get in trouble for running a Tor relay?
Maybe. While EFF cannot promise legal representation for all Tor relay operators, it will assist relay operators in assessing the situation and will try to locate qualified legal counsel when necessary. Inquiries to EFF for the purpose of securing legal representation or referrals should be directed to our intake coordinator by sending an email to info@eff.org . Such inquiries will be kept confidential subject to the limits of the attorney/client privilege. Note that although EFF cannot practice law outside of the United States, it will still try to assist non-U.S. relay operators in finding local representation."
So as a practical matter the EFF would probably step in for a precedent setting case, but it would be much better if there was a legal fund just for this that promised it would step in for a precedent setting case.
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>Sometimes the real world, or "territory," is more complicated than the "map" you find over at Less Wrong.
Well, yeah. Duh. Speaking of reality being more complicated than you've imagined...
>Take a minute to ponder this in between the daily Neoreactionary Discussion Group and the hourly Why Aren't More Women Rationalists/Rationalist Pickup Artistry thread.
LessWrong Political Opinions By Affiliation And Sample Sizes On The 2016 Survey:
Moreover I wasn't linking to LessWrong's opinion on charity it was Eliezer Yudkowsky's opinion on charity. I'm particularly annoyed about him getting slapped with the Neoreactionary stick when his stated public opinion is that he thinks Neoreaction is stupid and if he were still moderating the main LessWrong site he'd ban them all as part of cleanup:
(Eliezer Yudkowsky can be pretty uncharitable with his critics, I don't endorse that.)
If there were a way to fund exit nodes without running one myself I would definitely be interested in participating. If not, this might be a great idea for a crowdfunding campaign.
[1] The Tor Project spends about $2.5 million annually. About 80% of the Tor Project's spending goes on staffing, mostly software engineers. About 10% goes towards administrative costs such as accounting and legal costs and bank fees. The remaining 10% is spent on travel, meetings and conferences, which are important for Tor because the Tor community is global.
https://www.torproject.org/donate/donor-faq.html.en