I use the Tor network every day and, indeed, I’m using it right now. However, I also like to get the biggest picture possible on the world, so when I encountered this podcast I listened to it with interest. It takes a skeptical stance towards Tor on the basis of its sources of funding and the strange associations of some of its people as well as the people connected to it.
As a couple of examples of data that particularly give me pause (I’m not saying these are objectively most significant, just that they strike me):
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The Tor Foundation currently gets 90% of its funding from the U.S. Government.
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Jacob Applebaum often promotes the line that Tor helps (peaceful, freedom-loving) “dissidents” in Syria who are in danger from the “genocide” being waged by the Syrian government.
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The Tor employees are paid very generous salaries.
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and 3. mean that there is an incentive to avoid stating the bald truth regarding the U.S. government: that it is the biggest threat to peace and freedom in the world at present. A view such as mine, that the USG needs to be completely dismantled, is one that simply could never be spoken, nor even thought, by a Tor foundation employee. That money is blood money, like all taxes, taken from productive people at gunpoint.
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He’s repeating the NATO narrative regarding Syria, but the situation in Syria is not quite as simple as that, with NATO-backed militias being trained in Turkey and being brought over from Libya. Very strange, coming from an apparently intelligent man.