The Tor
Project, hailed as a bulwark against the encroaching surveillance
state, has received funding from US government agency the BBG and
cooperates with intelligence agencies, newly released documents
reveal.
Tor,
free software which enables anonymous communication over the
internet, is a “privatized extension of the very same government
that it claimed to be fighting,” claims journalist Yasha
Levine, who obtained 2,500 pages of correspondence about the project
via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Hailed
as “NSA-proof” and used by journalists and whistleblowers alike
to protect themselves and their sources from government retribution,
Tor is painted in an entirely new light in the FOIA documents, which
reveal cooperation between the software’s developers and US
government agencies.
The
documents released by Levine mostly focus on how Tor received funding
from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which supervises
Washington-funded media, including Voice of America and Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty. But they also tell a story of how employees of
the non-profit met regularly with the Department of Justice, the FBI,
and other three-letter agencies for training sessions and
conferences, where the agencies pitched their software needs, the
documents show.
Commenting
on the potentially explosive contents, Levine wrote in a blog post
published on his website: “Why would the US government fund a
tool that limited its own power? The answer, as I discovered, was
that Tor didn’t threaten American power. It enhanced it.”
Full
report:
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