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I wonder if I am the only one who finds this creepy, in light of all of the news that has come out lately about the banking systems having been hacked, etc. This kind of thing would draw a direct line of sorts to the bank account of the person/company involved with the exit node. This information could be used later by someone who doesn't have the person's best interest in mind. Tor is to some degree tolerated right now by certain authorities but what happens if that suddenly changes? <br><br><br><div> </div><div> </div><div id="editor_signature"></div><div>On Tuesday 17/09/2013 at 2:38 pm, Moritz Bartl wrote: </div><blockquote type="cite">Hi,<br><br>tl;dr: We want to start reimbursing exit operators end of this month.<br>Partner orgs, please sign the contract! Everyone else, consider becoming<br>a partner.<br>---<br><br>In July last year, Roger announced that BBG was interested in funding<br>fast exits. [1] The initial discussion on the mailing list continued<br>into August. If you're interested, you should consult the archive for<br>the various points raised. Since then, we've been discussing that topic<br>on and off. It matched with my plans to turn torservers.net into a<br>platform for many organizations, instead of just one single entity that<br>runs too many exit relays, so I agreed to take the lead. I posted a<br>status report of some sort on this list in April this year. [2]<br><br>The Wau Holland Foundation agreed to be one of the organizations willing<br>to handle the money and pass it on to other entities, be it single<br>operators or organizations. Both Torproject and Wau Holland Foundation<br>checked with their lawyers to see if this turns into a problem about<br>liability, and it looks like it does not. We're open for more<br>organizations to join in to manage the reimbursement process, but this<br>is what we've got for now.<br><br>In parallel, we've seen a growing number of organizations that were<br>created to turn donations into exit bandwidth. [3]<br><br>Two issues with reimbursements, that were also mentioned in Roger's<br>initial posting, are that (1) you don't want to drive away all the<br>volunteers, and (2) you don't want to become dependent on (a single or a<br>handful of) sponsors. These are difficult issues, and I want to strongly<br>encourage everyone to keep contributing to the network. We really need<br>you, and we need more of you!<br><br>The second issue, dependence on funders, is on the one hand a harder<br>one, but on the other hand (in my opinion) a less relevant one. If<br>structures die and nodes have to be shut down because a funder backs<br>off, so be it. We hopefully don't change the picture too much in<br>comparison to the "unfunded times of today". The reimbursement process<br>does not guarantee a money stream, and the amounts are set on a<br>month-to-month basis, to encourage recipients to plan only short-term,<br>and only make contracts based on the money they have, disregarding what<br>they may or may not receive in the future. The current "bucket" is the<br>one-time BBG money, and it currently does not look like they will<br>restock it.<br><br>It might sound scary, but to satisfy the tax authorities (and to show<br>that it is a [hopefully] fair and transparent process), the Wau Holland<br>Foundation needs to have partners sign a contract. The contract does not<br>limit the partners abilities or restrict what they do, it only defines<br>the reimbursement process.<br><br>The way we want to start doing it now is not set in stone, and hopefully<br>now that we finally start handing out money it will encourage further<br>discussion around it. We want to refine the process over time, but it<br>looks like we just have to try with what we have now and learn from our<br>mistakes. Please don't be too hard with your criticism or you will<br>emotionally hurt me. I'm all ears. :-)<br><br>We want to reimburse based on the throughput per exit relay and<br>organization. To strengthen network diversity, we came up with the plan<br>to also factor in the location of the relays. There is a maximum amount<br>any entity can receive so we hopefully don't grow big monsters.<br><br>The contract [4] specifies that there is a monthly amount, currently set<br>to $3500, split amongst all recipients (whom I started calling<br>"torservers partners"). The recipient share is calculated from the<br>throughput per relay * country factor, and the maximum amount per month<br>per partner is 500 Euro. The Wau Holland Foundation can currently only<br>reimburse via wire transfer.<br><br>The country factors can change over time, and are currently derived from<br>the total exit probability of that country. We can and should refine<br>this. Changes of these factors do not require new contracts.<br><br>Note that since the total amount of $3500 will be handed out every<br>month, as long as we have less than 6 entities signing the contract,<br>each entity will receive their maximum share of 500 Euro. I don't really<br>like the idea of a fixed monthly total handed out like that, but that's<br>what the lawyers and tax authorities signed off for Wau Holland<br>Foundation. It seems to be costly to re-evaluate such contracts, so this<br>is what we will stick to for now via WHF.<br><br>Technically, the monthly shares and the country factors are calculated<br>using a tool written by Lunar^^ (big thanks!). [5] You can find an<br>example report at [6] (not the correct numbers, but you'll get the<br>idea). This monthly report will be sent to all partners, and once they<br>signed the contract they will simply get their monthly share.<br><br>As stated at the top, we want to start reimbursing this month. Please<br>let me know if you have any questions. We have a mailing list that is<br>public and read-only where we send important announcements, and require<br>every participant to be on and actually read. We have another mailing<br>list that is also read-only for the public, but people of the<br>participating organizations can post and discuss everything around<br>Torservers.net and reimbursements. [7]<br><br>The process to become a "partner" for now requires that I "know you".<br>So, if you're interested in becoming a partner, start social interaction<br>with me. I see that as a bad bottleneck, and I hope we can somehow get<br>rid of it in the future. I generally prefer "organizations" over single<br>persons, because (1) in most countries it seems to be really inexpensive<br>and easy to set up organizations and (2) the process of setting up such<br>entities includes that you gather enough people around you, so chances<br>are you will continue even if one of you drops out.<br><br>If you want to discuss, I prefer the tor-relays mailing list and our IRC<br>channel, #torservers on irc.oftc.net. I also explicitly want to invite<br>every partner to join that channel.<br><br>--Moritz<br><br>[1] <a target="_blank" href="https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html">https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html</a><br>[2] <a target="_blank" href="https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-April/001996.html">https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-April/001996.html</a><br>[3] <a target="_blank" href="http://www.torservers.net/partners.html">http://www.torservers.net/partners.html</a><br>[4] [fill out + send back via pgp-encrypted and signed mail to me]<br>plain: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.txt">https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.txt</a><br>fancy: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.ott">https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_en.ott</a><br>german: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_de.ott">https://www.torservers.net/misc/2013-07-19_TorExit_de.ott</a><br>[5] git clone <a target="_blank" href="https://people.torproject.org/~lunar/exit-funding.git">https://people.torproject.org/~lunar/exit-funding.git</a><br>[6] <a target="_blank" href="https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-output-2013-07.txt">https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-output-2013-07.txt</a> (set<br>encoding to Unicode)<br>[7] <a target="_blank" href="https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-May/002138.html">https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-May/002138.html</a><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>tor-relays mailing list<br>tor-relays@lists.torproject.org<br><a target="_blank" href="https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays">https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays</a><br><br></blockquote><br>
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