Hi AJ,
First, thank you for supporting Tor!
Second, you're smart to contact the library, as IT would immediately shut down the idea as they don't want to receive more abuse emails than they already do (I know we did when I worked in academia). An additional resource you may wish to research is the https://libraryfreedomproject.org/ by Alison Mecrina. The resources available on this site speak directly to librarians on such issues. Good luck!
Thank you for your email, Isaac, Tor@SechsNullDrei.org
-----Original Message----- From: tor-relays [mailto:tor-relays-bounces@lists.torproject.org] On Behalf Of AJ Jordan Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2017 3:20 PM To: tor-relays@lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-relays] Feedback wanted: letter to my university's library
Hey, all!
I'm AJ; I've been lurking on this list for many years but have never had cause to post. I've run a Tor relay (`strugees`) on AWS for a number of years now, but haven't been able to dedicate all that much bandwidth to it due to cost concerns.
However I've just started college at the University of Rochester, which obviously presents a great opportunity to set up a relay on a really great network. I'm planning to reach out to the library with the following email and would love some feedback:
Heya!
I'm a new first-year student and I'm active in the technology activism community. One of the things I'm very interested in is the Tor Project (https://torproject.org), whose mission is to make it possible to freely and anonymously use the internet, without fear of surveillance or censorship. Tor is used by a wide variety of people
- activists, journalists, corporations, law enforcement, and
individuals - to gain free access to information and speak their mind. Tor is able to provide this free expression by utilizing a worldwide network of relays run by volunteers. A relay can make a big difference on the Tor network if it's run on a connection which is fast and has lots of bandwidth - like the University's connection.
I think it would be really cool if UR would donate part of its internet resources to the Tor network. I considered directly contacting IT, but I thought it actually made sense to talk to the library first since the core values are actually really similar - libraries and the Tor project both know the value and power of unrestricted access to information and are dedicated to making information available to anyone who wants it.
If this is something that sounds interesting, I would love to chat about this in person. I would also be willing to invest the time needed to administrate the relay - I have several years of experience doing this already, but haven't had access to the resources the University has.
Thanks very much!
AJ Jordan
Does anyone who's done something like this before have any tips or suggestions? Am I going about this in the best way?
Cheers!
AJ