[tor-talk] ***[SPAM]*** Re: Tor and Financial Transparency

[andrew at torproject.is]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 03:55:00PM -0700, BM-2D9WhbG2VeKsLCsGBTPLGwDLQyPizSqS85 at bitmessage.ch wrote 2.8K bytes in 0 lines about:
: with Navy input, that there are easier ways for nonprofits to hide DoD
: funding (like the subsidiary corporation reported on the Tor Project's IRS
: 990s, for example), and so on.

Just to be clear, the financial statements of the subsidiary corp are
rolled into the non-profit, therefore keeping anything the subsidiary
does as financially transparent as the non-profit. This is by design.

: But I asked because this single grant for $876K is a significant portion
: of Tor's operating budget, and about a third of the Tor Project's total
: operating income in 2012. It's also far more than the the sum of salaries

Most of what we do is research and then turn that research into usable
software (for varying definitions of usable). One of our core tenets is
that all we are contracted to do is released as free software. If someone
pays us to produce a custom version of Tor Browser, we'll release the
source code and designs as free software, at a minimum.

: But as someone who has donated lots of bandwidth and other resources over
: the past decade or so to the Tor Project, I'm interested to know whether
: my contributions to the project might be going into the coffers of an
: organization for which a third of its funding (and presumably, its
: activities) exist essentially as a black hole. Not knowing where this
: funding goes makes it harder to know where my money or bandwidth or code
: contributions go.

We appreciate your donations of bandwidth and resources over the past
decade. Millions of users appreciate them as well.

: Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance." I accept Andrew's
: explanation at face value, but I also think it's fair to say that it's a
: significant oversight.

Our contracts do not allow us to publish the organization name with the
details of their desired output. We publish the sponsor pages on the wiki
for coordination and transparency. We cannot list Sponsor A == Ambassador
to Alpha Centauri. Some organizations choose not to fund/contract us
because of our transparency. There are plenty of "black ops" organizations
out there willing to git pull our code and create custom solutions for
those organizations.

FOIA laws exist and more people should use them.

: I hope that in the future, The Tor Project will consider accepting funding
: from sources that it can speak to in greater detail and that don't come
: with the same risk of undermining trust among volunteers and users.

I look forward to this as well. We try to do this with every contract.

-- 
Andrew
http://tpo.is/contact
pgp 0x6B4D6475