[tor-talk] Non-free country law preventing Tor from getting donations

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Jun 15 05:00:55 UTC 2014


On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 11:40 PM, Andrew Lewman <andrew at torproject.is> wrote:
>>  - Looked into legality of receiving a large financial donation from a
>> country on the US Treasury embargoed list. Unsurprisingly, we cannot
>> accept such a donation due to the source.
> It's the law in the USA. Regardless of how one feels about it, it's
> currently against the law.
>
> The citizen resided in a country as listed as a State Sponsor of
> Terrorism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism
>
> According to the advice we received, "financial transaction" is defined
> broadly to encompass many things, possibly including
> bitcoins/dogecoins/and other coins.
>
> There are many battles Tor can fight, this is not one of them.
>
> Andrew
> pgp 0x6B4D6475

I would totally agree. If an incorporation wants to keep its status
you don't knowingly mess with the Sponsors or Persons lists.
And this would be donor made their origin observable, so that is
clearly off the table and tpo must deny their gracious generosity.
(With much love to Iranian friends of Tor, et al).

TorProject appears to currently accept (via Bitpay) donations of
up to under $10,000USD worth of BTC.
https://www.torproject.org/donate/donate.html.en

There are also other non-US entities listed on that page
which can accept donations, including BTC. There is a
liberation-tech mailing list which may be of interest/consult.
As well as all sorts of other international periphery groups.


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