Thread by @doctorow

For years, Congress allocated funds to the United States Agency for Global Media for the Open Technology Fund, a nonprofit that makes grants to internet freedom tools like Tor and Wireguard, as well as research projects, conferences and initiatives.

opentech.fund/results/suppor…

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I've been a (not hugely active) volunteer member of the advisory board for years, which means that periodically I hear from people who want to know - given the US's long history of overseas spook fuckery - why they shouldn't assume this is a CIA front.

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I have a great answer for them! You can tell this isn't a nefarious scheme to backdoor the tools that marginalized and oppressed people around the world (and in the USA) rely on because all that code is free and open. You can audit it for backdoors. Others can too. They have.

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NARRATOR: ONE DAY, ALL THAT CHANGED

The Trump admin wants to nuke the OTF and give all its money to a bunch of grifty, closed-source privacy and firewall-circumvention tools. These tools are NOT auditable, and the companied that make them stand to make BANK from the move.

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I have no idea whether these companies are CIA fronts, but I tell you what, if i was a Uyghur in Xinjiang or a dissident in Tehran, I would NOT trust my life to these tools. No goddamned way.

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Even if these companies AREN'T fronts for spooks, they COULD be in the future. Because if the companies that made these tools - companies that had been dealt a huge favor by the US government - were suborned for surveillance later, it would be very hard to catch them.

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OTF's ironclad rule of funding open, free code isn't just a way to allay suspicions about the tools' true purpose - it's also a preventative against corruption, because the projects OTF funds CAN'T insert spy code without being caught right away.

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Based on this administration's track record, I'm about 70-30 that this is just a bro deal that lets some cronies suck up millions in corporate welfare while hanging out tools used by vulnerable people around the world to dry.

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But even if that's the case, I'm ALSO 70-30 that spook agencies will get a twofer out of it, by suborning the beneficiaries of those bro deals.

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Here's the petition. Remember, Congress allocated this money for the OTF, not as pork for a bunch of connected insiders.

saveinternetfreedom.tech

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This money built the tools that #BlackLivesMatter protesters use, to say nothing of the #HongKongProtests and many other movements around the world.

It will be a genuine, deep, widespread tragedy if this move isn't stopped.

eof/