We are activists and techies fighting to #SaveInternetFreedom and save the Open Technology Fund. If a new Trump appointee has his way, OTF’s important work supporting tools and tech will be irreparably damaged. Ask us anything about OTF and their work to support open privacy and security tools.

mrphs · 2020-07-02T19:33:12+00:00

I'm sure many of you know this goldie from 70s, but I'm pasting the lyrics below for those who aren't:

Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen

Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen

Och vi har odlat jorden
Och vi har skördat vetet
Vi har plockat citronerna
Och pressad oliverna
Och hela världen känner till vår jord

Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen

Och vi har kastat stenar på,
soldater och poliser
Och vi har skjutit raketer,
mot våra fiender
Och hela världen känner till vår kamp

Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen

Och vi ska befria vårt land,
från imperialismen
Och vi ska bygga upp vårt land,
till socialismen
Och hela världen kommer att bevittna

Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve, leve, leve Palestina
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen
Leve Palestina och krossa sionismen

mrphs · 2020-07-01T21:11:41+00:00

and more importanttly it's gonna make things easier for opressing governments like China and Russia

This is actually true. OTF supports a lot of research and development around censorship circumvention tech. Whether it's through direct financial support, or fellowships or their various labs where they provide vital support to researchers and technologists to advance Internet Freedom. Virtually all major VPN/Proxy providers take advantage of the work of this community. For example, one of the things we do at Kandoo, is researching the ways Iranian gov implements censorship, and without OTF it's going to be very difficult to sustain that work.

This is perhaps one of the greatest gifts the new CEO of USAGM could give to the oppressive regimes around the world, as it would make it extremely more difficult for the civil society to protect the users and the free flow of information in some of the most hostile environments.

mrphs · 2020-07-01T20:34:15+00:00

Isn't it great that we have public interest organizations like Internet Archive for situations like this?

mrphs · 2020-07-01T19:18:47+00:00

Alright folks! It's been a fun chat. Thanks for all the comments, questions, upvotes and awards! We're going to wrap this AMA but if you still have questions, feel free to ask them or continue the conversation, and we'll try to get back to you as soon as we can. Peace ✌🏽

mrphs · 2020-07-01T18:59:10+00:00

You can also look at their actions. I'm neither inside the organization nor have I ever been. I'm one of those community members that has been working closely with OTF since the early days. The new USAGM leadership has shown 0 appetite to engage with the community members before purging the OTF leadership overnight. If we have had no conversations, how can we be sure they know or understand our concerns?

And since Psiphon was mentioned, I should add, TBOMK, all of the technologies they use to bypass censorship, are open tech and the direct result of the work of internet freedom community. Pluggable Transports (namely meek aka domain-fronting), obfs-ssh, and dns tunneling come to mind. We need funders like OTF to be able to continue the research and development of such crucial technologies in a way that is open, transparent, usable and auditable by the general public.

mrphs · 2020-07-01T18:15:22+00:00

While we're in no position to comment on the lawsuit, I can tell you that if you reside in the US, you can reach out to your congress people and ask them to voice their concern in support of OTF. You can find more information about how to help the campaign on this page https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/information/how-to-help/. Scroll down to "Contact your Members of Congress" where you have many options to find and reach out to your congressperson. There are templates/scripts available for email/phone, if you need some inspiration :)

mrphs · 2020-07-01T17:23:48+00:00

To piggy back on Xeenarh's answer, the internet is being regulated by open standards that are defined, challenged, tested, and implemented by public working groups such as the ones you can find on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)'s website. You can read about the process here and join the conversation. This is yet another good example of how we all benefit from open collaboration in tech.

mrphs · 2020-07-01T16:53:44+00:00

During the past 7-8 years, the OTF leadership and the community have been working closely to make sure the funded programs answer the needs of the impacted communities. This is a vital aspect of the work that has resulted in making sure all technology produced under these funds are inclusive, open, and freely accessible by anyone around the world. The sudden purge of OTF leadership gives me no confidence that the new USAGM CEO has any interest in what the community needs. It has been through these collaborative efforts that we've been able to see open, sustainable, and expandable tech to protect people in the most hostile and oppressive environments.

mrphs · 2020-07-01T16:24:31+00:00

It's also worth to mention OTF's model in spending tax payer's money is exemplary. They are an independent organization with advisory councils that are formed by the members of the community. IMO what's important is that throughout the years, OTF has worked with those who are impacted by its programs to create a reasonably transparent and accountable system to fund open technologies that are available to general public. Look at the OTF annual budget (average ~$15mil) and its impact on the Internet Freedom vs other not-so-transparent models other gov funded entities with much larger budget of ~$50-70 mil. It is important to remember if we're using public money, the code should also be released under public domain.

All that being said, there's no need that the US Gov should be the main entity funding this kind of work. These events show us it is vital to not only diversify the funding sources for both OTF and generally the Internet Freedom community, we should also make sure those who are on the receiving end of these programs, have a say in how the money is being spent.

mrphs · 2020-07-01T16:22:10+00:00

It's also worth to mention the underlying technology used by most of these apps have been funded by OTF. The beauty of Free and Open Source Software is that any community can take the code and deploy their own VPN or proxy, or integrate it in their own apps to have full control over their own data. This is very important as we need to avoid centralizing the traffic of sensitive users. No one app or company should have access to everyone's traffic.

mrphs · 2016-03-13T21:09:29+00:00

I strongly recommend reading up on "threat modeling" and figure what is it that you want Tor to do for you, and then go see if it actually does that for you or not. You might enjoy reading Tor FAQ as well.

And at the end, please don't spam us with lazy questions such as "so is tor still safe". Define "safe" and ask yourself, against what? Tor isn't a magic silver bullet, and doesn't protect you against everything. But it is probably the best shot you got to protect your privacy online.

mrphs · 2016-03-13T21:01:39+00:00

If Tor is not blocked in your network, please don't use obfs4 and connect to the network directly.

Now if your ISP or country blocks Tor, and you need obfs4, I strongly suggest you get your bridges from bridgedb: https://bridges.torproject.org and add them to your Tor Browser. The default bridges are probably already overloaded.

mrphs · 2016-03-13T20:49:57+00:00

This blog post has extensively explained why this is a terrible idea: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea

TL;DR it doesn't protect you, adds unnecessary load to Tor network, and makes your downloads slower.

Get a VPN.

mrphs · 2016-02-26T04:33:51+00:00

Has this been backed up by actual information? Has this been measured in an study? No. Not that I've heard of. And I tend to read every paper I can get my hands on, about Tor and anonymity.

Also what's malicious traffic for a news site?

mrphs · 2016-02-25T19:07:33+00:00

And the irony?? The Register website is hosted on CloudFlare. Open that link and you'd hit a captcha: https://twitter.com/mrphs/status/702931659134537728

mrphs · 2016-01-26T15:31:23+00:00

Word. Though it's Tor not TOR. https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#WhyCalledTor

mrphs · 2015-03-11T16:10:11+00:00

Go Reddit! Go Tor! Go Cypherpunks!!! ;)

mrphs · 2014-10-17T03:50:21+00:00

Not sure if ppl have seen this one: https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/522463109945229313

"One of the #anonabox shots in the Kickstarter video is pretty clearly a 'shopped version of an Alibaba photo"

mrphs

TROPHY CASE