On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 09:35:10PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
I think we should shut down the relay, which in my opinion is not mission-aligned, and set up the hidden service, which clearly is mission-aligned.
If Tor users are valueable to us enough to justify maintaining (small pieces of) code and infrastructure to support them, then surely that means that the Tor network itself is valueable too, doesn't it?
In other words, if we decide to embark on this project or another Tor-focused project (like Tor support in our mobile apps), we'd do because we recognize that it is of benefit to a particular segment of users who are unable to access us due to censorship (or worse), not for a handful of security-conscious users.
In my view, this automatically means that we value the Tor network, as a medium, for enabling this kind of use, and putting a small amount of resources to strengthen it is justified and mission-aligned. Not entirely different than what we do with other pieces of infrastructure as good Internet and Linux citizens.
The flip side of this is to argue that the Tor network is predominantly used for illegimate, ethically bad uses, like the ones you mentioned. In that case, I don't see why we would want to spend any of our resources on it whatsoever and go anywhere near it. I obviously don't believe that, but that would be a consistent PoV that I'd happy to argue against and eventually oblige to, if that was the consensus we came to.
Regards, Faidon