Reddit Now Funds Tor | a.nolen
Alexis Ohanian, the face of Reddit.
Reddit, the “front page of the internet”, now partially funds the Tor Project. The Tor Project is an internet “anonymity network” which was set up by the US Navy. Tor claims to help internet users hide from repressive governments, in reality it’s a US espionage tool designed to get ‘interesting’ targets to self-select.
Tor users are not sophisticated actors. Organizations which are serious about security do not use Tor, because rumblings about Tor’s ‘vulnerabilities’ have been reaching the mainstream media since 2007 (at least). Why would agencies like the NSA want to watch poorly organized and poorly informed ‘onion routing’ users? Well, there’s the blackmail angle: child pornography is all over the Tor network. There’s also the ‘useful idiot’ angle: simple-minded fanatics who believe they’re more dangerous than they really are and who can be easily manipulated into doing things that help the ‘intelligence community’. Think Lulzsec.
I’ve written about Reddit before: it’s a website where users post links to articles, which are then ‘rated’ by other users… all under the eyes of specially chosen ‘moderators’ who remove material they don’t like. The site was founded by Alexis Ohanian, a one-time ‘wunderkind’ internet entrepreneur and the son of an Armenian immigrant who grew up in the ‘Metroplex’ around Washington D.C.. Samuel Altman of Y Combinator and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz invested in the Reddit operation, which was bought by Condé Nast, a division of the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications. As of 2014, Ohanian continues as Reddit’s executive chairman. The position must not keep him very busy, because Ohanian also runs an investment firm called Das Kapital Capital when he’s not making tech proclamations on mainstream news networks. This is how Ohanian describes himself:
In 2006, Alexis Ohanian sold reddit.com, a startup he co-founded with Steve Huffman, to Condé Nast Digital.
This made him a 23-year-old accredited investor, one of the most dangerous things in the world. Suddenly becoming more dangerous than a raptor, Jules & Vincent from Pulp Fiction, and Predator (combined) he set off to invest some of this capital in startups led by founders just like him (long on ideas, short on experience, but full of energy). Besides, he wanted to live vicariously through these of startup founders — only sleep better.
“I’m dangerous!”
Back in 2013 Ohanian tried to sell information about Reddit users to Stratfor via email. (So he may be dangerously stupid!) Stratfor is a sort of CIA-for-hire and Ohanian’s inbox was hacked by Wikileaks. When Russia Today reported on Ohanian’s nefarious business proposal, RT was “partially banned” from Reddit. I’m told by multiple Reddit users that linking to anolen.com will get you ghost-banned, or if you’re too high-profile for that, you’ll be harassed by foul-mouthed Reddit moderators.
Alongside his Tor work, Ohanian is now getting involved in international affairs. A few weeks ago he decided to insert himself into the Armenian Genocide narrative by visiting his father’s native country on his birthday, which also happens to be the day designated for the genocide’s memorial. All this at a time when NATO is courting Turkey in strange ways.
The thrust of the Reddit founder’s platform is to get the Armenian Genocide officially recognized as a genocide by the US government– the US, Britain and until recently France have been reluctant to call the 1915 genocide what it was– this reluctance predates current relations with Turkey, so the stalling *probably* also has something to do with prominent international railway investors’ role in the massacre of this Christian minority by the Ottomans. Putin has no problem recognizing the genocide, by the way– so what is Ohanian doing? Perhaps voicing the concerns of US potentates who don’t like seeing Islamic Turkey gain too much power.
Why would a crony-capitalist wunderkind roll the dice by propping up the Tor network– especially when he’s stretching himself thin over a century-old ethnic grievance?
I’m confident that Reddit has its genesis in the ‘intelligence community’ just like Tor, which makes it particularly stupid for Tor to have accepted Reddit funding. It’s bad tradecraft to link different operations to each other, because when one is exposed, they all are. Tor is notorious for sloppy practices on its back-end, I’ve written about that here. In a nutshell, Tor tried to make itself look ‘internationally diverse’ by setting up a myriad of different shell organizations over the globe, but they didn’t go the extra mile to make sure these shell organizations appeared to be active and take funding from different sources.
Jacob Appelbaum, the face of the Tor Project. Check out all the weirdness around him here.
I don’t think Tor’s, and now Reddit’s, sloppiness problems are unique to their operation– I think the whole US ‘intelligence community’ is run like a third-generation company. Their pathetic Twitter-like project ‘Zunzuneo‘ is another good example of bad work.
There are some intelligence organizations that do a lot with very little, Cuba is one example and Jordan may be another one. The United States, however, is the opposite of these two. The US ‘intelligence community’ has phenomenal resources, but appears to have a real problem recruiting competent talent. Perhaps this is because ‘IC’ leaders are preoccupied with reliability instead of ability; perhaps the American ‘IC’ is what happens when you employ too many sons and lovers.
Tor has been criticized over the last two years for its reliance on US government funding, in 2013 the Washington Post (even!) reported that 60% of Tor’s funding still comes from “the Feds”. The WP was white-washing: it turns out that 75% of 2013 Tor funding came from the USG.
According to The Daily Dot, a very pro-Tor blog/internet news source:
In response to increasing public and internal dialogue, the organization [Tor] will be making a sustained push to increase funds from all other sources in order to decrease their dependence on the U.S. government.
Developers recently discussed the push to diversify funding at Tor’s biannual meeting in Spain, including setting a goal of 50 percent non-U.S. government funding by 2016.
Tor developers at the meeting also brought up the possibility of lobbying foreign governments within, for instance, the European Union.
However, increasing non-governmental funding is a major priority.
In response to this obvious PR problem, Tor has attempted to “eclipse” US government sponsorship by looking for “non-governmental” sponsors… like Reddit. Herein lies the great irony.
This official Reddit plush toy will only set you back US$142 and is available from the Reddit Store.
I eagerly await learning who Tor enlists over the next few months… which EU governments, “non-governmental” actors and business concerns will reach out and grab the tar-baby. In the meantime, here’s the list of 2015 Tor sponsors who have already self-identified:
Read all about those “concerned citizens” here.
Yahtzee!
… which is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US propaganda organ that funded Tor through 2006-2013.
‘National’ as in ‘United States of America’.
I guess the Swedes worked out their differences with the Jacob Appelbaum and Ed Snowden. According to the Digital Defenders Partnership:
The Digital Defenders Partnership has its origins in the Freedom Online Coalition, and is managed by Hivos, an international NGO based in the Netherlands. As an initial investment, the governments of the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Estonia, Republic of Latvia, Czech Republic and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) have dedicated financial support.
SIDA funded Tor from 2010-2013. Forget ‘Iron Curtain’, think ‘Digital Curtain’.
SRI International, or as it used to be called ‘The Stanford Research Institute’, is a huge, US-government derived, private research consultancy which was founded in 1946 with Herbert Hoover’s help and continues to do a phenomenal amount of work for the US military. Child movie star and US ambassador Shirley Temple was married to one of SRI’s stars, Charles Alden Black, a Navy intelligence officer. From her Washington Post obituary:
Luminaries who paid visits to Miss Temple in Hollywood included Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, J. Edgar Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt. She received an honorary child-sized Oscar in 1935.
“As long as our country has Shirley Temple,” Franklin Roosevelt said, “we will be all right.”
Presumably the same goes for SRI International.
Concluding remarks:
1) It’s interesting that the Broadcasting Board of Governors and SIDA are now trying to hide their Tor sponsorship behind daughter/partner organizations.
2) Tor still isn’t your friend.
3) Armenia, beware of Americans bearing gifts.
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