14 DAY TRIAL // The Tor Project has added a donations page to its website for the first time in its history, asking people to give money and help keep the project running.
But don't jump to conclusions and think that the project is in dire need of cash. Its most recent effort has more to do with politics and government pressure than with actual finances.
The TOR Project is the legal guardian of the Tor anonymization software package and the Onion protocol. In spite of the fact that the United States Naval Research Laboratory created Tor, the project is now run independently, operating on research grants offered by the US government and various universities around the world.
While this has ensured the project all the funds it needed, it also means that its employees must spend a lot of time lobbying high-ranking officials about guaranteeing future resources.
US government accounts for 60% of Tor's funds
This takes a lot of time but also puts the project under a lot of pressure. While in the beginning Tor was a tool used primarily by military servicemen, journalists, and political dissidents, it is now the main anonymization toolkit employed by cyber-crime gangs.
As such, law enforcement agencies are putting a lot of pressure on the project to add a backdoor to their software and allow them to unmask criminals (and everybody else) when they need to. The easiest way to put pressure on the project is by delaying its financing.
To avoid a situation where the project's future rests on giving governments a backdoor into their infrastructure, Tor is now seeking funds from other sources: you!
The Tor project is not saying government pressure is at the core of its recent move, but we believe our readers are smart enough to see through its announcement. Notably since this turn of events comes only a week after the Tor Project accused the FBI of paying $1 million / €0.93 million to the Carnegie Mellon University to hack its network.