Double Your Donation: Rabbi Rob and Lauren Thomas Announce Matching Challenge for #SupportTor

by katina | December 14, 2015


Rabbi Rob Thomas

Rabbi Rob Thomas, founder and CEO of Team Cymru, is a member of The Tor Project's Board of Directors, and a loud and proud advocate for Tor and our first fundraising campaign.

Rabbi Rob and his wife have issued a challenge to the Tor community worldwide: donate to Tor by 11:59pm PST on December 31st and they will match your gift, dollar for dollar, up to $18,000..

Rob and his wife Lauren normally make their contributions to the causes they support anonymously, for spiritual purposes. But their deep and long-term support for Tor's sustainability has moved them to make a public challenge. Your gift to Tor will now have twice the impact.

"The internet cannot heal itself in the face of tyrants," Thomas says. "Tor is the salve that heals that wound; Tor is what allows us to route around tyranny."

Our deep gratitude to you Rabbi Rob and Lauren, and to all who join the challenge to #SupportTor.

Tags
funding
crowdfunding

Dear Roger,

MeThinks Thou Sleeps TOO Long!

Seriously, I always look forward to hearing from you as a role person. (TOR BROWSER BUNDLE ROCKS!!!) And so do You and Ed S. & Laura P. and Robert A. and Diffie & Helman and calomel dot org and all those who make TOR the voice of freedom about which our world needs to hear & heed.

I look forward to everyone establishing tormail TOoRGLE torkype and torface and any way to have a full life free from BIG BROTHER all from a single interface!
Yes, Disconnect.me works for toorgle-- mostly (THANKS TO ALL!!!).

Thanks to RABBI BEN for doubling my efforts to help tbb get on the RPI2.
Thanks for a great many who made/make tor browser a reality.
I am one who uses my TBB for everything I can think of just because I can (if barely because I have huge trouble with technology including setting up email and then sorting thru it.) Anyway, I really need the TBB approach to Email and the like. I would love to be able to set up a middle node or two for TOR on a PI2 ($35.00 per node.) or maybe a PI-ZERO (@$5.00 per node!!!) My problem is that i do not speak TORRIC!!!!! (Videllia was a huge help and now is gone! So now I do not know how to make a node!) Nor can I compile C to RPI2.

Please, to all concerned, Please do not take no for an answer! Everyone is encouraged to use tor as much as possible and to contribute bandwidth where possible.

Anon

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 14, 2015

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Thank you Rob and Lauren, you guys are just awesome! It's one thing to just write a check, another to put your face next to it. Tor needs more human faces, so this is very much appreciated.

Anon

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 14, 2015

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Ah, Team Cymru... I remember when I heard of them: it's because they run stupid Conficker sinkholes that keep claiming my LINUX servers (who do web crawling and also some Tor relaying), are infected with the Windows-specific Conficker and sending them to Spamhaus's equality stupid CBL.

"The internet cannot heal itself in the face of tyrants," => Well Spamhaus are a bunch of tyrants so not helping them censor innocent servers would be nice.

Anon

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 15, 2015

Permalink

I also have longstanding concerns about some of Dragon and Cymru Research's electronic activities as these impact Tor, and about some of their business relations.

@ Shari: I'd be very concerned if Rob Thomas or associates were given access to the list of names of all Tor donors, so please provide reassurance on this point.

If someone donates to Tor (a US entity subject to US tax laws), it may be very difficult to keep his/her identity anonymous to NSA, even if s/he uses electronic currency. But Tor certainly should never be giving that information away to an old friend whose company--- and some of its clients--- have long been a concern to many loyal Tor users.

Since the Thomas's have finally chosen to "decloak", I assume they are prepared to explain the apparent contradiction in their stated appreciation of Tor to Cymru's USG/contractor clients. I'd like to see them explain these apparent conflicts of interest to the Tor userbase too, perhaps in a guest blog here or an interview here similar to the Laura Poitras interview (but longer because they have much to explain).

At least one reader is prepared to hear them out with an open mind.

It would appear that someone is still unhappy with the Tor Project receiving donations and continues to try and persuade the readers here not to give.

You could not be more wrong.

In fact, I encourage others to donate to Tor Project, as I do.

This is not inconsistent with urging the Project to continue to distance itself from USG and USG contractors who apparently have worked in the recent past for some very questionable USIC entities.

Did *you* donate to Tor?

Didn't think so.

Rabbi Rob & Lauren
Thanks for supporting tor!

I was looking for some way to contribute money to getting tbb tor-browser-bundle onto a raspberrry pi 2B for download (perhaps with its own secure os)!!. (This may have already been done since i last had time to check!) This seems to be simple for some but beyond my abilities. I would start by aksing tor-project to give out RPI2's to developers - interested developers. The point is to get tor into the hands of the very poor as a way of making tor universal, secure,and perhaps even distributed at many points. Could you help me get my donation to torproject for this purpose?

I would be grateful.

AND

Matching would be truly awesome!

Anyway, Again THANKS!

The following question might sound OT, but please hear me out:

@ Rabbi Thomas:

Glenn Greenwald recounts attending the bat mitzvah of a family friend. The Rabbi instructed the girl to be good because God is always watching and judging her. Greenwald thought that the Rabbi was wrong, because people should try to do the right thing because it feels right, not because God is watching and judging.

This story seems significant because all the increasingly oppressive governments (US, UK, China) are rolling out "citizenship scores". That is, these governments want to be always watching and judging everything each citizen does, the better to discriminate against political dissidents and other "troublemakers". These days, it seems, Big Brother wants to become God.

So my question is: what would you say to counter the argument that most people will only do good if they feel they are always being watched and judged by some superhuman entity? The argument that Torah and Talmud somehow support the claim that Government as God is implementing the Dragnet "for our own (spiritual, material) well-being"?

> what would you say to counter the argument that most people will only do good if they feel they are always being watched and judged by some superhuman entity? The argument that Torah and Talmud somehow support the claim that Government as God is implementing the Dragnet "for our own (spiritual, material) well-being"?

Please see also an enlightening essay which was praised by Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/04/the_dange…
The Policy Machine
The dangers of letting algorithms make decisions in law enforcement, welfare, and child protection.
Virginia Eubanks
Apr 2015

What does g-d have to do with this donation? It's a free fucking country. Evolve and enjoy your freedoms.

Haters gonna hate.

Keep politics and religion out of this project, thanks.

Also criticism/cyberstalking of people's spouses, FUD, and concern trolling.

I see nothing suggestive of any of those things here. Can you be more specific?