[Arm-netbook] OT: The U.S. Needs to Stop Lecturing the Rest of the World About Internet Values

[Jonathan Frederickson]

>> Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. In 2011, two years after
>> President Obama’s town hall meeting with future Chinese leaders in
>> Shanghai, the state-run newspaper China People’s Daily editorialized
>> about the United States’ deployment of shadow networks in authoritarian
>> countries: “The US State Department has carefully framed its support of
>> such projects as promoting free speech and human rights, but it is clear
>> that the policy is aimed at destabilizing national governments.” It
>> called Tor—software that helps people mask their location—“a weapon in a
>> covert cyber war intended to maintain the US’ global dominance.”
>> "
>
> LOL teaching to population that the tool that helps them is in fact the
> enemy, classic. the us funded tor cus a sub department needed such a
> tool too. while other departments hate it :)

Yeah. I think this speaks to just how hard it is to see different
perspectives, even on the internet where there are (in theory) no
borders. As a US citizen it's clear to me that politicians here are
wary of privacy-preserving technologies like Tor. (And PGP and OTR -
hello crypto wars!) Overseas maybe that's less apparent.

Of course this could all be the result of complex plots within the US
government and foreign governments, but I tend to believe that it's
more just a lack of exposure to different cultural values.