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.