cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/285435

When a private sector company blocks Tor, I simply boycott. No private entity is so important that I cannot live well enough without them. But when a public service blocks Tor, that’s a problem because we are increasingly forced to use the online services of the public sector who have gone down the path of assuming offline people do not exist.

They simply block Tor without discussion. It’s not even clear who at what level makes these decisions.. could even be an IT admin at the bottom of the org chart. They don’t even say they’re blocking Tor. They don’t even give Tor users a block message that admits that they block Tor. They don’t disclose in their privacy policies that they exclude Tor.

Just a 403 error. That’s all we get. As if it needs no justification. Why is the Tor community so readily willing to play the pushover? Even the Tor project itself will not stand up for their own supporters.

The lack of justification is damaging because it essentially sends the message: “you Tor-using privacy seekers are such scum we don’t even have to explain why you are outcast. We don’t even have to ask permission to exclude you from participating in society” This reinforces the myth that Tor users are criminals and encourages non-criminal Tor users to abandon Tor, thus shrinking the Tor userbase. The civilized world has evolved to a point of realizing the injustice of #collectivePunishment. At best this is a case of punishing many because of a few. I say “at best” because I’m skeptical that a bad actor provokes the arbitrary denial of service.

When the question is publicly asked “why did service X start blocking Tor” answers always come as speculation from people who don’t really know, who say they were probably attacked.