Sure, Tor traffic has always been suspicious, but that suspicious traffic has traditionally been without an attached political label. By branding Tor as a tool specifically for HR campaigns, you risk drawing additional ire from regimes considered to have a poor HR record.
Wouldn't a regime with a poor human rights track record consider any use of technology which hides who you are communicating with as warranting further investigation regardless of the ideals behind it? I don't think they are that naive.
Have you ever been to China? There's a plenty of people who work there and have to use various proxies to do so, is the Chinese government cracking down on them? Nah, they'll just mess with those connections a little to keep up appearances.
But hey, if you decide to use a proxy that screams "I'M A POLITICAL DISSIDENT" with every packet you send they might just get interested.
Governments that have a reason to be concerned about Tor are already concerned about Tor. And governments that are concerned about Tor won't be more or less concerned because of its mission statement.
I don't think so. You are probably from the west. Image what your government would do against tor if tor changed it's missions statement to be about circumventing drug laws. I'm very sure serveral liberal democracies where hell-bend to ban tor.
/edit: We had a massshooting in germany recently. We currently have a debate about police tool against the "dark web" as a source of firearms. Before that the goverment was not concerned about tor at all. After that it was very. The narrative about tor changed only slightly, and the governments stance changed rapidly. And the missions statment is a very strong source of narrative.
Goverments are not either good (supporting Freedom) or evil (supressing it's people), but do both things to some extend. It's not like Singapore wants a little freedom as possible for it's citizens. It just has very un-western values. If it though that tor does not get to much in the way it won't do much. OTOH German goverment might attac tor.
I'd argue the chances China cares about Tor being used to attack US based firms is an order of magnitude lower than when it is used to circumvent HR restrictions. If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool. Remember, these policy makers and enforcers aren't typically the most technically savvy.
> If Tor is marketed as a general anonymity tool, it seems less likely to be targeted than an HR specific tool
I would be surprised if the Chinese government cared about how Tor was being marketed. The change might help with propaganda but it won't change internal policy. What they care about is how it is actually used in China, and I'm sure they understand this better than anyone else except for perhaps the Tor Project.
That was the author's argument, that Singapore is against the Western view of human rights, so running human rights software would be seen as subversive by the government. He then undermines his argument to instead promote the privacy aspect of Tor by saying that the Singaporean government is fanatically anti-corruption. Privacy hides corruption, so promoting that aspect of the tool doesn't make sense either.
Author here.
In short, Singapore authorities view Privacy as a double-edged sword. They recognize it's power for anti-corruption (which they love), but dislike the human-rights angle and possibility for breaking the law. Realistically they'll do a balancing act.
As long as one can convincing argue that weight of the things they like about Tor exceed the weight of the things they dislike about Tor, you're good. Tor's pivot to emphasize human rights makes that comparison much harder to win.
In what way is privacy anti-corruption? My point was that having better privacy makes corruption easier, which is why saying the Singaporean government is taking aim at corruption undermines your argument. If you can untraceably accept payment for a deal that was set up and negotiated without the possibility of eavesdropping, you've got the perfect tools for corruption.
Good point. To answer you directly---in short they like whistleblowing.
More long-form they like some of the protection features---e.g., protection against corporate espionage from China/USA. They probably also like to use such technologies to spy on their neighbors in efforts to leverage that information to negotiate better trade deals.
