== 2017 AMS Tor Meeting - Global South - session 1
Breakout: Global South
Leads: flexlibris & ilv
=== Is "global south" the most effective and appropriate term for our goals?
=== INTRO
Alison Comm. Team is: Connecting with trainers in the south, providing with them travel support and more direct connection with tor; trying to secure more funding and participation in meetings.
ilv (Derechos Digitales): Working to get more relays in Latin America; educating people on how to set up and run relays safely, and trying to increase number of users
Maria (OONI): Work with various digital rights activations to detect and monitor censorship; aim to empower groups in those areas with tools and data to continue their work via probe deployment, data analysis, educational workshops.
Biella Announcement: April/May will be board recruiting, looking for candidates from the global south. Please email biella@riseup with candidate suggestions, short bio info, and contact information (if available)
=== OPEN FLOOR
==== Q: Other than money for lawyers, how can we support people in learning to run relays/nodes.
Working with lawyers, there's a legal loophole that relieves relay hosts of liability; varies country to country; hardware and internet connection is also an issue, so funding for hardware would be helpful;
Harvard cyberlaw clinic provides pro bono cyber advice; contact alison for examples of documents and contact information at the clinic alison@torproject
==== Q: Technical challenge to participation in meetings, uncomfortable with directory authorities being located so closely, would like to see directory authorities hosted in places like India, etc.
One of main issues is trust and coordination; possibly have contacts developing in a couple countries.
==== Q: (follow-up) Conversation has been having for years, but the tor project remains US-centric
Debian has been successful because they have been having meetings in Latin America; we should be having meetings in the global south; lots of freedom/oss meetings in Latin America, we should be building up a contingent to attending these and helping to encourage/educate setting up relays
We should establish partnerships and co-host events with those partners;
O-tech community lab (example)
- More local/regional meetings
- Board is pushing/prioritizing a global south meeting
- Another small step is for Tor to participate in other open-source conferences
==== Q: Re: motivations; what is Tor's motivation for pushing for diversity?
We need concrete goals so we don't just do one thing and forget
- One goal is to extend the network;
- We are a homogenous group, which isn't sustainable; and there are lots of Tor users who aren't represented in the group
- Resilience! A homogenous group leads to a single point of failure
- We should be present in the countries who need Tor the most
- Important to empower local groups and support events, Tor leadership attendance isn't necessarily what needs to happen
Comment on re-branding our goals in global south -- "Let's work together to make this great thing" instead of "We have this great thing we want to give you"
==== Q: Re: events in Latin America
Questions the value of hosting meetings in Latin America because of the cost;
the work of Tor is valuable, maybe it's not the best use of money, but to have people at the events would be VERY helpful (example: Isabela)
Suggestion: even Mexico would be a good middle place
The cost isn't an excuse, we have to get there
Challenge also with rapidly changing geopolitics and international visa restrictions
Suggestion: Tor user groups? Working with different groups to set things up will help facilitate more "co-collaboration"
Side effect of becoming more global: We can't expect to always get everyone together
Another issue: we need more Tor teachers; need to empower people to do their own Tor events
==== Q: How do we get to the point where someone, for example, searches for information on abortion in South America, gets results from Europe because the exit is in Germany?
HIGHLIGHT: We should be empowering local groups, we have a lot of work to do.
We will continue this conversation during a second meeting tomorrow.