Cyberactivists Get Help From YouTube, US to Thwart Repression

The State Department has given $15 million in the past two years to private projects that use technology and training to promote online freedoms.

It is reviewing applications for $5 million to support work including research into circumventing firewalls and surveillance and $30 million more will be available later this year, said Daniel Baer, deputy assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor. Helping activists creates a dilemma by exposing them to retribution from repressive governments. Projects are so sensitive and the people involved at such risk that the State Department declined to identify current applicants. One Washington-based group that got the bulk of the money doled out so far -- more than $13 million for projects worldwide -- asked not to be named, fearing Chinese employees would be jailed. AccessNow's founders haven't received government funds and said they would have reservations about accepting any because they want to remain independent and protect contacts in countries where taking foreign money is a crime. The group does disseminate open-source software that receives indirect U.S. support, including Tor, a network of virtual tunnels that allows people to surf anonymously. Built on work by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the science and technology arm of the Navy and Marine Corps, Tor was developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and volunteers. It is used by an average of 8,000 people in Iran and 100,000 in China at any moment, said Andrew Lewman, executive director of the nonprofit Tor Project.