Sebastian G. <bastik.tor> wrote: > Andrew wrote: >> - Looked into legality of receiving a large financial donation from a >> country on the US Treasury embargoed list. Unsurprisingly, we cannot >> accept such a donation due to the source. > Money is speech, isn't it? It's just a promise.* If that is true, then > preventing you from taking money is a violation of your first amendment.
Well, sort of. In campaign finance law, "money is speech," but America hasn't quite figured out how these laws complement or conflict. And there's a standing list of embargoed countries.[1] It's an incredibly tricky legal area. (I've ~really~ got to start reading tor-reports more often) [3] > Money is money; independent from the source. Money (especially donations to non-profits) are perceived to have politics attached to it. After Hurricane Katrina, there was a bit of an uproar after Kuwait offered to donate $400m in oil and $100m in actual money. My (limited) understanding is that Country X can use good deeds like those to try to rehabilitate their image, or use it to insinuate a political tie between themselves and the US. With some countries, these sanctions go away after a while, but with others it's a difficult situation long-term. Imagine if, to choose a totally random example, North Korea decided to give a billion dollars to anti-poverty charities while its people go hungry. Or if Lukashenko gave a few million to lobby for journalistic protections in the US while having an awful record domestically.[2] ~Griffin [1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx [2] https://www.cpj.org/europe/belarus/ [3] that awkward moment when you're reading someone's funder report and it has your name in it. surprise! -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
