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by slg
3131 days ago
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Here [1] is the first result on Google and it is a twofer. You might argue that the ACLU and EFF are publicizing their involvement, but I would argue that is because publicity of their fight is part of their political agenda. Thiel's political motivation was privacy so it makes sense that he wouldn't actively publicize his involvement. Also while we may know that these organizations are funding this legal battle, we don't know who is ultimately funding these organizations. It is certainly possible that a random billionaire donated money and earmarked it for this specific cause. Would it be more acceptable to you if Thiel created some dummy non-profit, donated money to it, and then had that organization publicly back the lawsuit? That likely would have had the same end result and might have even nabbed Thiel a decent tax break. [1] - https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-aclu-media-conference... |
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990s give some hint, but yes, individual donors aren't revealed (as they are for campaign contributions). OK, but the fact remains that we can see these orgs have, among other things, a bureaucracy. Let's say Soros (or insert your favorite villain here) is the sole funder behind ACLU. The ACLU provides cover for him, but the tradeoff is that there are more moving parts (i.e. the people in the organization) and less efficiency in action. And so this tactic is probably a lot more trouble than it's worth.
In terms of your hypothetical situation of Thiel creating a dummy non-profit org -- is your question rhetorical? Sure, I guess it would "please" the Thiel detractors because doing such a thing properly takes a considerable amount of time and planning (you can't just make up names to add to your 990, for example). And if you were to rush the scheme -- well, as you've already pointed out, that would put Thiel at risk of being nabbed for something tax-fraud related.
Does this help to answer one of your earlier questions (sorry, too lazy to climb the thread tree to look it up) about why some folks have more of an issue with an agenda-driven individual than with an agenda-driven organization? It's hard for an organization to exist as a public entity without stating some kind of agenda. The agenda of an individual is much more opaque. And while it's true that an organization can be completely subverted and controlled by a powerful private individual, there's a lot of work to set that up, and a lot of disadvantages even if you're successful. Hence, it is considered less of a potential problem.