Emails obtained by Motherboard show that off-the-books support from an FBI agent and dozens of supportive comments from regular people empowered a public library to keep its Tor node running.

“I grew up in the police state of South Africa during the Apartheid era, and am thoroughly disillusioned with the direction America is taking. This sort of intimidation tactic is something you would see in a totalitarian state like the one I am from, where books were banned, people's actions were monitored, and where we feared the government at every turn,”