The Tor Project, which maintains the private communications network Tor, has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign aimed at reducing its dependency on the U.S. government for funding.

The anonymizing network, which is popular with all manner of journalists, activists, whistleblowers, criminals and privacy-conscious netizens, reportedly gets around 90 percent of its funding directly from the U.S. government, according to The Verge. The funding comes in spite of the fact that Tor and some U.S. government agencies are fundamentally opposed to each other, with the NSA said to be desperately working on a way to hack the network and spy on those who’re using it.

Tor works by rerouting Web requests via a network of terminals which are dotted all over the world. It serves to cloak the user’s IP address, and allows access to some ‘hidden’ websites that operate outside of the regular World Wide Web.

With the new fundraising campaign, Tor users can make a one-time donation or set up recurring payments on a monthly basis. Tor is accepting payments through Bitcoin, Dwolla and PayPal, as well as old-fashioned cash, checks, bank transfers and money orders.

To further raise awareness, Tor has signed up Citizen Four director Laura Poitras, who used the network to communicate with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“There are so many reasons … that we want to protect our privacy and not broadcast every move we make online,” Poitras said. “Tor is an essential tool that is needed by people to do what they do.”

Previous to this drive, Tor said its main backers this year were the U.S. Department of State, the National Science Foundation, Radio Free Asia and Reddit, in addition to over 4,300 donations from individuals.

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