The unbridled support of dozens of citizens from both Lebanon and the entire country, including off-the-books support from an FBI cyber agent, empowered the town to turn it back on, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.

Earlier in the summer of 2015, the Kilton Public Library agreed to become the first library in the United States to host a Tor exit node, meaning it contributes bandwidth to the anonymizing web protocol (the more "nodes" there are, the faster and more secure the service is). Soon after announcing the plan, however, a DHS agent sent a one-sentence email to local police suggesting that the node would empower criminals and terrorists to evade law enforcement.