The Tor Project: Getting to Know the Most Important Project Making the Internet Accessible, Without Tracking and Surveillance
The Community Series features stories of the people and projects behind the digital rights community.
The Tor Project is a well-known nonprofit organization with the mission to advance human rights by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies. The Tor project is responsible for the Tor network, Tor browser and circumvention tools like Snowflake.
We talked with Tor’s executive director Isabela Fernandes, and Tor’s communications director Pavel Zoneff to learn more about the project’s work.
As Pavel shares, “Tor is the only user-friendly plug-and-play solution that helps human rights advocates, activists, and civil society members bypass online surveillance and censorship and access the open web. Our various teams, from apps and UX design, community outreach and advocacy, to anti-censorship and network-health, make sure that everything is running smoothly every day.”
How the Tor Project started
Most people probably first heard of the Tor Project in 2013 when whistleblower Ed Snowden used their technology to safely and anonymously communicate with journalists, but it has already existed as a nonprofit organization since 2006.
Scalable Vector Graphics Diagram of the "Onion Routing" Principle. Attribution: English Wikipedia user HANtwister, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The idea of "onion routing" - a technique that uses encryption to protect online privacy and allow for anonymous communication over a network - began in the mid-1990s when David Goldschlag, Mike Reed, and Paul Syverson first developed the first research designs and prototypes while in the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL). Then, in the early 2000s, Roger Dingledine began working on an NRL onion routing project with Syverson. To distinguish this original work at NRL from other onion routing efforts, Roger called the project Tor (standing for The Onion Routing). Nick Mathewson, a classmate of Roger's at MIT, joined the project soon after.
In 2004, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Roger's and Nick's work, and in 2006 The Tor Project was founded to maintain its development. In 2007, the organization began developing bridges to the Tor network to address censorship, such as the need to get around government firewalls, so users could access the open web.
The Tor Browser
Over time, the Tor Project gained more users and support among activists and tech and privacy experts and in 2008 the Tor Browser development began.
Tor Browser was a useful tool during the beginning of the Arab Spring because it protected people's identity online and allowed them to access critical resources, social media, and websites that were blocked in their territories. This, plus Snowden’s revelations in 2013 made people more interested in tools that protected them from mass surveillance and censorship.
Pavel explains that “since then, more and more people have started using Tor to browse the Internet privately, and share and access information online freely. Our work at the Tor Project is to make sure that users continue to have access to free and open-source software like the Tor network and Tor Browser.”
The image illustrates a user browsing to different websites over Tor - the green middle computers represent relays in the Tor network, while the three keys represent the layers of encryption between the user and each relay.
How the Tor Network Works
Tor browser uses the Tor network to protect your privacy and anonymity. The Tor network works by sending your traffic through three random servers in the Tor network. The last relay in the circuit (the "exit relay") then sends the traffic out onto the public Internet.
In this way, onlookers are prevented from tracking your internet activity. Website operators, Internet services providers, and anyone who may be watching, will see a connection coming from the Tor network instead of your real Internet (IP) address. You can download the browser for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, here.
How to Get Involved in Tor's Community of Volunteers and Support Users in Highly Censored Regions
The Tor network relies on volunteers to donate bandwidth. Review this link to learn how you can help the them on it.
The Tor network relies on thousands of volunteers to donate bandwidth, and the Tor Project is always looking for those who have the technical skills to run relays.
But for those of us who are less tech-savvy, there is a very simple way to help users living in highly censored regions: install and run a Tor Snowflake proxy via a browser add-on. Snowflake is a pluggable transport which helps users access the open Internet when even regular Tor connections are censored. Note: Tor Snowflake users will use your computer's IP address to access Tor, but they will exit the Internet using Tor's exit nodes' IP addresses.
If none of this is an option for you, don't forget that the Tor Project is a non-profit, and you can also donate here and subscribe to their newsletter to learn more about how to get involved in their cause.
Tor's Importance in the ‘Year of Democracy’: 65 Elections and 2 Billion Heading to the Polls
Zoneff explains: “A constant challenge is to improve Tor’s response to various anti-censorship tactics to ensure people have access to the open web without fear of retribution. This year, dubbed the ‘year of democracy’, with more than 65 elections taking place and 2B+ people heading to the polls, we expect censorship spikes around elections to discourage people from organizing and accessing information.”
In response, Tor has launched a new censorship-resistant tool called ‘Webtunnel’. It mimics ordinary web traffic in a way that makes it hard for censors to cut off access to the Internet without incurring collateral damage to their IT infrastructure. Launched on March 12, the tool is designed to assist users in heavily censored regions.
Your Help is Critically Needed this Year
As a result of the elections, people’s support of Tor is crucial this year. You can either run Tor bridges or run Snowflake, and ask others to do the same. Also, you can join the Tor community by joining the tor-relays mailing list, participating in the Tor Forum, following their policies, and engaging in their Matrix/IRC chat!
What the Future Holds for Tor
Review this link to learn how to help Tor to translate their software into more languages.
Besides continuing to fortify Tor's anti-censorship response, Tor’s executive director Isabela Fernandes shares that they are looking more closely at the way that people connect to the Internet and are working on improving Tor's mobile experience.
“In many cases, a website that a user visits on their browser becomes an app on their phone. As part of our mobile strategy, we need to ensure broad platform and backward compatibility to support some of our critical use cases with strong digital protections — even on older handheld devices. But, as has been in the past, our ultimate objective is to reach as many people as possible to provide them with strong online safety tools that help them reclaim their right to privacy and anonymity,” Isabela explains.