After a many-months-long search for a new executive director, the Tor Project announced last week that it has hired Shari Steele, former head of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to lead the organization.
Steele spent 15 years at EFF, including the last eight as its executive director, helping to grow the organization into one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates.
In her new role, Steele will be the main voice and face of the Tor Project, tasked with raising its profile, securing new sources of funding, and expanding the use of its anonymity software and tools to the broader public.
The Tor Project, founded by Roger Dingledine and Nick Matthewson in 2006, develops and maintains free software and tools that support anonymous communications on the Dark Web.
The Tor network uses layers of encryption to shield your location and the location of any hidden services you use.
Although it was originally developed by the US Navy, and is largely funded by the US government, the Tor network has come under attack by law enforcement and intelligence agencies including the FBI and the NSA.
One of Steele’s biggest challenges is changing the perception of Tor, which has become something of a safe haven for criminals, terrorists and child abusers.
Although it’s inevitable that Tor will be used to conceal illegal activities, it’s also a useful tool for protecting people who need anonymity to do dangerous but beneficial work, like whistleblowers, journalists and human rights activists.
In a post on the Tor Project blog, Steele said that her mission is to grow the organization by fostering “greater adoption of Tor products by mainstream internet users.”
Despite the rapid growth of people using Tor in the wake of revelations of NSA surveillance by leaker Edward Snowden, it is far from “mainstream.”
In our trustworthy browser poll back in October 2015, only 6% said Tor was the browser they trust the most, which suggests that the Tor Project has a steep hill to climb to get to mainstream acceptance and adoption.
Still, if anyone is up to the challenge, Steele seems like an excellent choice.
As Dingledine noted in his blog post announcing the hire, Steele has been a long-time supporter of Tor, having led EFF’s choice to fund Tor.
Steele also has the experience of growing an organization with a similar focus to Tor’s, and successfully launched EFF’s privacy tool HTTPS Everywhere, developed in collaboration with the Tor Project.
Dingledine said the move will allow him and co-founder Matthewson to get back to their old roles of “actually doing technical work,” while Steele takes over the organizational side of things:
Tor's technical side is world-class, and I am excited that Shari will help Tor's organizational side become great too. She shares our core values, she brings leadership in managing and coordinating people, she has huge experience in growing a key non-profit in our space, and her work pioneering EFF's community-based funding model will be especially valuable as we continue our campaign to diversify our funding sources.
The Tor Project faces technical challenges too, in fending off attacks and closing vulnerabilities, such as one discovered by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that was reportedly used by the FBI to bust a number of Dark Web markets including Silk Road 2.0.
If the Tor Project is going to grow and thrive, it will certainly need to secure more funding, build a more sustainable infrastructure and generate better public awareness – those are not going to be easy tasks.
But maintaining its own security is perhaps the most essential task of all.
Image of infinite computer screens inside computer screens courtesy of Shutterstock.com.
Anon
TOR is like a sharp knife – in the right hands it can be used to cook a fantastic meal, perform surgery and protect you in a hostile environment, and in the wrong hands in can be used for harm and intimidation. Blaming TOR for child abuse and criminal activity is the equivalent of blaming the knife for a murder – the problem is the way it’s used.
If you separate the darkweb from the TOR network and examine the TOR network on its own then you find a relatively secure, privacy respecting and safe network for day to day communications. It works especially well as Orbot on Android for protecting you while viewing webpages on open networks (assuming you can get the captive portal working with the proxy). If you combine this with https then your average hacker in the coffee shop is unlikely to be of any concern. It also works really well as secure messaging which keeps your communications private – Chat Secure has built in TOR integration. This prevents industrial espionage, intellectual theft, bullying, domestic abuse, stalkers and just about anyone who wishes to harm you. TOR by default enables free speech, the ability to challenge draconian laws, crimes of the state and generally promotes freedom and choice.
Then there is the darkweb… You have to ask yourself why would anyone wish to create .onion websites? The vast majority are criminal and up to no good at all. This is where TOR gets a bad reputation – child abusers, thieves, hackers, narcotics, firearms, in fact anything illegal and harmful to society. TOR’s TAILS doesn’t help here by enabling these websites to exist covertly. This is the single biggest downfall of the TOR network and it’s why most people stay well clear of TOR, and quite rightly too as they could become inadvertently involved with criminal activity.
For these reasons I tend to use TOR in the form of ORBOT on Android and Firefox – I want the protection of the TOR network while using my mobile devices on open networks, but I want to make a clear distinction that I’m not up to anything nefarious by avoiding .onion websites as Firefox cannot access these. (version 38 works – thereafter the proxy cannot be installed, and yes there is Orfox too although I have never tried it). I don’t use it primarily on my home network as there is no need – I can control and secure this myself and if it is hacked then I really ought to review my security practices and patching frequency.
Some people say VPN’s are better, but if you compare TOR to a VPN then you have to ask yourself do you trust the VPN provider? In short, no, not always – VPN’s may leak information, they can keep logs and they must comply with the laws of the country they are operating in. This means they are powerless to prevent state led abuses of power. TOR doesn’t have this problem.
If TOR were to remove access to .onion websites and focus on privacy, security and championing freedom of speech then it would go a long way to making it more mainstream for the masses.
Dan
One thing that could attract the public to the usage of TOR, is the holding liable of enter and exit nodes for all crimes that took place on the TOR Network from the simple cyberbullying of a person to the most drastic such as drug dealing and the deaths that could transpire. If these were implemented, then the TOR network would be a reliable source for those who value privacy. But as far as I am concerned, the TOR Network is a ruthless place, and should be condemned and outlawed in its current state. TOR has a lot of polishing to do, in order to, resurrect their image.
edwardsku
Tor is not a platform for people expressing what they think freely and also shielding people from privacy invasions, abuse of power by law enforcement, and other kinds of threats. It is somehow a tool for people/whistleblowers monitoring whether government agencies are on a right track and identifying those bad apples in our society. For example many cities have CCTVs, are they really annoying to the public? You might say yes for this, because they record what actually happens on street and identify all pedestrians/ bypassers. There are always a few law enforcers abusing their power to go beyond their granted authority. But at the same time they are the witness to recording and identifying any criminal activities/ culprits of mischief.
For the same token Tor as if other tools around us is a double-edged sword, who and how people are using it is rather a key though. Government agencies shouldn’t be too concerning about that, if they have integrity and transparency for their citizens. If most citizens by large are educated appropriately, it doesn’t matter whether there is a Tor or other kind of tool existed, our society is still be kept safe.