Tor, like much of the world, has been caught up in the COVID-19 crisis. Like many other nonprofits and small businesses, the crisis has hit us hard, and we have had to make some difficult decisions.
We had to let go of 13 great people who helped make Tor available to millions of people around the world. We will move forward with a core team of 22 people, and remain dedicated to continuing our work on Tor Browser and the Tor software ecosystem.
The world won’t be the same after this crisis, and the need for privacy and secure access to information will become more urgent. In these times, being online is critical and many people face ongoing obstacles to getting and sharing needed information. We are taking today’s difficult steps to ensure the Tor Project continues to exist and our technology stays available.
We are terribly sad to lose such valuable teammates, and we want to let all our users and supporters know that Tor will continue to provide privacy, security, and censorship circumvention services to anyone who needs them.
As a contribution to our campaign to take back the internet, Ed has given us three signed cards to include inside copies of his book for our supporters.
I know that a better internet is possible. In fact, it once existed. I started using the internet in the mid-90s, with a dial up connection in my family’s house in Brazil. I loved getting online because I could go down an infinite rabbit hole of hyperlinks, learning and discovering new things, and I could talk to all kinds of people without having to reveal my real name or my real identity. Who I was in the physical world didn’t matter when I got online.
Through partnership with our community and our community’s broader connections, we turned limited resources into a safe space to cultivate connections, collaboration, and progress toward the vision and values that we are all working towards at Tor.
The work we do at the Tor Project is to ensure that anyone can safely use the internet. We are very happy to know that our work provides women all around the world the security and anonymity they need to organize and express themselves.
This is my first blog post as the Tor Project’s Executive Director. I can’t express how excited I am for this next journey. I have been a Tor user and advocate since its early days, in the Vidalia times. Tor has come a long way, always evolving to provide a holistic solution for anonymity, security and privacy online.
The Tor community is vast and deep yet remains a virtual entity outside periodic physical events. In New York City on December 7, we are going to start to change that.
