Censored continent: understanding the use of tools during information controls in Africa: Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, and Zimbabwe as case studies.

A certain lack of cohesive semantic content suggests a certain line of thought concerning how the comment to which I am replying came into existence. (Wired.com recently covered an example in which such suspicions expressed by wary readers turned out to be justified.)

Regardless, just in case anyone (perhaps someone in Africa) who is not yet a Tor user but who is considering using Tor is reading this, an important correction to some fake memes often encountered in various places on the Internet:

> Although Edward Snowden promoted it with a Tor sticker on a laptop. I am pretty sure, he would be considered the .1% club. Entry at the door says "No one need apply" at the top of the club door.

Edward Snowden was indeed an early adopter of Tails, the "amnesiac" out-of-the-box Linux system (see tails.boum.org), and he did indeed place a Tor sticker on his personal laptop, and in exile he has continued to recommend that political dissidents and potential leakers use Tails. Just before leaving the US he also helped organize a cryptoparty where experts taught ordinary citizens how to use GPG and such.

Tails depends upon Tor and Tor Browser, but incorporates many other privacy and cybersecurity protections. Tails is provided as an ISO image which anyone can download and burn on a "live" DVD--- and optionally can then make a live USB, which is more convenient to use on a daily basis. It is essential to use GPG to verify the detached signature of the ISO image before burning this to the live DVD (see tails.boum.org for instructions).

"Live" means that when you reboot your computer with the DVD or USB inserted, your computer will be running the Tails system, not the one installed on your hard drive. "Amnesiac" means that Tails will not leave any traces of your activities on your hard drive.

The Snowden leaks included briefings on several secret programs intended to break Tails; the NSA people concluded (in about 2010-2012) that Tails would be almost impossible to compromise if used according to the (excellent) documentation at tails.boum.org. That might have changed in the years since, but despite the FUD above, the most knowledgeable commentators seem to agree that NSA/FBI/etc still have great trouble breaking Tails itself.

The busts alluded to above appear to involve people doing dangerous things which did not involve Tails. It is true that FBI has been able to compromise certain onion sites (which use Tor in a crucial way), but these compromises appear to have happened by means not involving a direct attack on Tor software, but rather on something dangerous the administrators of the onions were doing in order to log into their own onion site. The onion sites featured in those widely publicized breaches were, as suggested above, alleged illegal drug sale sites. Most onion sites, however, are operated by reputable and badly needed news organizations such as The Intercept, the paper cofounded by Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden leaks with Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and some colleagues from The Guardian, the paper he was then writing for. The Guardian also has an onion site.

Leak on, people! 8> 8> 8>