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torusers.wml

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#include "head.wmi" TITLE="Who uses Tor?"

# Note to translators: this file is still under construction, and
# will probably change a whole lot before we link to it. So it's
# probably best to not translate it yet.

<p>
If you have a success story with Tor, especially one we
can link to, please <a href="<page contact>">send us</a> a note!
</p>

<p>
Tor provides anonymity: when it succeeds, nobody notices.  This is
great for users, but not so good for us, since publishing success
stories about how people or organizations are staying anonymous could be
counterproductive.
As an example, we talked
to an FBI officer who explained that he uses Tor every day for his
work &mdash; but he quickly followed up
with a request not to provide details or mention his name.
</p>

<p>
Like any technology, from pencils to cellphones to airplanes, anonymity can be used for both good and evil.
You have probably seen at least some of the vigorous debate
(<a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/01/70000">pro</a>,
<a href="http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html#kelly">con</a>,
and
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/anon.html">academic</a>)
over anonymity. The Tor project is based on the belief that anonymity is not just a good idea some of the time - it is a requirement for a free and functioning society. The <a href="http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity">EFF has a good overview</a> of how anonymity was crucial to the founding of the United States and has been recognized by US courts as a fundamental and important right. In fact, governments mandate anonymity in many cases themselves:
<a href="https://www.crimeline.co.za/default.asp">police tip lines</a>,
<a href="http://www.texasbar.com/Content/ContentGroups/Public_Information1/Legal_Resources_Consumer_Information/Family_Law1/Adoption_Options.htm#sect2">adoption services</a>,
<a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/aronson/20020827.html">police officer identities</a>,
and so forth. It would be impossible to rehash the entire anonymity debate here - it is too large an issue with too many nuances, and there are plenty of other places where this information can be found. We do have a <a href="page faq-abuse">Tor abuse</a> page describing some of the possible abuse cases for Tor, but suffice it to say that if you want to abuse the system, you'll either find it mostly closed for your purposes (e.g. the majority of Tor relays do not support port 25 to prevent anonymous email spamming), or if you're one of the
<a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html">Four Horsemen of the Internet</a>,
you have better options than Tor. While not dismissing the potential abuses of Tor, here are just a few of the many important ways anonymity is used today:
</p>

<h2>Everyday, ordinary Internet surfers use Tor</h2>

<ul>
<li>
<strong>They protect their privacy from unscrupulous 
marketers and identity thieves.</strong>
Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/29449-compete-ceo-isps-sell-clickstreams-for-5-a-month">
sell your Internet browsing records</a>
to marketers or anyone else willing to pay for it. They typically say that 
they anonymize it by not providing your username or personally 
identifiable information, but
<a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/08/71579?currentPage=all">this is a farce</a>.
A full record of every
site you visit, the text of every search you perform, and potentially 
userid and even password information can still be part of this data.
In addition to your ISP, the websites
(<a href="http://www.google.com/privacy_faq.html">and search engines</a>)
you visit have their own logs,
containing the same or more information.
</li>

<li>
<strong> They protect their communications from irresponsible corporations.</strong>
All over the net, Tor is being recommended to people newly concerned
about their privacy in the face of increasing breaches and betrayals of
private data. From
<a href="http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11048">lost backup tapes</a>, to
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ex=1312776000&en=f6f61949c6da4d38&ei=5090">giving away the data to researchers</a>,
your data is often not well protected by those you are supposed to trust to keep it safe.
</li>

<li>
<strong>They protect their children online.</strong>
You've told your kids they shouldn't share personally identifying
information online, but they may be sharing their location simply
by not concealing their IP address. Increasingly, IP
addresses can be
<a href="http://whatismyipaddress.com/">literally mapped to a city or even street location</a>,
and can
<a href="http://whatsmyip.org/more/">reveal other information</a>
about how you are connecting to the Internet.
In the United States the
government is pushing to make this mapping increasingly precise.
</li>

<li>
<strong>They research sensitive topics.</strong>
There's a wealth of information available online. But perhaps in your 
country, access to information on AIDS, birth control,
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/03/tech/main531567.shtml">Tibetan culture</a>,
or world religions is behind a national firewall.
Or perhaps you are worried that if you research a particular set of
symptoms, at some later date an insurance company might buy the 
logs of the websites you visited and establish that
you had suspicions of a pre-existing condition.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Soldiers in the field use Tor</h2>
<ul>

<li>
<strong>Military field agents:</strong>
How much, do you imagine, would the Iraqi insurgency pay to find out
the location of every computer in Baghdad that logged into a military
server in Maryland to read email?  Tor can protect military personnel in
the field by hiding their location.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Hidden services:</strong>
When the Internet was designed by DARPA, its primary purpose was to
be able to facilitate distributed, robust communications in case of
local strikes.  However, some functions must be centralized, such as
command and control sites.  It's the nature of the Internet protocols to
reveal the geographic location of any server that is reachable online.
Tor's hidden services capacity allows military command and
control to be physically secure from discovery and takedown.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Intelligence gathering:</strong>
Military personnel need to use electronic resources run and monitored
by insurgents. Obviously, they do not want the server logs on an insurgent
website to show a military address, revealing their surveillance.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Journalists and their audience use Tor</h2>

<ul>
<li><strong>
<a href="http://www.rsf.org/">Reporters without Borders</a></strong>
tracks internet prisoners of conscience and
jailed or harmed journalists all over the world. They advise
journalists, sources, bloggers, and dissidents to use Tor to
ensure their privacy and safety.
</li>

<li>
<strong>The US <a href="http://www.ibb.gov/">International Broadcasting
Bureau</a></strong> (Voice of America/Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Asia)
supports Tor development to help Internet users in countries without
safe access to free media.  Tor
preserves the ability of persons behind national firewalls or under
the surveillance of repressive regimes to obtain
a global perspective on controversial topics including democracy,
economics and religion.
</li>

<li>
Although we often think of foreign journalists working in far off lands,
<strong>citizen journalists in China and other
<a href="http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554">Internet black holes</a>
use Tor to write about local events</strong> and to encourage social
change and political reform, more secure that there will not be a knock
on the door at midnight.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Law enforcement officers use Tor</h2>
<ul>

<li>
<strong>Online surveillance:</strong>
Tor allows officials to surf questionable web sites and services
without leaving tell-tale tracks.  If the system administrator of an
illegal gambling site, for example, were to see multiple connections from
governmental or law enforcement computers in usage logs, investigations
would be hampered.
</strong>

<li>
<strong>Sting operations:</strong>
Similarly, anonymity allows law officers to engage in online
&ldquo;undercover &rdquo; operations.  Regardless of how good an
undercover officer's &ldquo;street cred&rdquo; may be, if his or her
email headers include nypd.nyc.ny.state.us, his or her cover is blown.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Truly anonymous tip lines:</strong>
While online anonymous tip lines are popular, without anonymity
software, they are far less useful.  Sophisticated sources understand that
although a name or email address is not attached to information, server
logs can identify them very quickly.  As a result, tip line web sites that
do not encourage anonymity are limiting the sources of their tips.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Activists & whistleblowers use Tor</h2>
<ul>

<li>
<strong>Human rights activists use Tor to anonymously report abuses from
danger zones.</strong>  Internationally, labor rights workers use Tor and other
forms of online and offline anonymity to organize workers in accordance
with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even though they are within
the law, it does not mean they are safe. Tor provides the ability to
avoid persecution while still raising a voice.
</li>

<li>
When groups such as the <strong>Friends Service Committee and environmental
groups are increasingly
<a href="http://www.afsc.org/news/2005/government-spying.htm">falling under surveillance</a>
in the United States</strong>
under laws meant to protect against terrorism, many peaceful agents of
change rely on Tor for basic privacy during legitimate activities.
</li>

<li>
<strong><a href="http://hrw.org/doc/?t=internet">Human Rights Watch</a></strong>
recommends Tor
in their report, &ldquo;
<a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/">Race to the Bottom: Corporate
Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship</a>.&rdquo; The study
co-author interviewed Roger Dingledine, Tor project leader,
on Tor use.  They cover Tor in the section on how to breach the <a
href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/3.htm#_Toc142395820">&ldquo;Great
Firewall of China,&rdquo;</a>
and recommend that human rights workers throughout
the globe use Tor for &ldquo;secure browsing and communications.&rdquo;
</li>

<li>
Tor has consulted with and volunteered help to <strong>Amnesty International's
recent
<a href="http://irrepressible.info/">corporate responsibility campaign</a></strong>.
See also their <a
href="http://irrepressible.info/static/pdf/FOE-in-china-2006-lores.pdf">full
report</a> on China Internet issues.
</li>

<li>
<a href="http://www.globalvoicesonline.org">Global Voices</a>
can't stop recommending Tor, especially for <strong>anonynomous blogging</strong>,
throughout their <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.globalvoicesonline.org+tor">
web site.</a>
</li>

<li>
In the US, the Supreme Court recently stripped legal protections from
government whistleblowers.  But whistleblowers working for governmental
transparency or corporate accountability can use Tor to seek justice
without personal repercussions.
</li>

<li>
A contact of ours who works with a public health nonprofit in
Africa reports that his nonprofit
<strong>must budget 10% to cover various sorts of corruption</strong>,
mostly bribes and such.  When that percentage
rises steeply, not only can they not afford the money, but they can
not afford to complain &mdash; this is the point at which open objection can
become dangerous.  So his nonprofit has been working to
<strong>use Tor to safely whistleblow on governmental corruption</strong>
in order to continue their work.
</li>

<li>
At a recent conference a Tor staffer ran into a woman who came from
a &ldquo;company town&rdquo; in a mountainous area of the
eastern United States. She was attempting to blog anonymously to rally
local residents to
<strong>urge reform on the company</strong> that dominated the town's
economic and governmental affairs, fully cognizant that the kind of
organizing she was doing <strong>could lead to harm or &ldquo;fatal
accidents.&rdquo;</strong>
</li>

<li>
In east Asia, some labor organizers use anonymity to <strong>reveal information
regarding sweatshops</strong> that produce goods for western countries and to
organize local labor.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Both high and low profile people use Tor</h2>
<ul>

<li>
Does being in the public spotlight shut you off from having a private
life, forever, online?  A rural lawyer in a small New England state keeps
an anonymous blog because, with the diverse clientele at his prestigious
law firm, <strong>his political beliefs are bound to offend someone</strong>.  Yet, he
doesn't want to remain silent on issues he cares about.  Tor helps him
feel secure that he can express his opinion without consequences to his
public role.
</li>

<li>People living in poverty often don't participate fully in civil society
-- not out of ignorance or apathy, but out of fear.  If something you
write were to get back to your boss, would you lose your job?  If your
social worker read about your opinion of the system, would she treat
you differently?  Anonymity gives a voice to the voiceless.
To support this,
<strong>Tor currently has an open Americorps/VISTA position</strong> pending.  This
government grant will cover a full time stipend for a volunteer to create
curricula to <strong>show low-income populations how to use anonymity online for
safer civic engagement</strong>.  Although it's often said that the poor do not use
online access for civic engagment, failing to act in their self-interests,
it is our hypothesis (based on personal conversations and anecdotal
information) that it is precisely the &ldquo;permanent record &rdquo;
left online that keeps many of the poor from speaking out on the Internet.
We hope to show people how to engage more safely online, and then at
the end of the year, evaluate how online and offline civic engagement has
changed, and how the population sees this continuing into the future.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Business executives use Tor</h2>
<ul>

<li>
<strong>Security breach information clearinghouses:</strong>
Say a financial institution participates in a security clearinghouse
of information on Internet attacks.  Such a repository requires members
to report breaches to a central group, who correlates attacks to detect
coordinated patterns and send out alerts.  But if a specific bank in
St. Louis is breached, they don't want an attacker watching the incoming
traffic to such a repository to be able to track where information is
coming from.  Even though every packet were encrypted, the Internet
address would betray the location of a compromised system.  Tor allows
such repositories of sensitive information to resist compromises.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Seeing your competition as your market does:</strong>
If you try to check out a competitor's pricing, you may find no
information or misleading information on their web site.  This is because
their web server may be keyed to detect connections from competitors,
and block or spread disinformation to your staff.  Tor allows a business
to view their sector as the general public would view it.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Keeping strategies confidential:</strong>
An investment bank, for example, might not want industry snoopers to be
able to track what web sites their analysts are watching.  The strategic
importance of traffic patterns, and the vulnerability of the surveillance
of such data, is starting to be more widely recognized in several areas
of the business world.
</li>

<li>
<strong>Accountability:</strong>
In an age when irresponsible and unreported corporate activity has
undermined multi-billion dollar businesses, an executive exercising true
stewardship wants the whole staff to feel free to disclose internal
malfeasance.  Tor facilitates internal accountability before it turns
into whistleblowing.
</li>

</ul>

<h2>Bloggers use Tor</h2>
<ul>
<li>
Every day we hear about bloggers who are
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112541909221726743-Kl4kLxv0wSbjqrkXg_DieY3c8lg_20050930.html">sued</a> or
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-06-14-worker-blogs-usat_x.htm">fired</a>
for saying perfectly legal things online, in their blog.  In addition to following
the advice in the
<a href="http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/lg/">EFF Legal Guide for Bloggers</a>
and Reporters Without Borders'
<a href="http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542">Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents</a>,
we recommend using Tor.
</li>

</ul>

</div>

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