EFF pushes for more people to set up Tor relays at home.
Democratic activists, whistleblowers, and journalists all over the world rely on Tor to shield their identities when they use the Internet. It’s software that helps Internet users protect their anonymity and circumvent censorship. When you use Tor, your real IP address remains hidden from the sites you visit—and anybody else who might be eavesdropping.
Tor is strong code. It’s one of the few technologies reported to thwart the National Security Agency's passive surveillance practices. But Tor can only exist because of an international network of volunteers running relays.
Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Tor Project, the Free Software Foundation, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are launching a joint campaign to encourage Internet users all over the world to support the Tor network by operating relays.
We need volunteers. The more Tor relays we have running, the faster and more secure the Tor network becomes. Want to help out? Join us: https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/
The Tor network is actively under attack. Documents released by Edward Snowden show that government agencies are spending lots of time and money trying to find ways to hack or get around Tor. From what we've seen, the NSA techniques revealed in those documents are unable to defeat the underlying structure of the network. Instead, the documents show that agencies have been forced to turn to other incidental vulnerabilities to entrap Tor users, for example by exploiting bugs in browsers and other software.
Tor remains a powerful tool against surveillance by the NSA and other government agencies. But it can only be that strong if there is a diverse, committed network of volunteers donating bandwidth to the network. Please join us in creating that future for Tor.
How to get involved: We’ve created a detailed legal FAQ about Tor [https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/faq.html] and The Tor Project has a guide for setting up a Tor relay [https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en]. Once you’re running a Tor relay, register your relay on our campaign page [https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/].
Already running a Tor relay? This is a great moment to increase the bandwidth of your relay. Existing relays can participate by adding at least 128 KB/s to your RelayBandwidthRate and RelayBandwidthBurst, and registering on our site.
Not ready to run a Tor relay? That’s OK. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has suggestions for other ways to help support Tor: https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/b...-tor-challenge
Resetting the Net. Our campaign is part of a larger movement of digital rights activists across the world working to make surveillance more difficult. It’s called Reset the Net. Check out the website to learn more about the project: Reset The Net
