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Today The New Yorker unveiled Strongbox, a service that allows sources to share information with TNY journalists securely and anonymously. As explained in this infographic, Strongbox relies on the Tor network, a dedicated server, PGP encryption, VPNs, and multiple laptops and thumb drives to prevent files from being intercepted or traced. The codebase, which is open source, was designed by the late Aaron Swartz (Previously). Kevin Poulsen, one of the organizers of the project, chronicles how Swartz developed the code and how the project managed to carry on after his death. TNY hopes that Strongbox will help the magazine continue its long tradition of investigative journalism.
posted by Cash4Lead on May 15, 2013 - 34 comments

Jacob Appelbaum speaks about resistance in his keynote address at 29c3 (previously : 28c3, 24c3) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Jan 7, 2013 - 43 comments

My fellow Oceanians, you know we've always been at war with Eurasia
(Or is it Eastasia?) Either way it's war and we need division to wage it
But now the proles are connecting online bypassing these illusory divisions
Of race, religion and nationality (Sounds grand to me?!) It's a catastrophe!

Rap News (previously) analyzes the ongoing struggle of civil liberties in the Internet Age.
Will it remain the one open frequency where humanity can bypass filters and barriers, or become the greatest spying machine ever imagined?
posted by dunkadunc on Sep 10, 2012 - 30 comments

From TOR.com: What Everybody Gets Wrong About Jekyll and Hyde: 'And when I say everybody, I mean everybody.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Aug 8, 2012 - 208 comments

"If the government is able to learn what we speak about, and know who we're talking to, and know what it is that we're planning, it makes any kind of activism extremely difficult, because secrecy and privacy are prerequisites to effective activism. "

Glenn Greenwald on challenging the surveillance state: (1 - 2 - 3 - 4).
posted by dunkadunc on Jul 1, 2012 - 48 comments

TorChat is an instant messaging protocol based upon Tor hidden services, making it perhaps the only instant messaging protocol with any substantive resistance to traffic analysis. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Jun 18, 2012 - 19 comments

"There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls. It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. “Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.” Tor.com brings us some short horror/fairy tale fiction from Leigh Bardugo, "The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale."
posted by The Whelk on Jun 8, 2012 - 29 comments

Tor.com asks: So Who Would Make Up The Epic Fantasy Version Of The Avengers?
posted by The Whelk on May 10, 2012 - 169 comments

Tor developers Arturo Filasto and Jacob Appelbaum's OONI project seeks to provide "an accurate representation of network interference" such as website blocking, surveillance, and selective bandwidth slowdowns on the Filternet, aka the internet. Their OONI-probe software tool has already exposed T-Mobile USA's "Web Guard" mobile internet censorship program and Palestinian Authority's censorship of opposition websites, leading to the resignation of the MP overseeing the project. (main git repo) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on May 1, 2012 - 8 comments

Tor/Forge, the Science Fiction and Fantasy subsidiary of Macmillan, has announced that it is going DRM free on all of its ebooks. Mefi's own Charles Stross shares a presentation he recently made to executives at Macmillan that may have partially influenced this decision. Stross had previously predicted that publishers would need to go DRM free to prevent Amazon from gaining too much power in the ebook market.
posted by bove on Apr 24, 2012 - 74 comments

Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen trilogy is to be concluded with Boneland, over 50 years after it started.
posted by Artw on Mar 16, 2012 - 30 comments

The "visible web" is what you can find using general web search engines. It's also what you see in almost all subject directories. The "invisible web" is what you cannot find using these types of tools. It's the internet that Google doesn't show us; some of it dull, some of it private, some of it deliberately hidden.

More beneath the surface. [more inside]
posted by Stagger Lee on Feb 13, 2012 - 71 comments

My mistake, if I can call it that, was trust - to think a smile was a smile and not a show of teeth. - - - All this week, tor.com is publishing The Situation, a comic based on a story by everyone's favorite Jeff VanderMeer, and illustrated by Eric Orchard. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long on Jan 25, 2012 - 20 comments

BlueCoat Systems (Sunnyvale, CA) has been exposed selling surveillance equipment to the Syrian government in violation of U.S. trade embargoes. The Telecomix hacktivist 'cluster' anonymized and released 54 gigabytes of Syrian censorship log data, collected from seven of the fifteen Bluecoat SG-9000 proxies used by Syrian government telco and ISP STE. Telecomix has also been providing Syrians with Tor and VPNs, offering support via IRC (#telecomix, #opsyria), and providing DNS service for The Pirate Bay. (see also : reflets.info tags opsyria and telecomix) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Oct 12, 2011 - 29 comments

The google and sonic.net emails of Tor developer Jacob Appelbaum (ioerror) have been obtained by the DoJ using a secret court order, which both companies sought to unseal and sonic actually fought in court. Sonic's CEO Dane Jasper said that challenging the order was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do." Appelbaum has repeatedly been harassed by boarder agents when entering the U.S. and his twitter account was subpoenaed [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Oct 11, 2011 - 55 comments

Can't wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic? You'd better be Jedi fast! EA wants you to pre-order its game real bad. [more inside]
posted by _paegan_ on Aug 23, 2011 - 72 comments

Telex is an interesting proxy-less anti-censorship system designed to combat state-level censorship (pdf). But would it cost too much? Should we really trust "good" state-level actors with our anti-censorship efforts? And might it divert resources from established anonymity projects, like Tor, I2I, Freenet, etc.
posted by jeffburdges on Aug 7, 2011 - 18 comments

How Dangerous You Make People: A Boldly Violent New Side to the Doctor discusses who, or what the Doctor (who?) is becoming. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle on May 2, 2011 - 725 comments

"The [Customs and Border Patrol] specifically wanted laptops and cell phones and were visibly unhappy when they discovered nothing of the sort." [more inside]
posted by notion on Jan 13, 2011 - 78 comments

MeFi's own Jacob Appelbaum visits Iraq, offers a hand after Katrina, exposes security holes, creates spaces for learning and sharing, represents for Wikileaks and Tor and is generally superhero like.
posted by serazin on Dec 8, 2010 - 56 comments

The Haystack application aims to use steganography to hide samizdat-type data within a larger stream of innocuous network traffic. Thus, civilians in Iran, for example, could more easily evade Iranian censors and provide the world with an unfiltered report on events within the country. Haystack earned its creator Austin Heap a great deal of positive coverage from the media during the 2009 Iranian election protests. The BBC described Heap as "on the front lines" of the protesters' "Twitter revolution", while The Guardian called him an Innovator of the Year. Despite the laudatory coverage, however, the media were never given a copy of the software to examine. Indeed, not much is known about the software or its inner workings. Specialists in network encryption security were not allowed to perform an independent evaluation of Haystack, despite its distribution to and use by a small number of Iranians, possibly at some risk. As interest in the project widens and criticisms of the media coverage and software continue to mount, Heap has currently asked users to cease using Haystack until a security review can be performed.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 13, 2010 - 31 comments

Robert A. Heinlein: The Tor.com Blog Symposium - a series of blog posts commemorating the publication the first half of a new biography of Robert Heinlein. Interview with the Biographer.
posted by Artw on Aug 17, 2010 - 23 comments

Illinoize - "a free remix tape put together by Montreal-based producer Tor, sampling songs from multi-instrumentalist and indie hero, Sufjan Stevens. Tracks are sampled from his 2005 LP Illinoise, as well as 3 of his other albums, 'A Sun Came', 'Seven Swans' and 'Songs for Christmas', blending Sufjan Steven's acoustic guitar, piano and horns with MC's Aesop Rock, Big Daddy Kane, Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), C.L. Smooth, Outkast, Brother Ali, and Grand Puba."
posted by Paragon on Jan 24, 2010 - 26 comments

Close all the drapes, board up the fireplace, watch what might be hiding in that tree, and whatever you do, don't go to sleep, because December belongs to Cthulhu.* [more inside]
posted by Caduceus on Dec 7, 2009 - 32 comments

It’s only natural that if you wish to present yourself as a well-read person, a certain degree of complete bullshit is required. There’s no shame in lying about what you’ve read. There’s only shame in getting caught. Then you look like a doofus, and an illiterate one at that... How to lie about books.
posted by Artw on May 28, 2009 - 73 comments

This is an ironic tale of the consequences of inept application of cryptographic tools. Or is it? Dan Egerstad, a Swedish hacker, gained access to hundreds of computer network accounts around the world, belonging to various embassies, corporations and other organizations. How did he do it? Very easily: by sniffing exit traffic on his Tor nodes. [more inside]
posted by Anything on Dec 4, 2007 - 27 comments

Had he not died in 1971, Tor Johnson would be 103 today. Who could forget his face? Or that it makes a great mask? Don't we often think back fondly on his remarkable filmography? He made a great partner for Bela Lugosi! Who could forget that he tended to break toilet seats when he sat on them, and so would often steal them?
posted by Astro Zombie on Oct 19, 2006 - 12 comments

"What Do I Put in My Portfolio?" Irene Gallo, art director for science fiction/fantasy publisher Tor Books (and its mainstream imprint Forge), lays down wisdom on how to impress an art director and maybe get one to hire you for a book cover. Aside from being a practical primer for artists on everything from picturing the human figure to how not to annoy an art director at a party, for everyone else it's a glimpse into why SF book covers look the way they do.
posted by jscalzi on Jul 11, 2006 - 24 comments