The Tor Project
The Tor Project, the nonprofit organization that maintains software for the Tor anonymity network, is joining forces with Tails, the maker of a portable operating system that uses Tor. Both organizations are seeking to pool resources, reduce overhead and work more closely together on their mission of online anonymity.
Tails and the Tor Project began discussing the possibility of a merger late last year, the two organizations said. At the time, Tails was maxing out its current resources. The two groups ultimately decided that it would be mutually beneficial to come together.
Amnesic onion routing
“Rather than expanding Tails' operational capacity on its own and putting more pressure on Tails employees, the merger with the Tor Project, with its larger and established operational framework, provided a solution,” the joint statement said. statement on Thursday. “By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission: maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while taking advantage of The Tor Project's larger organizational structure.”
The Tor Project, in turn, could benefit from better integration of Tails into its privacy network, allowing web users and websites to operate anonymously by connecting from IP addresses that cannot be linked to a specific service or user.
The “Tor” in the Tor Project is short for The Onion Router. It is a global project best known for developing the Tor Browser, which connects to the Tor network. The Tor network routes all incoming and outgoing traffic through a series of three IP addresses. The structure ensures that no one can determine the IP address of the originating or destination party. The Tor Project was founded in 2006 by a team including computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson. The Tor protocol on which the Tor network runs was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory in the early 2000s.
Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) is a portable, Linux-based operating system that runs from thumb drives and external hard drives and uses the Tor browser to route all web traffic between the device it runs on and the Internet. Tails routes outgoing traffic through the Tor network
One of the main advantages of Tails OS is the ability to run entirely from a USB stick. The design makes it possible to use the secure operating system while traveling or on unreliable devices. It also ensures that no traces are left on a device's hard drive. Tails has the added benefit of routing traffic from non-browser clients like Thunderbird through the Tor network.
“Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project structure will provide easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to address a wider range of digital threats,” the organizations said. “In short, the collaboration will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship.”
The merger comes amid growing threats to personal privacy and calls from lawmakers to mandate backdoors or trapdoors in popular apps and operating systems so law enforcement can decrypt data in investigations.
