十年前，即2013年6月，爱德华·斯诺登（Edward Snowden）冒着自由的风险与媒体分享揭露美国政府大规模监控计划规模的文件。他的流程需要专业的操作安全性，并在每一步都提供强有力的匿名保证。这就是为什么斯诺登在某种程度上求助于 Tor 网络和 Tails，这是一个通过 Tor 路由计算机流量的操作系统，以便与值得信赖的记者进行交流。

斯诺登的泄密事件显示，美国国家安全局通过互联网对美国公众进行广泛监视。这一知识引发了许多关于监控在社会中的地位以及在线隐私保护是否重要的公众辩论。人们是否有权在互联网上保持私密？在这些辩论中，人们在使用互联网时通常会说他们“没有什么可隐瞒的”，那么他们为什么需要隐私呢？

在斯诺登吹哨以来的几年里，我们看到了许多具体的例子，说明政府和企业在网上侵犯隐私的行为如何影响社会的社会环境和其中每个人的生活。作为个人，我们也对科技行业及其滥用的商业模式有了更深入的了解，这种商业模式专注于收集有关我们在线行为的信息，就好像它是新的自然资源一样。

我们已经看到，通过在线监控收集的大量数据集，政府和企业可以利用他们对我们的了解来操纵公众舆论。利用这些数据开展的针对性很强的运动，尤其是那些使用假新闻或仇恨言论的运动，已经促使各国做出影响全球社会的决策。英国的脱欧公投运动、特朗普在美国的竞选活动以及博尔索纳罗在巴西的竞选活动都明确使用了这些策略。

目睹这种数据操纵对现实世界的影响帮助我们中的许多人明白，隐私与隐藏某些东西无关。相反，隐私意味着保护你这个人，保护所有使你成为你的人。你在乎什么，你爱什么，你讨厌什么，你对什么好奇，什么让你发笑，你害怕什么。最重要的是，选择何时决定共享该信息以及与谁共享。关于隐私的争论已经从有东西要隐藏转变为能够行使我们的代理权。

这种观念的转变导致客户对科技行业提供更好的隐私保护的需求增加，并通过了立法（如GDPR和CCPA），试图帮助消费者对我们在使用服务或应用程序时生成的数据行使一些权利。

科技行业已经转变为优先考虑隐私，至少在他们的营销活动中是这样，以避免被客户拒绝以及因新立法而被罚款数百万美元的风险。我之所以说“变形”，是因为即使是以隐私为中心的消息传递的薄薄面纱，也无法改变建立在收集有关您的数据之上的商业模式，也无法限制这些数据的使用方式。科技公司正在做出足够的改变，以满足要求而不损失利润，比如谷歌正在逐步淘汰谷歌浏览器中第三方cookie的使用，以便用他们自己的数据跟踪和广告服务技术取而代之，并试图将其作为用户隐私的好处进行销售。

在 Tor 项目中，我们提供了一个示例，说明如何以不同的方式制造技术。以隐私为核心构建数百万人使用的技术是可能的。我们开发技术来推进这一权利，以帮助用户在数字空间中重新获得代理权。我们希望成为在不断变化的世界中发展隐私保护技术的参考点。

改变是可能的。我们正在看到它正在形成。我们很自豪地看到，这个行业的其他公司也开始接受我们作为 Tor 浏览器和 Tor 网络的一部分开发的创新。网络浏览器现在正在提供针对第三方 cookie 或指纹识别的保护，这是我们十多年来一直提供的功能，而像 Apple 这样的玩家正在试用 Private Relay 等功能，这是一项模拟 Tor 网络模型的测试版功能。

但是，抓住这个巨变的机会不仅仅是向大型科技公司施压，要求他们做出改变。这是关于用从一开始就设计隐私的工具替换这些选项。Mullvad Browser、OnionShare、Tails、Quiet 和 Ricochet Refresh 等工具都是这种新型生态系统的一部分。

到 2024 年，我们将继续为改善在线隐私而开展的重要工作——我们正面临着全球范围内的挑战。明年，世界41%的人口将参加全国大选。政治事件和选举越来越多地受到互联网自由的破坏，从滥用数据收集和操纵性广告技术到全面关闭网络和网站审查。与此同时，世界各地的立法都威胁到加密的合法性。政府还推动通过新技术和扩大其法律权力来加强监控，就像我们在美国看到的情报委员会提出的法案 H.R.6611，即 2023 年 FISA 改革和重新授权法案，该法案将引入肤浅的改革和极端扩张监控权力。

Tor 将在 2024 年来到这里迎接这些挑战。我们将在这里通过实时用户支持渠道、本地化、与社区合作伙伴的培训以及跟踪全球互联网自由的发展来扩大对 Tor 的全球访问。我们将通过继续为洋葱服务运营商开发管理工具，并支持想要发布洋葱网站的组织，来推进洋葱服务的采用。我们将加强 Tor 网络抵御攻击，多年来专注于减少网络上的恶意中继活动。我们将进入第三年投资用 Rust 重写 Tor，这是一种更安全、更现代的语言，使 Tor 更容易集成到各种应用程序和服务中。我们将在这里为网络人权而战。

对强大的在线隐私的需求正在增加。作为一个小型组织，每一笔捐款都会有所作为。如果您重视 Tor 提供的隐私，并且希望确保我们能够坚强地面对 2024 年的挑战，请立即捐款。

A decade ago, in June of 2013, Edward Snowden risked his freedom to share documents with the press that exposed the extent of the U.S. government’s mass surveillance program. His process required expert operational security and strong assurances of anonymity at every step. That’s why, in part, Snowden turned to the Tor network and Tails, an operating system that routes your computer’s traffic through Tor, in order to communicate with trusted journalists.

 

If you look at the way post-2013 whistleblowers have been caught, it is clear the absolute most important thing you can do to maintain your anonymity is reduce the number of places in your operational activity where you can make mistakes. Tor and Tails still do precisely that.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 24, 2019

 

Snowden’s leaks revealed that the NSA was engaged in widespread surveillance of the American public through the internet. This knowledge sparked many public debates about the place of surveillance in society and whether or not online privacy protections were important. Did people have a right to be private on the internet? In these debates, it was common for people to react by saying they “had nothing to hide,” when they used the internet, so why would they need privacy?

In the years since Snowden blew the whistle, we have seen many concrete examples of how government and corporate privacy violations online affect the social context of a society and the lives of everyone in it. As individuals, we’ve also gained more insight into the tech industry and its abusive business model focused on harvesting information about our online behavior as if it were the new natural resource to exploit.

We’ve seen that with massive data sets collected through online surveillance, governments and corporations can use their knowledge about us to manipulate public opinion. Highly targeted campaigns using this data, especially those using fake news or hate speech, have driven nations towards decisions that affect global society. The campaign for the Brexit referendum in the UK, Trump's election campaign in the U.S., and Bolsonaro’s election campaigns in Brazil all explicitly used these tactics.

Witnessing the real-world impact of this data manipulation has helped many of us understand that privacy has nothing to do with having something to hide. Instead, privacy means protecting the human being that you are, all the personal details that make you, you. What you care about, what you love, what you hate, what you are curious about, what makes you laugh, what you fear. And most importantly, choosing when you decide to share that information and who you share it with. The argument about privacy has shifted from having something to hide to being able to exercise our agency.

This shift in perception has generated a rise in customer demand for better privacy protection from the tech industry and the passage of legislation (like GDPR and CCPA) that tries to help consumers exercise some rights over the data we generate while using a service or app.

The tech industry has morphed itself to prioritize privacy in response, at least in their marketing campaigns, in order to avoid the rejection by their customers and the risk of millions of dollars in fines due to new legislation. I say “morph” because even the thin veil of privacy-focused messaging does nothing to change business models built on harvesting data about you or to limit the way this data is used. Tech corporations are changing just enough to meet the requirements without losing profit, like how Google is phasing out the use of third-party cookies in Google Chrome in order to replace them with their own data tracking and ad serving technology--and trying to sell it as a benefit for user privacy.

At the Tor Project, we offer an example of how technology can be made differently. That it is possible to build technology used by millions of people with privacy at the heart. We build technology to advance that right in order to help users reclaim their agency in digital spaces. We want to be a point of reference for what is possible regarding privacy-preserving technology developing in a changing world.

Change is possible. We’re seeing it take shape. We are proud to see the rest of the industry pick up the innovations we’ve developed as part of Tor Browser and the Tor network. Web browsers are now shipping protections against third party cookies or fingerprinting, features we’ve offered for over a decade, and players like Apple are piloting features like Private Relay, a beta feature that emulates the Tor network’s model.

But grasping this sea change opportunity is not only about pressuring Big Tech to change. It’s about replacing these options with tools that are built with privacy by design from the start. Tools like Mullvad Browser, OnionShare, Tails, Quiet, and Ricochet Refresh, are all part of this new kind of ecosystem.

In 2024, our important work for better privacy online will continue – and we’re facing challenges on a global scale. Next year, 41% of the world’s population will take part in a national election. Political events and elections are increasingly marred with disruptions to internet freedom, from abusive data collection and manipulative ad technology to total network shutdowns and site censorship. Simultaneously, legislation around the world threatens the legality of encryption. Governments also push to increase their surveillance both with new technology and by expanding their legal powers, like we are seeing in the U.S. with the Intelligence Committee’s proposed bill, H.R.6611, the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2023, a bill that would introduce superficial reforms and extreme expansion of surveillance power.

Tor will be here in 2024 to meet these challenges. We will be here expanding global access to Tor with live user support channels, localization, training with community partners, and tracking the development of internet freedom around the world. We will be advancing onion service adoption by continuing our development of administration tools for onion service operators and support of organizations that want to release onion sites. We will be strengthening the Tor network against attacks in our multi-year focus on reducing malicious relay activity on the network. We will be entering our third year of investment in re-writing Tor in Rust, a safer, more modern language that makes Tor easier to integrate in a variety of applications and services. We will be here in the fight for human rights online.

The demand for strong privacy online is mounting. As a small organization, every donation makes a difference. If you value the privacy that Tor provides, and you want to ensure we can face the challenges of 2024 with strength, please make a donation today.