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The Secret History of Tor: How a Military Project Became a Lifeline for Privacy
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of MIT Press Reader
Posted: August 23rd, 2025
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-secret-history-of-tor...
Tor is mostly known as the Dark Web or Dark Net, seen as an online Wild West where crime runs rampant. Yet it’s partly funded by the U.S. government, and the BBC and Facebook both have Tor-only versions to allow users in authoritarian countries to reach them. At its simplest, Tor is a distributed digital infrastructure that makes you anonymous online. It is a network of servers spread around the world, accessed using a browser called the Tor Browser, which you can download for free from the Tor Project website. When you use the Tor Browser, your signals are encrypted and bounced around the world before they reach the service you’re trying to access. This makes it difficult for governments to trace your activity or block access, as the network just routes you through a country where that access isn’t restricted. But, because you can’t protect yourself from digital crime without also protecting yourself from mass surveillance by the state, these technologies are the site of constant battles between security and law enforcement interests. The state’s claim to protect the vulnerable often masks efforts to exert control. In fact, robust, well-funded, value-driven and democratically accountable content moderation — by well-paid workers with good conditions — is a far better solution than magical tech fixes to social problems ... or surveillance tools. As more of our online lives are funneled into the centralized AI infrastructures ... tools like Tor are becoming ever more important.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
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