I don't mind saying publicly that I use Tor to access websites censored in Ireland; The Pirate Bay, chiefly. I upload some of my own work (3D printable models, most recently) and I also find and download Free Culture stuff from well seeded torrents. Certainly, it's a trivial use of Tor, and I use it for other stuff too. But it's easily forgettable that one of Tor's primary uses is circumventing censorship, and censorship is alive and well in Ireland thanks to former junior minister Sean Sherlock's "Irish SOPA". It's important not to forget i2p when discussing darknets, and I see many more positive uses of i2p than Tor hidden services; straightforward social networks, search engines, etcetera. The developers curate a simple list of "positive" eepsites for the preinstalled router, so it's got a good community spirit. I've used it for email, microstatus and a few other things besides, and there's a lot more diversity of hidden services by other users because of the ease of setting hidden services up (indeed, every user has one preconfigured by default). On 01/10/14 23:04, coderman wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Patrick Subject: [tor-talk] Tor in the media

Hi everyone,

Over the past few weeks, I've talked with a number of Tor people about how the project is portrayed in the media. As a reporter on this beat, the many legitimate criticisms the community have had strike pretty close to home for me. I don't think I need to tell this list why Tor's portrayal in the media is important, now more than ever. So, with the blessing and encouragement of a couple of official Tor people, I've got a question to ask of tor-talk (secure contact info follows at the bottom of the message):

-- What untold but important stories about Tor are you willing to share?

When writing about Tor, it's relatively easy to write about, for instance, popular hidden services (and I've admittedly done it plenty). The drug markets that advertise themselves and run a business are often more than willing to talk to reporters. They're even proactive about it.

It's much tougher for a reporter to nail down important Tor stories about, as another example, domestic abuse victims using the software or political activists protecting their lives with it. That makes perfect sense, those people rely on anonymity in a much different way than enterprising drug dealers, but this reality makes it trickier for reporters to tell the full story when it comes to Tor. The trick, then, is to be proactive as well.

I recently took a swing at writing precisely the kind of article I'm talking about--an untold but important story about how Tor is used in the wild--here: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/10393/t... ... I was inspired in large part by articles like this: http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-goes-digital-shelter.... The BetaBoston article is very good, obviously, but it's a too-rare breed.

I'd like to hear from anyone who might be willing to talk about (on the record or off) untold but important Tor stories that can shed light on the way the software serves its users. By design, I'll never get the full picture, but we can surely do more than surface scratching.

If you have a story to tell, if you know someone who might, if you can think of others who I should be talking to, or if you have a good direction to point me in, I would love to hear from you. Or if you just want to talk more about Tor in the media, that's a topic I'm really interested in as well to be honest, so I'm happy to talk about that.

If you're interested in talking (again, on the record or off, it's still valuable to hear stories I won't write about), you can find my contact info and PGP key at http://www.patrickhowelloneill.com/contact , you can email me here (my personal email), or at pat@dailydot.com. Obviously we can also work out other ways of communicating if need be.

Thanks!

-- Twitter: @onetruecathal, @formabiolabs Phone: +353876363185 Blog: http://indiebiotech.com miniLock.io: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM