Enabling access via a Tor hidden service is a valuable step that all sites can take to enable their most vulnerable users to use the site safely. It especially helps those who have censored internet connections – people who rely on circumvention tools like Tor to access the unfiltered web. It is also particularly helpful for users who need to protect their personal information or risk harm for the things they write.
Tom Lowenthal, Committee to Protect Journalists
Providing people with privacy online is an essential feature of any modern democracy – as is an ability to deliver the levels of safety and security expected by society. Technologies such as those embodied in onion routing are an important part of how we orchestrate cyberspace to meet these needs – but no single technology is a panacea. Another essential component is that of shaping how we understand acceptable behaviours, how we should treat each other and what we expect in terms of support. Imagining that we should sacrifice privacy online for security is as old-fashioned as the position that somehow cyberspace is special and free from these concerns. The truth is that humanity embraces both cyber and physical spaces in a hugely complex and entangled way and that we must step up to the challenge of providing both privacy and safety.
Professor Sadie Creese, University of Oxford
Whether it’s intimate secrets or the plans for a protest against dictatorship, if information held by social networks gets into the wrong hands there can be real-world consequences. Responsible social networks now encrypt information, but governments have reacted with censorship, forcing people onto less-secure alternatives. That’s why Facebook went one step further; by allowing access from Tor they allow people to bypass censorship, prevent eavesdropping, and control the information they disclose. This was a welcome move that I hope others will follow and extend, developing further ways to give people confidence their private information will be safe.
Dr Steven Murdoch, Principal Research Fellow, University College London
