Run a TOR node, help Iranians and others keep their privacy

Want to do something more meaningful for Iran’s dissidents than turning your Twitter avatar green? EFF would like you to run a TOR bridge or relay, which will allow Iranians, and others around the world, to communicate with enhanced privacy and secrecy.

More sophisticated users can skip this paragraph, but for the rest, here’s the basic outline. Tor (an acronym of “The Onion Router”) is free and open source software that helps users remain anonymous on the Internet. Normally, when accessing websites, your computer asks for and receives a webpage out in the open, a process that exposes your IP address, the URL of the website, and the contents of the site, among other information to third parties. When accessing websites while using Tor, your computer essentially whispers its requests for a website, to another computer, which passes the request on to another computer, which passes it on to another computer, which passes it onto the computer where the website is hosted; the reply returns in the same, chain-message manner. The whispers are encrypted, so that neither outside authorities, nor the computers in the middle of the chain, can tell what is being said, and to whom. And the website itself does not have your IP address either.

Internet users in Iran are using Tor to both (a) circumvent censorship systems and (b) remain anonymous while reading and writing on the Internet. Both are critically important to the safety of protesters, many of whom fear retaliation from the government. Preliminary reports indicate that use of the Tor client in Iran has increased in the days after the contested election.

Whatever you think of Mousavi, I suspect that we all agree that Iranian citizens should be allowed to communicate without being spied upon by their governments (if only Americans enjoyed this right!).

Help Protesters in Iran: Run a Tor Bridge or a Tor Relay