[tor-talk] Tor in the media

[Patrick]

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/tor-transgender-military-service/
... I was inspired in large part by articles like this:
http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-goes-digital-shelters-turn-to-counter-surveillance-with-tor/.
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 at dailydot.com. Obviously we can also
work out other ways of communicating if need be.

Thanks!