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from the so-long,-farewell,-auf-weidersehen,-goodbye dept.
Shari Steele is resigning her position as the director of the Tor Project, according to a report by Cyberscoop. Steele will remain director through December 31st, and the search for her replacement is still underway.
[...] For many, Steele's directorship, which started in December 2015, signaled a sea change within the organization and shifted Tor towards being more inclusive and community focused.
[...] "I had intended to retire after my time with EFF, but I believed strongly in the Tor Project's mission, and I felt I could help," Steele wrote in a blog post after the news broke. "I look at the Tor Project organization today and feel quite confident that we've got the talent and the structure to continue to support the organization's great work."
Source: The Verge
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Saturday February 24 2018, @04:39PM (3 children)
That graph is slightly misleading. Tor usage is down from its late 2013 peak. That page has only been tracking usage since mid 2011.
A more complete [torproject.org] graph shows what I'm talking about.
As for why the usage rocketed up in 2013? I haven't the foggiest. I would have thought it was related to the popularity of the original silk road [wikipedia.org], but it was started in February 2011, and was shut down in October 2013.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Saturday February 24 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
*dons tinfoil hat*
...then again, the huge uptick could have been the real mechanism that was used by the FBI to find the real IP address of the Silk Road. Instead of leaked data from a CAPTCHA or PHP information linkage, they instead set up a huge amount Tor relays and clients to statistically determine the real IP address.
*doffs tinfoil hat*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:22PM
That doesn't seem like a tinfoil hat type scenario, I would say that sounds incredibly plausible and a reasonable course of action for them to take. Not a conspiracy level thing where people get murdered for finding out about it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 24 2018, @05:20PM
Edward Snowden's disclosures were in June 2013. What you see is a massive but temporary spike in interest in Tor as ordinary people tried the software out but grew tired of it. However, when it fell back down, it remained at a significantly higher level than pre-June 2013 (~500k vs. ~2 million), and organically grew to the high level we see today (3.5-4 million). The 2014-present activity is not misleading because it encompasses activity that happened after peak-Snowden and shows more stable growth.
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