SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Tor Project exists to provide privacy and anonymity for millions of people, including human rights defenders across the globe whose lives depend on it. The strong encryption built into our software is essential for their safety.

In an age when people have so little control over the information recorded about their lives, we believe that privacy is worth fighting for.

We therefore stand with Apple to defend strong encryption and to oppose government pressure to weaken it. We will never backdoor our software.

Our users face very serious threats. These users include bloggers reporting on drug violence in Latin America; dissidents in China, Russia, and the Middle East; police and military officers who use our software to keep themselves safe on the job; and LGBTI individuals who face persecution nearly everywhere. Even in Western societies, studies demonstrate that intelligence agencies such as the NSA are chilling dissent and silencing political discourse [sagepub.com] merely through the threat of pervasive surveillance.

For all of our users, their privacy is their security. And for all of them, that privacy depends upon the integrity of our software, and on strong cryptography. Any weakness introduced to help a particular government would inevitably be discovered and could be used against all of our users.

It's a strongly-worded statement [torproject.org] worth reading in full. So nice to see people finally standing up to governments that are out of control.

Original Submission