Virginia Heffernan has a story in the New York Times about Tor to add to your reading list today.
Transparency is secretive business. WikiLeaks, the swashbuckling new-media organization whose motto is “We open governments,” relies on a technology of extreme reticence called Tor Hidden Services — a part of the Tor Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated not to light and clarity but to shadows and opacity, to the increasingly difficult art of keeping secrets online.
[…]
Peaceniks and human rights groups use Tor, as do journalists, private citizens and the military, and the heterogeneity and farflungness of its users — together with its elegant source code — keep it unbreachable. When a communication arrives from Tor, you can never know where or whom it’s from. Tor is by design not a media project or a human rights one or (anymore) a military one.
Her piece includes an interview with Tor developer Jacob Applebaum.
Read more in the New York Times.