This page was created by Sue Gardner and contains the results of the brainstorm session at the winter dev meeting, when a group of us tried to create the beginnings of a Tor ecosystem map -- who contributes to Tor, builds upon/amplifies/extends the Tor mission, and benefits from Tor's existence. The entities here are intended to be listed roughly in order of their importance/relevance to Tor -- so, if relay operators contribute more to the Tor mission than the New America Foundation, relay operators should be listed first.
I am guessing we've created a pretty good snapshot here, although I think there are probably many players in the space who we've missed -- probably particularly, we are missing unorganized or loosely-organized groups. (It is easiest to brainstorm names of groups that are well-defined and have an official existence, like the MacArthur Foundation or Ford Foundation. Harder to capture things that are loosely-organised/decentralised/don't have an official existence, like "hackers" or "the crypto community" or whatever.)
Please help improve this page. How you can help:
- Add groups/orgs/ppl who are missing. I feel like we are probably particularly weakest in the "beneficiaries" section, so additions there would be particularly welcome.
- Fix mistakes, e.g., typos and misspellings. Some of the stickies were hard to read so there are certainly typos/mistakes in the transcriptions.
- Add full names for entities that are captured only by acronym -- e.g., "CCC" should probably be "Chaos Computer Club (CCC)".
- Add links to entities' sites, if you want.
- If you feel like an entity is wrongly categorised (e.g., it's a contributor to Tor wrongly slotted as something that builds upon Tor) then move it to the correct category
- Our prioritisation of entities was only partially-completed, and I lost some of it in the transfer from stickies to this page, so please feel free to re-prioritise entities. Reminder: ideally they will be listed roughly in order of their importance to Tor.
- Refactor the page. If you feel like there's a better way to organise this page / display the information, please feel free to do that.
What's the purpose of this page: I'm expecting the information on this page will be useful for people like Katie and Karen -- probably especially Katie, because she's fairly new to Tor. Also, if we move ahead with doing a strategic planning process, the information here will help me know whose opinions to solicit about Tor's future. For example we would want to ask some groups/people in the beneficiaries category how well Tor is serving their needs and what could be improved; we would want to ask some groups/people in the "builds upon/extends/amplifies" category whether Tor is a good partner to them and what would make Tor a better partner. Etc.
Contributors to the Tor mission (e.g. funders, developers, etc.)
These were the pink stickies. Groups/orgs/ppl listed here are those who help make it possible for Tor to do its work, usually either by contributing time, money or thought leadership.
Relay operators (Nos Oignons, TorServers and their partners, Noisebridge, Mozilla, others); BBG/VOA/RFA; Bits of Freedom; Freedom of the Press Foundation (); Academia/PETS (Privacy Enhancing Tech Symposium); Tactical Tech; EFF; Cory Doctorow; AccessNow (advocacy); ACLU; Laura Poitras; United Nations; Jean-Marc Manach (lemonde.fr]; Evgeny Morizov; Berkman Center; Mozilla; Cindy Cohn; Eben Moglen; Bruce Schneier; Global Voices/Ethan Zuckerman/Rebecca MacKinnon; New America Foundation; Der Spiegel; Netzpolitik; digitale gesellschaft; Hermes Center (Global Leaks and Tor2Web); Reddit; DARPA (); Amaelle Guiton; Linux Weekly News; Tails developers; OpenITP; Wau Holland; Jeremie Zimmerman (La Quadrature du net); SIDA (); the Knight Foundation (); OTF (); RiseUp (advocates, devs, relay); MacArthur Foundation (); EIDHR (European Institute of Democracy and Human Rights); Ford Foundation; National Science Foundation; Open Society; Reporters Without Borders.
Builds upon/extends/amplifies the Tor mission
These were the purple stickies. Groups/orgs/ppl listed here were those who work directly with or alongside or as part of Tor, to advance its mission. (There's some overlap/blur between this and the category above: that's okay. This group is intended to be more "internal to Tor" relative to the "external" groups above.)
Hidden services; pluggable transports; Tor help desk; Tor Router; QubesOS; Onion browser (iOS browser); Debian; Satori (software distribution); Pond; AHMIA.FI; CCC; crypto parties; Richochet (hidden services IM); GlobalLeaks; Tahoe-LAFS; Gr Security; TORZWEB; Freedom of the Press Foundation (SecureDrop); Tails; Cupcake (flashproxy wrappers); Onion Share; Privacy International; Hivos (); Disconnects (); DRL ($); WhoNix and other LiveCDs (LiveCPs); Guardian Project (Android / mobile); Molly Crabapple; Novena (open hardware for Tor laptop/Tor router)
Beneficiaries of Tor (e.g., whistleblowers, etc.)
These were the yellow stickies. The ppl/groups/orgs listed here were those who directly benefit from Tor.
Privacy-sensitive people; the public discourse around privacy/security; journalists and researchers; First Look Media; Greenpeace; Committee to Protect Journalists; SVT (Swedish Public Media/TV); Afrileaks; Wikileaks; Transparency International; La Monde; Courage Fund; anti-terrorism researchers; domestic violence victims/people being stalked; trafficking victims; LGBT people; Art; Musicians; Amnesty International; leakers, whistleblowers; OCCRP (Organization For Crime Corruption Reporting Project) (Balkans); Bitcoin; NYTEKNSK (Swedish press); criminals; law enforcement; Antivirus companies; F-secure; business intelligence; ASL19 (Iranian human rights group); Facebook; PT consumers; Psipou (?); Lantern; Other.