As many friends and followers of Tor know by now, we spend the final weeks of each year asking for your help as part of our year-end fundraising campaign. This year hasn’t been a normal year at all, not for Tor and not for the rest of the world.
In many ways, 2020 has put the dangers of a centralized, surveillance-driven internet into even clearer focus. The pandemic has changed most of our lives dramatically. Many of us have shifted more of our work, socialization, shopping, medical care, and schooling online. We’ve seen governments and corporations roll out new surveillance technology, like tools to watch students while they take tests, tech to spy on workers, and contact tracing mechanisms that will change our world long after the pandemic is over.
In the face of this widespread hardship, people all around the world have also demonstrated enormous gestures of solidarity and mutual-aid, and millions of people have risen in defense of Black lives in the U.S. and around the world.
For our 2020 campaign, we wanted a theme that conveys a positive message and speaks to the power of this kind of community action. That’s why we decided on the theme Use a Mask, Use Tor. There is a lot of meaning and intention behind this slogan. Use a mask, use Tor promotes the positive steps we can all take to combat the virus by using masks. Wearing a mask protects others. Wearing a mask is about caring about each other, our community.