with Isabela Fernandes
For our 6th SUPERRR Feminist Tech Night, we had the pleasure of welcoming Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director of the Tor Project. The project, best known for its Onion Browser / Tor Browser, advocates for and provides anonymity tools, working closely with organisations and individuals for whom privacy is an absolute necessity to continue their work safely.
Zara Rahman interviewed Isabela about why anonymity is a feminist issue, what privacy actually means, and how anyone can begin their own privacy journey today. This post highlights some key insights from their conversation.
Zara: Why is anonymity a feminist issue?
Isabela: “Anonymity is a feminist issue because when we are fighting for a cause we are using the internet to do so. So it's very important that we also think about security and protection.
For instance: Anonymity is important when you're seeking help against domestic violence, and maybe you don't have safety and people are monitoring your tools. So having a tool that allows you to become anonymous online when pursuing that is important.
Another example is that organisations who are promoting reproductive rights to help women who are seeking information about abortion often have their websites censored. So using a tool that can hide who is hosting that website, giving anonymity to the host, is also important.
When you are online, I think all women have experienced this, there's a lot of violence. There are a lot of hate attacks like exposure of private information and doxxing. So if you are in a situation where you need to be active online, you need to talk about the struggle and the things that you are doing, but you want to protect your privacy to avoid such hate attacks. People receive death threats because of the work they do online. Feminists are receiving death threats for it. So it's important to think about that – can I use a tool where I can still have my voice online, but at the same time I'm protecting myself from those threats that exist on the internet?”
Zara: What is one sentence you tell people who say “I have nothing to hide”?
Isabela: “It's hard to say in one sentence, but I would say that it's not about hiding.
Privacy is the human being that you are. It's the things that you like, it's the things that you dislike, it's the things that you are curious about. So it's all the components that make you the human being that you are.
That's privacy. So it's not about doing something illegal and having to hide. Of course, you as a human being are not an open book to everybody. You have different types of dialogue that maybe in the workplace are one way, at home they're different, with friends they're different.
So why not be able to bring that to the online world as well? You should have the choice, just like you have in your life outside of the internet, to decide what you want to share with whom.”
+++ Part 2: On privacy +++
Zara: We have recently seen the debate about online safety shift toward sacrificing privacy for the greater good of protecting people, especially vulnerable groups like children, from the harms of the online world. What is the perspective of TOR in all of this?
Isabela: [...] “Tor is never going to block a website. We don't host content. We are the wires that people use to access it. I could stop someone in the middle, right? But maybe Tor is never going to do that because it's a slippery slope for us. Once I start doing that, then what's going to stop the Russian government from asking me to block certain websites? What's going to stop the United States government from coming to me to say, you need to block the reproductive rights website? I know this side is so complex and so difficult; that's why I'm educating about how anonymity can also be an effective tool to combat that in a different way.” […]
“The internet is part of our lives, it's part of everybody's lives. And if we don't think that the components of encryption, security, and privacy are important, we're giving away pillars of democracy, of our civic rights, that are important. Privacy is a human right for a reason. Your vote is anonymous for a reason. So we should not disconnect those things from the internet.”
Zara: Is this dispute about breaking encryption for the sake of security new, or has it always been around?
Isabela: “There is always a narrative to control means of communication that can empower people, no matter the struggle they are fighting. And now with the internet, it's encryption. Blocking websites, blocking domains, that's another way of doing this; it’s censorship in another form. It's always been there.”
Zara: What can people listening do to start their privacy journey?
Isabela: “Download Tor! You can go to torproject.org and download Tor.
It's just like any other browser; it's nothing complex, and maybe it is not going to be the browser that you use every day, all the time. But it will be the browser that makes sure that what you are doing at that moment on the internet stays anonymous.”
Thank you!