Tor Project's executive director Shari Steele talks about changing public perception of Tor, CMU attack, diversifying the funding sources, and more
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
Tor enters this interview at a turning point on two fronts. Weeks earlier it launched its first crowdfunding campaign explicitly to reduce reliance on US government money, and chief architect Nick Mathewson had just published an account of the Carnegie Mellon attack that had damaged trust in the network.
Against that backdrop, the Project brought in Shari Steele — fifteen years running the EFF — as executive director (the hire itself was covered here), making this conversation effectively the debut of her agenda: fixing how outsiders see Tor and broadening who funds it.
First-order effects
- Steele inherits a fundraising problem in real time: government money still dominates Tor's budget while the crowdfunding push has only just begun, so donor outreach and perception work become her immediate deliverables.
- Her decision to address the CMU attack head-on signals the organization will keep answering publicly for security incidents rather than letting researchers' disclosures define the narrative.
Second-order effects
- A diversified funding base would loosen any single funder's leverage over Tor's roadmap — a shift competitors-adjacent players and critics alike have watched for, given the network's government-funded history.
- Reputation repair aimed at mainstream users widens the volunteer and relay base, which is exactly the resilience the network later draws on when nation-states try to block it.
Third-order effects
- If the professionalization pattern holds — outsider leadership, new funders, then a rebuilt board including Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze after Jacob Appelbaum's resignation (the July 2016 overhaul) — Tor moves from a research project dependent on patrons toward an institutionally governed nonprofit, which is what lets it survive state-level censorship campaigns like Russia's ongoing blocking effort.
The trend: Privacy infrastructure projects are professionalizing their governance and funding so they can withstand both reputational attacks and state censorship rather than depending on a single patron.