EFF University Tor relay advocacy campaign

We are collaborating with Cooper at EFF to help them run an advocacy campaign to get more Tor relays running in universities.

The campaign has several synergistic goals, including: increase capacity for the Tor network; help create a new generation of activist-users who understand Tor and want to help; test and refine our messaging about the value of running a Tor relay; make sure privacy and decentralization are better integrated into the curriculum at more institutions; help provide a focus and a lever for people to change policy toward privacy and human rights tools at their institutions; and build a list of high-profile institutions that are participating in the Tor network, to normalize the idea that everybody should do it and so we can leverage that list for our policy and comms goals.

This is the master ticket for tracking the roadmap and progress on the overall campaign.

• (0) Have some sort of starting web presence to point at, e.g. a Tor gitlab ticket.

• (1) Organize, write, and/or improve guides or links for each of

  • (1a) "how to set up a relay" (https://community.torproject.org/relay/)

  • (1b) "why universities are great places for relays" (#72)

  • (1c) "how best to advocate for a relay at your university" (https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/tor-relay-universities/)

  • (1d) "explanations to reassure university general counsel"

  • (1e) "suggested escalation path e.g. start with a bridge, then a non-exit relay, then an exit relay"

  • Some starting points: https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/why-you-should-use-tor

• (2) Re-establish and strengthen relationships with existing university relay operators

  • (2a) Invite them to publicly join the campaign at launch

  • (2b) Answer all of their Tor questions and ideas over time, and use these interactions as a feedback loop to improve the above guides.

  • (2c) Learn what level of support they have at their uni: do they just do it themselves? Does the GC know? What do the sysadmins think?

  • (2d) Connect them to their peers to strengthen the community

    • (2d1) Cultivate a section in the Tor forum for this audience

    • (2d2) Hold periodic university relay operator meetups

    • (2d3) Set up announce/newsletter mailing list

• (3) Put the campaign on the web

  • (3a) Have a central EFF campaign site, including the above guides/links, the names of amenable participants and institutions, etc.

  • (3b) Have an EFF lawyer on deck to reassure university lawyers. Prepare this lawyer for the questions they will receive.

  • (3c) EFF reviews the EFF Tor Legal FAQ to see if it needs any updates. (As of April 2023 Cooper says they have looked at it again and they are still happy with it.)

  • (3d) Make sure the improved guides get onto the Tor community portal too.

• (4) Figure out a scalable and sustainable way to keep track of our contacts.

  • Start with a contact email alias with the five-ish of us on it, but very soon we will want something more workable than "past emails in our mailboxes" for being organized. Try not to invent too many new things, but also don't fall into the Google docs trap. A pad? A git repo?

• (5) With help from our EFA contacts, track which universities are Tor-supportive.

  • (5a) Policy and culture: Are they ok with snowflakes on their network? bridges? relays? What are the policies (AUP, etc) about running tools like Tor on their network?

  • (5b) Technical: Does Tor as a client work on their network in practice? Are the Tor websites (www, gitlab, etc) reachable?

• (6) Recruit new university relay operators, choosing them by:

  • (6a) Direct contact from existing relationships

  • (6b) Picking the good candidates from step 5

  • (6b) Drive interactions from people discovering the campaign site

  • (6c) Spread the word at academic conferences and events

  • (6d) Do Tor seminars and guest lectures at key (tipping point) institutions

• (7) Publicize the ongoing successes

  • (7a) Pick out some good ambassadors and amplify them

  • (7b) Reward (swag!) and highlight the Tor-positive institutions

  • (7c) Visualize and understand our progress using network health tools (#73)

  • (7d) Become as open with our data as we can, modulo individual privacy

  • (7e) In particular, highlight successes on Tor's community portal too

  • (7f) Feed everything back into step 1

• (8) Unsorted bonus items for later phases

  • (8a) A stock "Tor and Education" presentation that people can use to drive their own advocacy

  • (8b) Curriculum content for professors (most every security class these days has a Tor module, and they vary widely)

  • (8c) Other ways to help, e.g. run a Conjure station at your uni