This is a contributed article by a member in the USPP Discord. You can join and contribute as well.

Part ofA Guide to Being Anonymous

One advanced method many aspiring pirates or privacy concerned folks can take nowadays is using a proxy to mask your IP.

The Onion Router, or TOR, is a proxy system that uses a chain of proxies, or relays, to further hide your IP behind multiple layers.

Tor can be used for basic private browsing, more anonymous communications, and is a tool used by many journalists and activists globally to keep themselves private and secure. It’s one of the best tools for avoiding online surveillance and censorship.

For more advanced use is Tails OS. Famously used by Edward Snowden during his whistleblowing, Tails OS is a Debian based operating system that routes everything through Tor for more complete anonymity.

How does Tor work?

Tor is a global network of computers run by volunteers, designed to provide online anonymity to its users. It accomplishes this through a combination of innovative features and a unique network infrastructure known as onion routing. The Tor network consists of thousands of servers, called Tor relays, operated by volunteers worldwide, making it extremely difficult to trace the origin and destination of internet activity.

Tor’s functionality is based on the principle of onion routing. This process creates a private network pathway with layers of encryption, similar to the layers of an onion. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how it works:

1. Circuit Establishment

When you connect to the Tor network, your Tor client downloads a list of all available Tor relays. It then selects three relays to create a circuit: a guard node, a middle (relay) node, and an exit node.

2. Layered Encryption

Your request is encrypted in multiple layers, with each layer only decryptable by its corresponding node. This ensures that no single node knows both the origin and destination of the data.

3. Data Transmission

The encrypted request is sent through the selected nodes:

+ The guard node (entry node) only knows your IP address and the middle relay. It decrypts the outer layer of encryption.

• The middle node only knows the guard relay and the exit relay. It decrypts the next layer of encryption.
• The exit node knows what you’re requesting from the internet and the middle relay, but not your identity or the guard relay. It decrypts the final layer and sends your request to its destination.

A single relay never knows both where the encrypted connection is coming from and where it is going to:

+ The 1st relay only knows where you are coming from but not where you are going to.

+ This 3rd relay only knows where you are going to but not where you are coming from.

+ The connection to the final destination is encrypted whenever possible to prevent the 3rd relay from reading its content.

This way, Tor is secure by design even if a few relays are malicious.

Organizations running Tor relays include universities like the MIT, activist groups like Riseup, nonprofits like Derechos Digitales, Internet hosting companies like Private Internet Access, and so on. The huge diversity of people and organizations running Tor relays makes it more secure and more sustainable.

4. Response Routing

The response from the website follows the same path back through the Tor network, with each node encrypting the data before passing it to the previous node.

5. Circuit Renewal

To further enhance anonymity, Tor creates a new circuit every 10 minutes for new connections, making long-term traffic analysis even more challenging.

This process effectively separates the content you’re requesting from anything that can be used to establish your identity, providing a high degree of anonymity.

Downloading and Installing Tor Browser

The best way to start using Tor for your online uses is todownload The Tor Browser from The Tor Project and use it for your daily browsing. They have packages and installation files for various operating systems listed there. You can download it for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android!

For the more secure, you can also download their PGP keys and check the signatures and hashes to ensure the integrity of your downloads.

Downloading for iPhone

The Tor Project recommends installing two applications to effectively use Tor for your browsing needs on iPhone:Orbot andOnion Browser. WikiHow hasa great guide on how to use them effectively together.

Well, what about Tails?

Tails OS is an operating system you install onto a USB that always starts on a clean slate when you turn it on.

Amnesia

Tails always starts from the same clean state and everything you do disappears automatically when you shut down Tails. Nothing is written to storage unless you set up secure and encrypted persistent storage.

Without Tails, almost everything you do can leave traces on the computer:

• Websites that you visited, even in private mode
• Files that you opened, even if you deleted them
• Passwords, even if you use a password manager
• All the devices and Wi-Fi networks that you used

Tor for everything

Everything you do on the Internet from Tails goes through the Tor network. As discussed above, that’s pretty awesome.

Downloading and using Tails

Downloading, verifying, and installing Tails requires about an hour of your time and:

• A USB stick of 8 GB minimum or a recordable DVD.

All the data on this USB stick or DVD is lost when installing Tails.

• The ability to start from a USB stick or a DVD reader.
• A 64-bit x86-64 IBM PC compatible processor.

Tails does not work on ARM or PowerPC processors.

Tails does not work on 32-bit computers since Tails 3.0 (June 2017).

• 2 GB of RAM to work smoothly.

Tails can work with less than 2 GB RAM but might behave strangely or crash.

A detailed guide for each operating system you may be using to download and install tails is available from the Tails Website. This includes a browser based download verification tool for additional security.

For Mac

Unfortunately, we don’t know of any Mac model that works well in Tails and can run the latest macOS version.

For Android

Tails doesn’t work on smartphones or tablets. The hardware of smartphones and tablets is very different from the hardware of computers. For now, it’s impossible to make smartphone and tablet hardware work with Linux distributions like Tails.

Further reading:

The Tor Project: About Tor

Wikipedia: About The Tor Network

TailsOS: How Tails Works

uspirates.org/a-pirates-guide-…

Germany’s ability to ensure societal resilience has significantly declined in recent decades according to political scientist and PPI alternate board member Schoresch Davoodi. In a working paper, he warns that political complacency and socio-economic mismanagement expose the country to multifaceted vulnerabilities.

Germany celebrated the stability of the 1990s and early 2000s without preparing for the disruptive forces of digital transformation, globalization, and geopolitical shifts. The nation’s overdependence on exports, Chinese markets, and Russian energy, coupled with a slow digital transition, creates strategic weaknesses. Neglecting critical infrastructure, particularly information technology and public services, renders Germany susceptible to cyberattacks and external shocks.

Davoodi also highlights growing domestic inequality, social fragmentation, and political alienation, particularly among low-income communities. Urban gentrification, rising debt, and unequal access to education fuel this divide, threatening social cohesion. He warns that, if left unaddressed, these tensions could destabilize German democracy, echoing the unrest seen in other European nations.

He critiques Germany’s media landscape for lacking social diversity, resulting in biased narratives and underrepresentation of disadvantaged voices. Moreover, he stresses the need for structural reforms, such as inclusive education, fair media practices, and new civic platforms to rebuild trust and solidarity across classes.

Political complacency and socio-economic mismanagement expose the country to multifaceted vulnerabilities. Artificial intelligence will not protect Germany. Our society must first fix itself with domestic support programs. Will Germany seize this warning as its moment to reform or risk repeating the mistakes of its past?

pp-international.net/2025/05/r…

Our next member meeting is today, Sunday, May 25th. We will start at 8pm and it will end by 9pm.

To participate:

• go to communitybridge.com/bbb-room/m…;
• enter your name;
• enter the access code listed on the page;
• click the Join button.

Summaries of the meetings and agendas are at our wiki. You can check out the 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022 meeting recordings.

masspirates.org/blog/2025/05/2…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has informed Paramount Global executives that it plans to file a lawsuit if Paramount settles with President Donald Trump over his court case against CBS News.

News reports indicate Paramount Global is prepared to settle Trump’s frivolous and unconstitutional complaint against its subsidiary, CBS News, over its editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. United States senators and others have said the purpose of settling may be to bribe the president to clear the path for Paramount to finalize a merger with Skydance Media.

We’ve written previously about how Trump’s complaint against CBS is a clear First Amendment violation and threatens the basic press freedom rights of other news outlets.

So today, FPF sent a letter to Paramount Chair Shari Redstone to put her and other Paramount executives on notice that it plans to file a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit should Paramount settle with Trump, and to demand that Paramount preserve all records that may be relevant to its claims. FPF is a Paramount Global shareholder.

A derivative lawsuit is a procedure that allows shareholders of a company to recover damages incurred due to impropriety by executives and directors. Any damages award would go to Paramount, not FPF.

Paramount executives have reportedly feared liability for settling, and this week, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren opened an investigation of whether settling would violate bribery laws and asking whether Paramount had evaluated the risk of derivative liability.

FPF Director of Advocacy Seth Stern said:

“Corporations that own news outlets should not be in the business of settling baseless lawsuits that clearly violate the First Amendment and put other media outlets at risk. A settlement of Trump’s meritless lawsuit may well be a thinly veiled effort to launder bribes through the court system. Not only would it tank CBS’s reputation but, as three U.S. senators recently explained, it could put Paramount executives at risk of breaking the law.

“Our mission as a press freedom organization is to defend the rights of journalists and the public, not the financial interests of corporate higher-ups who turn their backs on them. When you run a news organization, you have the responsibility to protect First Amendment rights, not abandon them to line your own pockets.

“We hope Paramount will reconsider the dangerous path it appears to be contemplating but, if not, we are prepared to pursue our rights as shareholders. And we hope other Paramount shareholders will join us.”

John Cusack, an FPF founding board member, activist and actor, added, “I’m proud that Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing what CBS’s corporate owners won’t — standing up for press freedom and against authoritarian shakedowns. People who aren’t willing to defend the First Amendment should not be in the news business.”

You can read FPF’s letter here.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

freedom.press/issues/we-plan-t…

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

This week we examine how leaks are fueling reporting in spite of crackdowns on whistleblowers and journalists. And Rümeysa Öztürk may be out of jail but her ordeal isn’t over. It’s now the 59th day that she’s facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like. More press freedom news below.

Recent leaks show why source protection matters

Our Freedom of Information Act request for an intelligence community memo and the reporting that’s followed have turned into “exhibit A” on why leaks to the press serve the public interest.

Journalists have written about how the memo belies the Trump administration’s own rationale for mass deporting Venezuelans, and we’ve explained how it confirms that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s basis for repealing her predecessor’s safeguards against subpoenaing journalists was bunk.

But even more revelations have followed. This week the Times reported that Director of National Intelligence official Joe Kent pressured intelligence agencies to rewrite their assessment on the Venezuelan government’s control of gang members to support Trump’s position and then supported the release of the rewritten memo because he didn’t understand what it actually said. We also learned that there is a major rift between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the intelligence community.

Read on our website. For more on leak investigations, catch us live on May 28 at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET with Telos.news founder Ryan Lizza and Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen.

Don’t empower Trump to define terrorism

Rümeysa Öztürk never supported terrorism. That’s not even debatable now.

But lack of evidence isn’t stopping the Trump administration’s efforts to deport her and others. So when Congress contemplates further empowering the same administration to arbitrarily deem its opponents’ conduct “support of terrorism,” alarm bells should sound.

Well, ring-a-ling. Last year’s “nonprofit killer” bill, which would allow the administration to deem rights organizations and nonprofit news outlets terrorist supporters and revoke their tax-exempt status, is making a comeback. Read more here.

An open letter to leaders of American institutions

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was proud to join a letter led by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University urging leaders of civic and other major institutions to defend free speech amid the Trump administration’s multifront assault on First Amendment freedoms.

As the letter says, “If our democracy is to survive, the freedoms of speech and the press need a vigorous, determined defense.” Read the whole thing.

US press freedom groups launch Journalist Assistance Network

Five major U.S.-based press freedom organizations (including FPF) announced the launch of a network to provide legal and safety resources and training to journalists and newsrooms in the United States. Read more about it here.

What we’re reading

Coalition to Columbia, Barnard: ‘Do better’ for student journalists (Student Press Law Center). We joined a coalition demanding Columbia stop investigating student journalists and respect students’ free press rights.

Paramount could violate anti-bribery law if it pays to settle Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit, senators claim (Variety). Don’t just take our word for it. Settling with Trump puts Paramount executives at risk of significant liability. It also puts CBS at risk of further shakedowns.

Why does GOP budget bill focus on punishing people who leak tax returns? (The Intercept). “Lawmakers and judges should focus on stopping tax evasion by the rich and powerful, not on disproportionate punishments for whistleblowers,” explained FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to keep DOGE records secret (Politico). Seems like it’d be more “efficient” to comply with basic transparency requests than waste government resources to keep your work secret.

Judge orders U.S. to keep custody of migrants amid claims they were sent to South Sudan (The New York Times). The Trump administration says “that’s classified” any time it doesn’t want to answer difficult questions to the courts or to the public.

Disclose the Trump crypto dinner guests (The Wall Street Journal). So much for the “most transparent administration in history.”

FCC Chairman Carr seeks to designate NBC equal time issue for hearing (The Desk). Another week, another sham investigation by Brendan Carr in the news.

Indiana hides executions. Firing squads would be more honest. (IndyStar). “Indiana killed Ritchie under a veil of secrecy, with no media present . ... We don't know if Ritchie suffered."

New Montana law blocks the state from buying private data to skirt the Fourth Amendment (Reason). Montana is leading the way. Other states and the federal government should follow.

freedom.press/issues/recent-le…

Our Spring 2025 conference will be Sunday, June 15th in the Lavender Room at Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. The conference starts at 10am and ends by 4pm.

Arts at the Armory is wheelchair accessible, has free parking in the back, is on the Route 88 and 90 bus lines and walking distance from the Gilman and Magoun Squares MBTA Green Line stations. The Lavender Room is in the basement and is accessible by stair and elevator.

Registration

The conference is free, but we request that participants register in advance. We encourage attendees to mask to protect everyone’s health. We will have masks and COVID tests for attendees as well as air purifiers. We plan to live stream it for people who cannot attend in person.

Speakers Wanted

If you would like to speak at our conference, please fill out our speaker registration form.

Want to Help?

If you can help with the conference, please take a look at our conference pirate pad and put your name down for anything you will do.

masspirates.org/blog/2025/05/2…

When the Trump administration quickly fulfilled our Freedom of Information Act request for a memo belying its own rationales both for mass deporting Venezuelans and for cracking down on leaks to the press, we had plenty of theories about why.

Maybe someone in the FOIA office used our request as an opportunity to blow the whistle. Maybe it was some kind of mistake. But one possibility that never occurred to us was that administration higher-ups somehow thought that the memo made them look good. After all, everyone knows President Donald Trump hires only the “best and most serious people.”

But according to a report in The New York Times, that’s exactly what happened. So who was the poor junior staffer who somehow read a short, straightforward memo wherein intelligence agencies said Venezuela’s government does not control the Tren de Aragua gang, as Trump claims, and took it to mean, well, the complete opposite? The intelligence community had better stop hiring from whatever school gave that kid a degree!

Turns out it wasn’t some kid, though. It was Joe Kent, chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. And get this: He’s Trump’s nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center. Apparently, after a first memo undermined Trump’s narrative that Venezuelan migrants are actually President Nicolás Maduro’s secret foot soldiers, Kent requested some “rewriting … so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS.”

The memo released to us was apparently the rewrite — which confirmed the conclusions of the initial memo. It did mention that the FBI believed some Venezuelan government officials might communicate with some members of Tren de Aragua, but no serious legal minds believe that constitutes an invasion that justifies Trump’s invoking of the Alien Enemies Act.

Kent, however, somehow read it (or maybe that’s giving him too much credit) and thought it vindicated the administration. No one else read it that way, including Secretary of State (among other jobs) Marco Rubio. Rubio didn’t even attempt to twist the memo into somehow supporting the administration’s policies — he just said the intelligence community got it wrong.

But the reason Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) filed the FOIA in the first place was not to prove whether Maduro has gangbangers on speed dial or whether high-ranking intelligence officials lack intelligence. It was to check whether Attorney General Pam Bondi’s basis for repealing her predecessor’s safeguards against subpoenaing journalists held water.

Bondi, as well as Gabbard, claimed reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post were false when stating that intelligence agencies disbelieved Trump’s claims about Tren de Aragua. The administration, these officials said, needed the ability to investigate the source of the leak, including by subpoenaing journalists, to protect the nation from so-called fake news from the so-called deep state.

The memo, as we’ve written before, confirmed that the Times and Post got it right and the only thing a crackdown on leaks was meant to protect was Trump and his cronies from embarrassment. But the memo has turned into more than that — it’s become Exhibit A on why leaks to the press serve the public interest.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of news we now know about because of the leaks to the Times and Post, the memo we were able to request as a result of those leaks, and the reporting that followed.

• Kent, the nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, can’t comprehend basic intelligence reports.
• Kent demanded intelligence agencies rewrite their findings to save his bosses from embarrassment and, according to the Times, there are emails to prove it (we have filed requests for those, too).
• There is a major rift between the State Department and the intelligence community about one of the Trump administration’s most significant policies.
• Gabbard requested Bondi initiate a leak investigation based on lies.
• Bondi repealed protections for reporters and their sources based on the same lies.
• The United States mass deported people to a dangerous prison in El Salvador to perform slave labor for a Trump-friendly authoritarian — all based on the same lies.

Virtually every time the government has cracked down on leaks claiming some kind of threat to the homeland, the real threat has been to its own reputation. Usually it takes years to confirm the obvious. It took decades for Nixon officials who once argued that releasing the Pentagon Papers would gravely endanger national security to admit that was nonsense all along. But this time we know the truth almost immediately, thanks to leaks.

Bondi was right about one thing — the leaks undermined the administration’s policies. But she left out that they were policies that needed undermining because they were built on lies — the kinds of lies that the drafters of the Constitution intended journalists to expose when they wrote the First Amendment’s press clause. That’s what the Times, Post, and their sources did, and it’s exactly why journalist-source confidentiality needs protecting.

freedom.press/issues/recent-le…

Ahoy Pirates,

Our next PPI board meeting will take place on 03.06.2025 at 14:00 UTC / 16:00 CEST.

Prior to that meeting we will hold a SCENE and SCUBA working groups meeting in the same Jitsi room a week later, 10.06.2025 at 19:00 UTC / 21:00 CEST.

All official PPI proceedings, Board meetings included, are open to the public. Feel free to stop by. We’ll be happy to have you.

Where:jitsi.pirati.cz/PPI-BoardAgenda: etherpad.pp-international.net/…

All of our meetings are posted to our calendar: pp-international.net/calendar/

We look forward to seeing visitors.

Thank you for your support,

The Board of PPI

pp-international.net/2025/05/j…

Rümeysa Öztürk never supported terrorism. That’s not even debatable at this point. A federal judge confirmed the government has no evidence to deport the Tufts University graduate student besides her co-authorship of an op-ed opposing the war in Gaza.

The Washington Post has reported that the State Department warned the government before it nabbed her off the street near her home that there was no basis to deport her.

But lack of evidence isn’t stopping the Trump administration’s efforts to deport her or others. So when Congress contemplates granting the same administration further powers to arbitrarily deem its opponents’ conduct “support of terrorism,” alarm bells should sound.

Well, ring-a-ling. Last year’s “nonprofit killer” bill is making a comeback. That’s the bill that would allow the secretary of the treasury to deem nonprofit organizations terrorist supporters and revoke their tax-exempt status, all with little to no due process.

It was buried at the back of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that passed the House Ways and Means Committee, before being stripped out of the next version of the megabill, likely for procedural reasons. There’s no reason to think it’s gone for good.

Opposing the bill’s next incarnation must be top priority for all defenders of press freedom and the rule of law. The bill was a horrible idea during the Biden administration, when many Democrats pandering to anti-Palestinian donors supported it while knowing full well Trump might be president in a few months. Now it’s downright scary.

We don’t have to speculate about slippery slopes anymore — Trump has already shown what he’ll do if he’s allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to who is a terrorist supporter. Öztürk is still facing deportation proceedings, and Mahmoud Khalil is still in jail in Louisiana despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitting in a court filing that the “terrorism” case against him is solely based on his beliefs — primarily his opposition to the Israel-Gaza war.

He’ll almost certainly demand his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declare any organizations that advocate for or assist Palestinians to be terrorist supporters. That’s practically a given. If Bessent refuses, he’ll find someone who will. But what about protesters? Minor property damage will quickly become a terrorist attack in Trump’s alternative reality — an “invasion!” And the administration has already made clear its intent to target environmental nonprofits.

And then, of course, there are nonprofit media outlets, not to mention press freedom groups like Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF).

Trump’s creativity knows no bounds when it comes to conjuring up frivolous legal theories against news outlets. Just last week, his White House claimed that Business Insider’s parent company engaged in illegal political meddling by reporting on his son’s business entanglements. He has argued that reporting critically about him constitutes “tortious interference” or even election interference — months after the election. The list goes on.

Trump’s creativity knows no bounds when it comes to conjuring up frivolous legal theories against news outlets.

And his own party has already shown him the way. Last year, Sen. Tom Cotton and other Republicans demanded that major news outlets be investigated for terrorism because they bought photographs from freelancers in Gaza (one of whom the Israeli army just assassinated). One letter even threatened charges for merely reporting things officials didn’t like.

Those news outlets were for-profit companies and the threats were under existing laws on material support for terrorism. Cotton and his friends’ antics were mere stunts — those laws require the government to prove its case, and it couldn’t. But the nonprofit killer bill solves that problem when it comes to nonprofit news outlets, by eliminating the government’s burden of proof and the defenses afforded to organizations investigated under current law.

Sure, a nonprofit could challenge the constitutionality of the claims against it — and should win — but that could take years, and the controversy could permanently steer donors away.

Here’s what’s puzzling: This bill could easily backfire on Republicans, but they’re pushing it anyway. It’s one thing for anti-immigrant officials to claim broad powers to deport immigrants like Öztürk and Khalil. But conservatives aren’t anti-nonprofit. They have nonprofits too.

One could easily imagine a future Democratic administration, using powers gifted to it by today’s Republicans, deeming anti-abortion organizations terrorist supporters, or punishing conservative groups because of ties to white supremacists far less tenuous than the alleged ties between Öztürk and Hamas. Pro-Israel groups that associate with illegal West Bank settlers could be targeted in the unlikely event the Democrats nominate a pro-Palestine president.

So why don’t the bill’s proponents care about the obvious “shoe on the other foot” possibility? Is it because they’re just that shortsighted? Maybe. Or perhaps they don’t intend to ever relinquish power, and destroying civil society and the press is one part of that plan.

freedom.press/issues/dont-empo…