[ndbug] Tor relays in India

[George Rosamond]

Greetings ND-BUG.

I know a number of you have access to decent internet infrastructure, so
I thought I'd ping the list.

Two of us launched a project entitled the Tor BSD Diversity Project
(https://torbsd.github.io) this past March, aimed at injecting more BSD
Unix into the Tor anonymity network on various levels.

Our main project is porting Tor Browser to OpenBSD, which is now in its
sixth release.

We have also worked to get more BSD Tor relays
(https://torstatus.rueckgr.at) running.

I did a recent presentation at BSDCon Brasil (http://queair.net/br-pres)
and the effect was incredible.  They went from only Linux relays and a
couple of Windows ones, to new BSD relays which now account for about a
third of observed Tor bandwidth in Brazil.

On that note, I noticed there are only a handful of Tor relays in India,
approximately ten right now.  None of them are running a BSD.  And
remarkably, there are no Tor relays at all in Pakistan...

I strongly encourage anyone with available hardware and bandwidth to run
a relay, particularly on a BSD.  One could even run a Tor bridge from
home (https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges) which would help censored
users.

There should be no hassles with running a relay if you are not allowing
exit traffic with this line enabled in the torrc file:

  ExitPolicy reject *:* # no exits allowed

We have a mailing list entitled Tor-BSD at lists.nycbug.org if you need
assistance, and feel free to ping me offlist.

Tor is a vital tool in providing a means for online anonymity, for
human rights activists to journalists and beyond.  Diversifying the
network, in both geography and in utilized operating systems is vital.
You can play a small part in that diversification.

g

PS.. just noticed one came up a few hours ago... the first BSD one.
Definitely room for more!