How to setup a Tor Relay (and why you should)

I just jumped in at the end of a conversation on App.net about the latest NSA revelation, the undermining of worldwide encryption standards for the benefit of the self-appointed world-police. @isaiah pointed out that we (geekdom in general) don’t get as excited about civilian casualties in Iraq, or unsanctioned drone strikes.

I decided to react by setting up a Tor relay on my VPS, contributing a little bandwidth and capacity to the Tor Project{.broken_link}, which allows anyone to bypass censorship and surveillance (at the cost of speed, currently).  It took about 30 (fun) minutes to setup on Debian, and the process is well-documented at Setup a Tor relay.

While there’s not much I can do to prevent drone strikes and abuses of power, enabling and supporting ongoing efforts to thwart oppression and overreaching authority seems like time well spent.