Over the Firewall and into the Fire

The Freedom House report Leaping over the Firewall is a new report designed to help users understand, evaluate and select a tool or series of tools for security, privacy and most importantly, for circumventing Internet censorship. As a long time developer with The Tor Project and as a member of the circumvention community, I feel that it is important to set the record straight about a number of issues. My motivation for writing this response is to inform readers of the serious concerns that many people, myself included, have about the recent Freedom House report. I am always pleased to see more analysis of censorship circumvention and Internet security tools, but I have concerns about this report’s methodologies and resulting conclusions. The report in its current form could be dangerous to the users it aims to help.