Tor: An Anonymous, And Controversial, Way to Web-Surf

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

For more than four years, William Weber has helped run a free service called Tor that makes Web surfing anonymous for anyone.

Then on Nov. 28, the police showed up at the 20-year-old's home in Graz, Austria, and accused him of distributing child pornography. He says the authorities confiscated his computers, and he now awaits formal charges that could lead to jail time.

Mr. Weber says the porn isn't his. But it might have come through his computers as the unavoidable cost of serving as a volunteer for the fast-growing Tor network. "Sure it's bad" that Tor can be used by criminals, he says, but "there is nothing I or the Tor Project can do."

His experience underscores the challenges facing the Tor Project Inc., a 10-year-old Walpole, Mass., nonprofit that is hoping to take anonymous Web surfing mainstream. The network depends on volunteers such as Mr. Weber whose computers help reroute and conceal Internet traffic.

Created in part to hide the online activity of dissidents in countries such as Iran and China that censor the Internet, Tor has seen its popularity grow in the U.S. and Europe amid concerns about online privacy. In the past year, use of the free software nearly doubled to about 600,000 people every day, the group says.

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