14 DAY TRIAL // The Tor Project, the organization behind the Onion protocol, Tor network, and the Tor Browser, announced yesterday a new Board of Directors, in an effort to right its image after the sexual misconduct scandal that broke out at the start of June.
The new board members are Matt Blaze, Cindy Cohn, Gabriella Coleman, Linus Nordberg, Megan Price, and Bruce Schneier.
They will join Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, TOR's co-founders and the project's technical research and development leaders. Chairwoman of the Board is Shari Steele, elected to her position at the end of 2015, after coming over from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Former board accused of indifference, complacency
At the start of June 2016, what were once rumors surfaced as official accusations, forcing Jacob Applebaum, a privacy evangelist for the Tor Project, to leave the organization.
In later reports, it was said that people inside the Tor Project had known about Applebaum's behavior for almost ten years and that the Tor board had been officially notified more than a year before the scandal broke out but chose to ignore the matter.
Many argue that the old board was replaced because of the poor way it treated the Jacob Applebaum sexual misconduct scandal.
One of the new board's many objectives is to navigate the project through the murky waters that surround these accusations of complacency regarding this serious issue.
Short bios of the new board members
Matt Blaze is a cryptography guru and professor at the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cindy Cohn is the current Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She has been involved with the EFF since 1993, officially an employee from 2000, serving as Legal Director and General Counsel. In 2013, she was named one of 100 most influential lawyers in America.
Gabriella (Biella) Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. Her work includes research in the culture of hacking and politics.
Linus Nordberg is a software developer, Internet and privacy advocate, previously involved with the Tor Project since 2009. He's one of the founders of the Swedish digital rights organization DFRI (Digitala Fri- och Rättigheter) and a member of the EDRi (European Digital Rights).
Megan Price is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a member of the Technical Advisory Board for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and many other more.
Bruce Schneier is a well-known security expert who has been recently elected as a special advisor for IBM Security and CTO for Resilient, a security vendor.