Privacy in Action: Isabela Bagueros, Executive Director at Tor

In our interview with Isabela Bagueros, the Executive Director at Tor, we discussed upcoming updates from Tor and how users can be more private online.

Isabela Bagueros is the Executive Director at Tor. Isabela Bagueros joined the Tor Project as Project Manager in 2015, after working as Product Manager for International and Growth at Twitter for four years. Isabela has been part of the free software community since the late 90s, and in 2007 she co-founded and worked as Latin America Project Manager for North by South, a startup from San Francisco focused on free software projects.

She took some time from her busy day to talk with us about online privacy and what her work at Tor looks like. To stay up-to-date with Tor, follow them on Twitter @torproject.

Interview with Isabela Bagueros

Startpage: How did you first become aware of the importance of online privacy? What was your tipping point moment or experience?

Isabela Bagueros: It was back in the early 2000s, at the time I was part of a collective that was using online tools to do our work and for the most part we used free software and hosted these services ourselves. I believe that this experience brought on me the awareness about the data that I create when using digital tools and the internet. It became part of the list of things I would go through in my mind when picking a service or solution. 

At this time we used to do workshops to teach people how the internet works and we would always include the importance of protecting your information or knowing who has access to it, where it is hosted etc.

Startpage: What’s your favorite part about working at Tor?

Isabela Bagueros: I think it is the people who are part of the organization. Our mission brings a lot of great and very smart people together and I enjoy how we do so much with very little. 

Startpage: How has Tor grown so much over the years? And why do you think that is?

Isabela Bagueros: There was a bump on users when Snowden came out in 2013 and depending on events happening around the world there is always a bump on connections coming from those locations. I believe user growth at Tor is very correlated with people’s awareness on why privacy matters. As well as with censorship events around the world. Our work is to improve the user experience and make it as easy as possible to use Tor and where they don’t feel a difference from directly accessing services online. So when moments like this come and people start to use Tor they can have a good experience and use it more often.

Startpage: As the Executive Director of Tor, how do you inspire or motivate your team?

Isabela Bagueros: I work to build an organization that is a safe space and offers a safety net to support the people who are part of it, so they can be the best they are. I think that by working to provide that to my team, I am motivating them to work on Tor’s mission which is what inspires all of us to be here.

Startpage: Are there any new or upcoming changes or additions to Tor you can share?

Isabela Bagueros: I want to call attention to the fact that pretty soon v2 onion services won’t be working anymore, and everyone should migrate to v3 before October, the sooner the better. We have been talking about it on our newsletter, blog and social media. As many places as possible so everyone makes sure to migrate.

Another cool thing about onion services is that you can now get DV certificates for your v3 onion site using HARICA, a Root CA Operator founded by Academic Network (GUnet), a civil society nonprofit from Greece.

I’m very excited with the work Nick Mathewson and others from the Network Team are doing on Arti – a Rust implementation of Tor. Our goal here is to have Tor on a high level language that has security features and is easier to use. This will allow us to build a smaller Tor and a more robust API, both things that are old requirements from developers who want to integrate Tor to their apps.

I would also pay attention to our Tor Browser stable release in June, as we have been doing every year for the past 5 years, this release will have significant improvements to the user experience. 

Startpage: What’s your advice for someone to be more private online? Are there privacy tools or tips you recommend?

Isabela Bagueros: The first step is to develop consciousness that all your actions online are data being produced and stored about you. And there are no real regulations to stop it from being sold by data brokers and consumed by thousands of companies that have some business that makes money out of this information. First step is to care about what will happen with that information you are typing, the link you clicked, your actions when you are online.

Then create the habit of going to privacy settings. Most people never do that. We need more people doing it so they can see how terrible the state of things are. And demand change. The complaints from users, the legislation being passed, all this is forcing the industry to think about privacy. So that is a chain of effects that will help you be more private online.

As for tools, I recommend Tor Browser for web browsing. For text messaging and voice/video calls, I recommend Signal. For file sharing, I recommend OnionShare.

Startpage: Outside of Tor, how do you spend your time? Hobbie, passions, etc.

Isabela Bagueros: I like to dance Salsa and other latin styles.