Nonprofits with Onion Links
Despite common belief, the dark web is also home to a number of non-profit groups that use the privacy and anonymity given by the dark web to defend and support whistleblowers and journalists. These organizations frequently operate on the dark web in order to avoid being targeted by governments or other entities seeking to stifle their activity. For example, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) provides a dark web portal called SecureDrop that allows journalists to connect securely with their sources while maintaining their identity. Similarly, other dark web non-profits may utilize the site to distribute sensitive material or to campaign for whistleblower and journalist rights.
While the dark web has a reputation for being a shelter for unlawful activity, it is also a crucial tool for those seeking to preserve and promote freedom of expression and transparency.
Here are a few notable examples of nonprofit onion links
The Courage Foundation is an organization that raises funds for the legal defense of individuals, including journalists and whistleblowers. It was founded in 2013 by Gavin MacFadyen, Barbora Bukovska, and Julian Assange, and rebranded in 2014. It has supported individuals such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Jeremy Hammond, Matt DeHart, Lauri Love, and Chelsea Manning. The trustees of the organization have included Susan Benn, John Pilger, Renata Ávila, and Vivienne Westwood. In 2018, three trustees removed Barrett Brown from the organization’s list of beneficiaries due to “nasty adversarial remarks” he had made about Julian Assange. This led to the resignation of the organization’s director, Naomi Colvin, and accusations that Brown had only been given a small portion of the funds donated for his defense. They have recently changed their website, and now appear to be active on Twitter under a different url, primarily focused upon ending the prosecution of Julian Assange.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit organization that works to support freedom of the press and free speech. It was founded in 2012 and has a board of directors composed of journalists, whistleblowers, celebrities, filmmakers, and activists, including Edward Snowden, who served as its president from 2016. The organization has several programs to support journalists, including SecureDrop, a platform for secure communication between journalists and their sources, and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a database of press freedom violations in the United States. The FPF has also been involved in Freedom of Information Act cases and has taught journalists how to use encryption and other digital security tools to protect their sources.
Forbidden Stories is a non-profit organization that helps to continue and publish the work of journalists who are facing threats, imprisonment, or murder. It does this by allowing journalists to send their work to Forbidden Stories, where it can be accessed by other journalists in case the original investigator is unable to continue their work. The organization partners with groups such as Reporters Without Borders and Freedom of the Press Foundation and has received praise from various media outlets. It was founded in 2017 by Laurent Richard, a French investigative journalist, in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting in which 12 people were killed, and the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia in a car bomb explosion. Forbidden Stories allows threatened journalists to upload their work and secure their data and information, and it continues the work of “silenced” journalists by publicizing their stories to a wider audience. It was inspired by similar initiatives in the past, such as The Arizona Project and The Khadija Project, which continued the work of murdered or imprisoned journalists. They are currently located at this onion link.