2026-06-14 –, Hauptbühne (Saal 1)
When Tor was founded in 2006, its mission sounded almost utopian: to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free, open-source anonymity and privacy technologies. Two decades later, the mission hasn't changed — but the world has. Internet shutdowns and systemic censorship affected more than half the world's population in 2025, as governments tighten their grip on the technology people rely on for a free, open internet. Wikipedia
In this talk, Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director since 2018, traces how a tool built by volunteers became civic infrastructure, relied on by everyone from human rights advocates bypassing surveillance and censorship to ordinary people just accessing the open web — all while staying true to a model built on collaboration and community rather than competition.
She'll also look ahead: as shutdowns and censorship escalate globally, what does it take to keep anonymity infrastructure resilient, funded, and recognized not as a luxury, but as a public good.
Isabela Fernandes is the Executive Director of the Tor Project since November 2018.
She 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.
Isabela was also part of Brazil’s Federal Government Free Software initiative, working in 2005 on the Ministry of Communications digital inclusion project and participating in 2006 on a project to migrate the IT of the Presidential Palace of Brazil to free software.