Ruberg ’12, Vitale ’11, Wagner ’12 Create Software for Human Rights Workers

Computer science majors Jeff Ruberg ’12, Michael Vitale ’11 and Katie Wagner ’12 participated in the Humanitarian Fee and Open Source Software Project summer internship program.

For their project, they worked on software that is part of the Tor network. Tor is software that allows users to browse the web anonymously, and is used by human rights workers, individuals in repressive regimes, and people who just don’t want corporations tracking their on-line movements. It is implemented as a world-wide network of “relays” that are run by volunteers on anything ranging from academic servers to home computers.

Ruberg, Vitale and Wagner completely re-designed and re-implemented Tor Weather, an application that allows Tor relay operators to sign up to be notified of important events on their relays. Their software has now gone live, and is an important component of the Tor Project.

“Congratulations to these students on a  job well-done and on writing software that is helping to make a difference in people’s lives,” says Norman Danner, associate professor of computer science.