Tails: The Amnesic Incognito Live System

Tails is a live operating system that can be started on almost any computer from a USB stick or a DVD. Tails preserves its users’ privacy and anonymity, and is widely used by journalists, activists, and everyday users to stay safe from surveillance and censorship. Tails is designed to be accessible for users across levels of technological comfort as it is packaged with ready-to-use essential tools for secure communications, including the Tor Browser, OnionShare and Metadata Cleaner.

For over 15 years, Tails operated as a small workers’ collective that was able to distribute an entire operating system because of a consistent emphasis on technical sustainability through strong upstream and downstream relationships. In July 2024, Tails became a part of the Tor Project’s to become even more impactful in delivering on its core mission, by unlocking technological complementarities with the Tor Project, and by relying on the stronger organisational structure of the Tor Project.

One of the key aspects of sustaining this organisational merger will be the successful integration of the Tails infrastructure within Tor. This will be a mammoth exercise, and will be progressively completed over the next 3 years. Parallely, we want to continue delivering on our core mission, and continue improving Tails OS to be more usable for our current and potential users. These works, together, will be crucial to ensuring the sustainability of Tails’s growth. And for this, we are requesting support from the FLOSS/fund.