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The government's campaign for online censorship has created a backlash, with the number of Russia-based users of anonymous web surfing software Tor more than doubling in the past three weeks. The Tor network, which allows users to anonymously visit websites blocked in their country, numbered almost 200,000 users from Russia on Wednesday, compared to some 80,000 as of June 1, according to official statistics for Tor usage on Torproject.org.

AS THE Iraqi government censors large swathes of the internet following devastating attacks and victories by the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), thousands of people are turning to the deep, anonymous web. Locals are adopting the browser Tor, the most popular anonymising tool online, to get around government obstruction, the Daily Dot reported.

One year after the first revelations of Edward Snowden, cryptography has shifted from an obscure branch of computer science to an almost mainstream notion: It's possible, user privacy groups and a growing industry of crypto-focused companies tell us, to encrypt everything from emails to IMs to a gif of a motorcycle jumping over a plane.