[[!meta title="2023 at Tails: a new home, small steps, and giant leaps"]]

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[[!tag announce]]

**Malicious actors upped the ante in 2023.**

So-called artificial intelligence systems soared in popularity, supercharging political [disinformation](https://www.wired.com/story/slovakias-election-deepfakes-show-ai-is-a-danger-to-democracy/) [programs](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/19/ai-generated-disinformation-us-elections). Internet shutdowns and slowdowns became [firmly entrenched](https://www.accessnow.org/publication/internet-shutdowns-in-2023-mid-year-update/) in authoritarian toolkits to censor progressive speech. And the [continuing revelations](https://securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2023/11/serbia-civil-society-threatened-by-spyware/) of zero-click attacks drove home the perilous omnipotence of the military-digital complex.

**But, we also made plans to call their ante.**

We built a state-of-the-art 3-year strategy to make Tails a formidable adversary to these powerful, repressive forces. We made plans to better understand the use of Tails by journalists and activists, and understand and improve the use of Tails in the [majority world](https://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/shahidul-alam-on-the-majority-world/). All this while introducing new features and improvements to existing features that make Tails even more relevant.

Here's the progress we made in the first year of the plan.

Product development

**The Persistent Storage got even better at storing encrypted data.**

[[Tails 5.8|news/version_5.8/]] was one of the most important Tails releases in years. In Tails 5.8, we unveiled a brand new Persistent Storage. The new Persistent Storage doesn't require restarting after creation or any time after you activate a new feature. It also made it easier to persist more settings. The icing on the cake: a dashing makeover for the Persistent Storage!

But the new Persistent Storage wasn't all fun and games for Tails users. It was buggy and we worked extra hard to fix the issues our users faced.

We didn't stop there. We also continued to add functionality to the Persistent Storage. Now, it is easier to both do [[backups of the whole Persistent Storage|news/version_5.14/]] and [[delete the data of a each feature|news/version_5.12/]].

[[!img version_5.12/delete-data.png alt="" caption="New button to delete the data of a Persistent Storage feature"]]

[[!img doc/persistent_storage/backup/clone.png alt="" caption="Option to clone the current Persistent Storage in Tails Installer"]]

We also introduced better password practices for securing the Persistent Storage. Randomly generated [diceware](https://diceware.dmuth.org/) passphrases and an upgraded encryption format make the Persistent Storage [[exponentially more secure|security/argon2id]].

<div class="center"><img src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png" alt="" style="width: 66%"/></div>

**Improvements to the [[Tor Connection|news/version_4.20]] make it easier to
circumvent censorship.**

The Tor Connection Assistant is slicker. We improved the error messaging when connecting automatically to the Tor network and the handling of captive portals.

Connecting to Tor is only part of the story. At times, Tails users may find themselves on slow Tor circuits. And worse, unable to troubleshoot issues. So, we've made it easier to close pesky Tor circuits that we can sometimes land on.