On August 16 2009, *intrigeri* announced the first release of *amnesia* on the [*tor-talk* mailing list](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2009-August/002667.html).
In March 2010, *Incognito* was declared dead and *amnesia* its "[spiritual successor](https://web.archive.org/web/20100728224716/http://www.anonymityanywhere.com:80/incognito)".Some weeks later, *amnesia* would be renamed *T(A)ILS*, *The Amnesic Incognito Live System*, to act the fusion between *amnesia* and *Incognito*.
We quickly realized that having parenthesis in our name looked very radical but was quite confusing and finally settled on *Tails* in 2011. Eight years later, we still see most people on the Internet write it TAILS though it's never been written in all caps on our website.
To support this intense development and the increased responsibility on our shoulders, we accepted our first grant, from the *Swedish International Development Agency* in 2011 and started paying for some of the development work.
In June 2013, Edward Snowden would reveal thousands of classified documents on the surveillance programs of the NSA. Tails got mentioned by famous technologists [Bruce Schneier](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance)and [Micah Lee](https://freedom.press/news/encryption-works-how-to-protect-your-privacy-and-your-sources-in-the-age-of-nsa-surveillance/)as one of the tools that protect from the NSA surveillance.
In March 2014, we received our first award, the [Access Innovation Prize for Endpoint Security](https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2014/03/11/2014-access-innovation-prize-winners-announced-at-rightscon).According to Access Now:
> Tails embodies the successful collaboration of developers, trainers, > security professionals towards tackling the spectrum of user needs -- > from usability to security -- in high-risk environments.
The same month, we launched a [[!tails_blueprint logo desc="logo contest"]]. It was heartwarming to receive 36 very creative proposals. Here are some of the best ones:
In May 2014, the UX team at [NUMA Paris](https://web.archive.org/web/20140524130455/http://events.numaparis.com/Evenements/Apero-Experience-Utilisateur-Tails-The-Amnesic-Incognito-Live-System)invited us to organize a usability testing session of Tails with journalists. We asked participants to do slightly complex tasks such as establishing an encrypted conversation with someone else using *Pidgin*.Reality hit us hard when all the journalists in the room encountered problems to either install, start, or connect Tails to Tor. We realized that, despite having laid down most of the core features in Tails 1.0, we still had a lot of work to do to make Tails easy to use by most people.
Since then, we focused our work on 3 aspects of the project that don't bring in so many new features but rather ensure its long term sustainability and growth: user experience, continuous integration, and project sustainability.
