Join the FSF and friends on Friday, June 13, from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!

All in all, it was a whopping success, with major Web sites commiting to improve their security and more than thirty thousand people visiting the FSF's brand-new Email Self-Defense guide.

The Email Self-Defense guide, along with its infographic, made the rounds on reddit, Boing Boing, Slashdot, and Hacker News, and we think it's likely to become one of the Web's most popular guides to email encryption. It's also a powerful vector for the free software message, emphasizing the importance of computer user freedom for security more than other prominent guides.

We want to get this guide linked to from every Web site people visit to learn about encryption, and we're itching to make more tools like it. Can you help us by joining the FSF as a member (if you aren't already), or donating $25?

If you're not able to donate, you can still get people learning about free software encryption by sharing the infographic. If you're a fan of any encryption and privacy-related Web sites, email them and ask them to link to the guide. Most of all, you can make a point of using encryption yourself whenever possible -- even for messages that aren't sensitive.

We've gotten a lot of feedback on Email Self-Defense, and we see that people are rightfully excited about this project. Here are some of our favorite comments:

"I haven't found a guide that's anywhere near this approachable for people scared of technology, and the infographic is also ace."
- an anonymous supporter

"This is our opportunity to get my less-techy friends using encryption, while showing them why free software is important. Right on, FSF."
- a Slashdot commenter

Thanks to these commenters, and everyone in the free software community who participated in Reset the Net. Your actions give us hope for a future free of suspicionless bulk surveillance. And free software is going to be a big part of that future. Please join us as a member, or donate today.

Today's Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meeting ended-up with a focus on free software games. We received seven new submissions of games, including Stunt Rally, a free software racing game with track editor licensed under GNU GPL version 3 (or at your option, any later version).

In total there were 7 new packages during the meeting, and over 10 new packages added in the week since our last meeting, as well as many updates to pages. In addition, on Thursday we added a Privacy pack collection, to go alongside our launch of the Email Self-Defense infographic and guide. Lastly, we thank SJ Klein of Wikimedia Foundation for leading today's introduction to the meeting.

You can find out how to attend our Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meetings by checking our blog or subscribing to the RSS feed.

Tor is a publicly accessible, free software-based system for anonymizing Internet traffic. Tor relies on thousands of computers around the world called relays, which route traffic in tricky ways to dodge spying. The more relays, the stronger and faster the network. That's where you come in:

Start a relay and register it with the Tor Challenge! It's easy and works on all operating systems, including the best one — GNU/Linux.

Tor is used by journalists, political dissidents, and everyday folks around the world. In fact, it was used by Edward Snowden for his famous leaks. The FSF is proud to run our own Tor relay as well.

We've long been supporters of Tor, and we're pumped to join our allies in promoting it. As we write this, there have already been 128 new relays set up since yesterday. Let's help them double that!

To learn about more tools and actions you can take to secure privacy for yourself and your community, see the FSF's bulk surveillance page. For a discussion of pushing back bulk surveillance on a mass scale, read Richard Stallman's article "How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?".

Email encryption is a simple way to give yourself a shield that can protect you and your community from the giant surveillance system we all face. If you need any proof of the effectiveness of these tools, remember that Snowden used them to leak his precious information safely. Many effective shields, wielded well and held together in solidarity, make a strong wall. The Email Self-Defense Guide will lead you all the way through the process of sending and receiving your first encrypted mail.

Check out the guide, and get started encrypting your email!

It comes with a gorgeous infographic, which you can share with the hashtags #EmailSelfDefense and #ResetTheNet.

"Encryption matters, and it is not just for spies and philanderers. [Encryption] is a critically-necessary security measure for anyone who wishes to communicate with you." -- Edward Snowden

Encrypting your email can not only protect you and your loved ones from the NSA, it also keeps big Internet corporations from collecting your data as well. Gmail, for example, mines your email to serve you ads. If that email is encrypted on your desktop, Google's servers will never see the contents of your messages (even if you don't use Gmail yourself, every email you send to someone who does ends up on their servers). And even if you think that you personally have nothing to hide, remember: if the only people who encrypt their email DO have something to hide, then the NSA can easily target those emails and use their massive resources to break the encryption. The more people encrypt all their email, even the trivial stuff, the harder it becomes for the NSA to target whistleblowers, journalists, and others with legitimate, legal reasons to keep information private.

If you already use email encryption, we encourage you to check out the guide and give us feedback on it. You can also make a big difference by sending it to your friends and offering to help them use it to get started.

Self-protection is essential for your privacy, but the real solution is to make digital systems stop collecting data about everyone. Today thousands of people -- and some of the most popular websites -- are taking concrete steps to secure their part of the Internet. With free software tools and principles, we can make suspicionless, dragnet-style surveillance exponentially more difficult and expensive for governments to conduct.

Learn how to practice email self defense, then head over the Free Software Directory to download our free software privacy pack.

If you like Email Self-Defense, please consider making a donation. We have big plans to get it in the hands of people under bulk surveillance all over the world, and make more tools like it.