German police raid homes of Tor-linked group's board members

https://www.zdnet.com/article/german-police-raid-homes-of-tor-linked-groups-board-members/

by jfreax • 8 years ago

71 17 8 years ago

Wow, imagine being raided by police and having all your stuff stolen, just because the police allege that you helped someone do something "anti-government".

Tor board, I would offer you my help, but I'm an American, so we would probably all be sent to Guantanamo

superkuh2• 8 years ago

I don't have to. It happened to me in 2010 in the middle of the USA. 6am no-knock raid by regional FBI agents with guns drawn. They stole all of my computer equipment and my flatmate's computer equipment too.

There were never any charges brought. We never got our stuff back. The local police were brought in to try to charge me with something, anything, and the best they could come up with was a city ordinance called "Maintaining a disorderly house." -- yeah, it tends to be a bit messy after the feds have trashed it.

Of course back then the feds were really up in arms trying to squash any and all grassroots political organizations (ie, wikileaks + occupy). Even more than now.

anoncoward1115• 8 years ago

What is life like after this? I would love to help, as a semi-anonymous ally of anyone who has put their livelihood on the line so that we could have nice things like privacy and decentralized services :)

TheSpiceIsLife• 8 years ago

Police raided my home in South Australia. It was drug related, and I was dealing, so fair enough. They later dropped the charges, nolle prosequi.

But did they have to make such a mess? I mean, they had had my keys and still busted open locks, pulled everything out of everything and threw it across the room, upturned everything that wasn't bolted down. And they still didn't find some of the drugs in plain sight, and a substantial amount of cash that was barely hidden.

More recently they forced their way in to my home Sunday night at 12am and dragged me off before I had a chance to get out of my pajamas to charge me with assault on allegations I pushed someone over in to 2 feet of fresh snow. Held me till midday Monday forcing me to miss a day at work and appear in court in my bed clothes. Yeah, they dropped those charges too.

The police are the enemy. And an incompetent, gun wielding, violent enemy immune to the law.

prolikewh0a• 8 years ago

Never threaten the profits and capital. They will find you.

anoncoward1115• 8 years ago

This is the motivation behind so many corporate-police partnerships, it's really sickening.

Like, if the bank forecloses on you, the police will be more than happy to evict you as soon as the bank demands it.

But if the bank ever accidentally loses your money or something, be prepared for the police to laugh you out of the station if you ask for help getting your money back by force

microcolonel• 8 years ago

Tor board, I would offer you my help, but I'm an American, so we would probably all be sent to Guantanamo

You'd be sent to Guantánamo for offending the German federal police?

CBLT• 8 years ago

I guess a big lesson here is: keeping the data on paper made it less secure.

The police made overreach on top of overreach and grabbed as much as they could, far exceeding their warrant. They now have historical donor records for an unrelated organization, when the warrant should have limited them in scope and history. But the police can't compel them to unlock their encrypted hard drives. If they kept that info on encrypted disk it would have been safe.

hh3k0• 8 years ago

But, under pressure from tax authorities, the organization had compiled paper receipts with names and passport numbers of those the project had reimbursed.
Bartl said those records have been compromised, putting the identities of those involved at risk.

Pretty sure those records have been compromised the moment you handed them over to the tax authorities.

mindfulhack• 8 years ago

This law enforcement overreach and breach of civil freedoms is fucked up.

How is it fair to just sit back and not wage war after persecution like this? If I were in the CCC I'd be fuming and scheming right now. Not sure what sort what the war would look like exactly, but I'd be thinking of something.

n1231231231234• 8 years ago

another example of tried overreach: a branch of the federal police, "staatsschutz", raided the posteo office in 2013 and claimed to have a warrant to seize _everything_. posteo immediatedly pushed back and it turned out that the police only had a warrant for a single document [0](in german, tho). like the investigating officers wouldn't be aware of this. it's their modus operandi.

what they also like to do is to adjust events in hindsight such that it suits their story. the case I have in mind concerns the NRW state police, but that, too, seems to be common strategy. in this case, which is very recent, a protester was arrested and police claimed, in their official report, that the protester physically assaulted the officer and resisted arrest. the protester disputed this, but without evidence would not have stood a chance in court. moreover, the protester was badly injured during the whole ordeal. now a video turns up and what do you see?: no physical assault, no resistance [1](also in german). in such cases, i am glad that we live in the age of mobile phones, where anyone can take recordings.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posteo [1] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wuppertal-fall-von-polize...

forapurpose• 8 years ago

I'm not speaking about the events in the OP, but generally I think people do their cause harm when they say things such as the following (there are several more examples in the article):

After the raids, Bartl was forced to take a break from work. He said that he assumes, given his work on digital rights issues, that he may be under surveillance. Bartl also expressed concern that future donors may also face scrutiny, financially hurting the group's projects.

Sometimes (I know nothing about these incidents), some of the reasons for these actions are to intimidate you and disrupt your work. Letting them know you are intimidated and disrupted not only encourages the bully, it spreads those consequences much more widely than just you: It demoralizing people who follow you, who depend on you, and who are in similar positions; and via the news article it spreads the intimidation and disruption to a much wider audience. How many on HN will now have second thoughts? The better response, I think, is f- that; we won't be stopped or intimidated.

merricksb• 8 years ago

Heavily discussed 1-2 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17456289 (333 points/130 comments)

German police raid homes of Tor-linked group's board members

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