Tor exit node operator raided in Austria

http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/6283/raided-for-running-a-tor-exit-accepting-donations-for-legal-expenses

by Nyr • 14 years ago

495 309 14 years ago

AlexMuir• 14 years ago

We need a community fund that can be used for things like this. The equivalent of a hardship fund with an aim of protecting our internet freedoms. It's good for the world, it's good for us individually, and it's good for business.

Everyone throws a few €£$ in a pot and a few volunteers administer it and do a bit of due diligence to ensure cases are valid. I guess in the US this is the EFF, but there are plenty of cases outside their remit.

It'd be like social security but for legal battles - but I don't think contributing/not should entitle or exempt anyone from funds.

cynoclast• 14 years ago

I think we need to rethink our society because if the average person can expect to have their lives nearly ruined by a legal battle in which they did nothing wrong, we have a very defective legal system. Not saying we shouldn't do this, but that we shouldn't have to.

dwj7• 14 years ago

So you think it's fine to allow someone to use your computer to transfer child porn and other illegal stuff with no consequences?

While tor might have some legitimate uses, I think 99% of the time it's used for trolling or illegal stuff. It's a pain in the ass for me because I have to keep reblocking it when the ips change.

Xylakant2• 14 years ago

I don't know if it's applicable here or wether they'd help out in austria, but such a fund exists in germany since a couple of month. Their main area of expertise is free speech for bloggers, but running a TOR exit node might just qualify. And they might have legal contacts in austria.

http://www.kanzleikompa.de/2012/07/02/verein-speakers-corner...

chollida15• 14 years ago

Agreed.

I think one of the biggest benefits of such a fund is that it could employ a lawyer who could look at cases like this to determine who is "worthy" of receiving funds.

I don't want to be that guy, but all I know about this is that a guy claims that the child porn that was found was due to him running an exit node.

I don't want to say the porn was his, but it's possible that the porn was his.

I'd feel better about donating if I knew a lawyer had investigated and found his story to be credible.

Hypothetically, what if it was his porn, and then internet raise 1000's of dollars for him and then have this info come out. I'd imagine most people would be like me and never donate to people like this again. After all who wants to knowingly help someone escape justice when they actually deserve jail time.

smokeyj3• 14 years ago

If TOR was used for sharing illegal files, would you stop supporting it? Seems like you would be against most technology with that mind set.

DrWhax• 14 years ago

There are already quite a few funds like that, torservers.net and noisetor.net are examples of that, both have lawyers on stand-by. I recommend donating to these folks to keep exit nodes online!

stephengillie• 14 years ago

This is called insurance. Who wants to start a company insuring internet users against civil and criminal penalties?

EDIT: ok, it's almost insurance.

joepie915• 14 years ago

Uh, no, it isn't. Insurance requires you to pay a premium to be eligible for pay-out. A fund does not.

eitland• 14 years ago

I think I have seen insurance against speeding tickets being sold. I haven't heard about that company for a while though.

lambda• 14 years ago

> Everyone throws a few €£$ in a pot and a few volunteers administer it and do a bit of due diligence to ensure cases are valid.

You are fairly optimistic about the ease of administering a charity which gives out free money.

hornbaker• 14 years ago

How about a Kickstarter for legal defense funds? Is there one out there?

dbaupp2• 14 years ago

I know little about the Tor community, but is there any verification of these sort of claims?

loopdoend• 14 years ago

All tor node addresses are public. (Except for secret entry nodes.) I imagine this information could be used to verify claims.

throwaway125• 14 years ago

I briefly looked for other information about this and I found this thread on the tor-talk mailing list. The thread mentions he contacted the torservers.net team for a recommendation about a lawyer. The thread also mentions someone is going to provide better proof soon.

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-Novembe...

haarts2• 14 years ago

What if the guy had an open Wifi router? And the neighbors downloaded a movie? This goes to show law enforcement does not know what they are doing.

I run a node as well and noticed other (far less severe) downsides of doing so. Registering on certain forums won't work and purchasing games on Steam doesn't work. These parties just blacklist the entire list of IPs published running exit nodes.

Tichy• 14 years ago

Where I live you can get punished for stuff people do with your open Wifi network.

I think the authorities know exactly what they doing: they don't want people to anonymously surf the internet, so the prevent it by making it impossible to run Tor nodes or Wifi networks. I don't like it...

error542• 14 years ago

Same here. If you don't secure your wifi then you are legally responsible for what people do on your internet which I kind of understand but where does the line get drawn? If my computer gets hijacked and is used in a DDOS attack against some website, am I responsible for that too? At best this is all a legal gray area.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, in Germany, someone has already been arrested over using something that works in a similar way to Tor (routing traffic through multiple computers):

http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal...

The laws need to be changed so that you're not responsible for someone routing something through your PC if you're not aware of what is being routed, and it should be done at the EU level. I hope at least the Pirate Party starts working on pushing for this law.

theorique2• 14 years ago

I agree with Tichy - I think LE authorities know exactly what they are doing.

If it weren't "think of the children", it would be "al Qaeda was organizing anonymously". They need a reason to create a hostile climate for privacy and anonymity.

SageRaven2• 14 years ago

Well, here's the thing with that tactic. If I wanted to organize anonymously, I'd have my co-conspirators gather on .onions sites, most likely an address run and known only by us. If anti-TOR shit gets real, then I believe we'll see non-trivial growth of the various darknets out there.

If every tor exit node vanished today, tor's darknet half will thrive and the network would still be valuable. It's trivial to set up a hidden service. If you want to whistle-blow to the media, you'd set up a http or ftp share and drop the .onion URL in the mail to your journalists of choice.

tomku6• 14 years ago

Should law enforcement just say "Oh, you have an open Wifi hotspot/you're running a Tor exit node, I guess this is a dead end, thanks for your time"? Investigating (including seizing equipment) to determine whether the traffic in question actually came from the Tor network seems like a reasonable idea. Otherwise, anyone running an exit node would have a blank check to do whatever they'd like and simply claim it was just traffic they were passing through.

I know that people like to pretend otherwise, but as long as there are crossover points between the Tor network and the public internet, there will be non-anonymous people in the real world who will have to deal with things like this. "I'm running a Tor exit node" is not (and should not be) a magical pass that makes you immune to any kind of investigation.

richardlblair• 14 years ago

This is a great point. It needs to be investigated.

But, if he is found guilty and the traffic did come from tor than this is a lot like sending drugs through the mail and convicting the post office.

drzaiusapelord3• 14 years ago

>Yesterday i got raided for someone sharing child pornography over one of my Tor exits.

Reason #1 why I will never run a tor exit node. I don't want to make it easier for child predators to get off nor do I want the legal issues they bring.

shocks4• 14 years ago

There are plenty of legitimate uses for Tor.

kevindication2• 14 years ago

You don't find yourself in litigation for the legitimate uses of Tor.

jcromartie• 14 years ago

I wonder what proportion of Tor is used for legal purposes? I personally hold an extremely low estimate for that figure.

shocks4• 14 years ago

Here is a good link, with more information.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en#WhatAboutC...

contingencies• 14 years ago

Jacob Applebaum: "The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money laundering, and The War on Some Drugs." - Cypherpunks, p43. O/R Books. http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/cypherpunks/

The book (and The World Tomorrow interviews at http://assange.rt.com/ from whence it spawned) go on to explain why these arguments are extremely bad for the internet. We have to protect the freedom of speech for everyone, or there is no freedom of speech.

drzaiusapelord3• 14 years ago

Media made from victimizing children is not "free speech" in my book.

axusgrad• 14 years ago

I think we can support censorship of child pornography, and also support protection of anonymity and network neutrality.

mistercow8• 14 years ago

I always find it odd that people often tend to focus on pedophiles "getting off" rather than pedophiles hurting children. If we really want to protect children, we'd do well to find harmless ways for pedophiles to get off. It's pretty well established that giving people benign sexual outlets is an effective way to prevent them from seeking harmful ones.

I mean, yeah, don't run a TOR exit node because of the legal risk - that makes sense. Or because you're afraid it makes it easier to hurt kids... well, I don't know if it really does, but at least your heart is in the right place. But what business is it of anyone else who gets off?

dreoe• 14 years ago

Fun fact: People care more about hurting paedophiles than they do about protecting children. It's why communities rally around protesting against sex offender treatment centres or cheer about prison rape like more sexual abuse somehow won't make offenders more deviant.

ahelwer5• 14 years ago

Are you seriously defending child pornography right now? First off, the "harmless outlet" concept is absolutely not "well established." Pedophilia is a paraphilia. The desire grows as it is fed.

Furthermore, the reason you hear of child porn rings is because those are what form - people share it with each other in a tit-for-tat sort of way. It absolutely incentivizes the production of more, which means more abused kids.

God damnit HN, I should have known a thread on a Tor node being shut down would bring out all the child porn apologists. Funny how that happens, eh?

rprasad• 14 years ago

I say this as someone who has been in the unfortunate position of defending a pedophile in court, please stop defending child pornography and pedophiles.

Child pornagraphy is not an abstract concept. Child pornography isn't outlawed simply because it's obscene. Child pornography is outlawed because it is depraved, frequently violent imagery or videos of real children actually being violated. This is not speech. This is one of the most horrific, most sadistic acts that a human being is capable of perpetuating against another. It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them. (There are a few situations where images are faked, i.e., by photoshopping children's faces on adult bodies, but this represents a drop in the bucket.) This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.

Will he be convicted of possessing and/or distributing child pornography?

Probably not. Tor is not as anonymous as people think it is; an FBI forensics team will probably be able to track down the real criminal. In such case, this idiot will probably be off the hook. But if they are unsuccessful in backtracing to the real criminal, he will be the sacrificial lamb offered up by the prosecutors for this crime. His conviction (and trust me, there will be a conviction if this goes to trial) will serve as a warning to others: if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn.

error542• 14 years ago

I fully support TOR and I think that overall it's a good thing for the internet but legally I don't know if he has a leg to stand on. Being an exit node operator carries these risks which he knew about so the court system has him there. The danger if he is tried and convicted is that all it sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the TOR network.

Who's to say where the blame stops? Can the relay operators passing the packets along be convicted too? I hope for the sake of the TOR network that he gets off on the charges because if he does not, less and less people will be willing to be exit nodes which essentially means the end of the TOR network.

driverdan2• 14 years ago

Without knowing and understanding Austrian law you can't make such speculations. In the USA he wouldn't be breaking any laws.

jonpaul2• 14 years ago

Really? This surprises me. Do you have any research, evidence, articles to support this?

iamtherockstar3• 14 years ago

I have friend here is the US with loads of bandwidth (he has a hosting business) and has talked about running a tor exit node, but fears that he puts his business at risk if he does that.

I'm interested to see why you don't think he'd be breaking any laws.

ef42• 14 years ago

The legal theory here is that he should have common carrier status, like an ISP.

ISPs aren't generally liable for the things that their customers do over their network.

Irregardless• 14 years ago

What's next? If someone walks across my lawn with a backpack full of child porn DVDs I'll be liable for aiding a felon? I'm sure the authorities would agree that's absurd, yet it's fundamentally identical to this case.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

Wouldn't a closer analogy be someone suing FedEx because you used them to ship a DVD of child pornography?

finnw2• 14 years ago

I think a combination of the two would be a better analogy:

A complete stranger knocks on your door and asks you if it's ok for FedEx to deliver an unmarked parcel of DVDs to your house, and he will collect them from you later.

You do not know his name or address. The package arrives. You open it and examine the DVDs, but find that they are encrypted. You pass them on as agreed.

Next day the feds knock on your door, saying they have a tip-off that some child porn, bomb-making manuals and stolen bank account details were delivered to your address. You tell them exactly what happened. They seize your laptop and search it for said materials, but find nothing incriminating.

Have you committed a crime?

I hope not (in both cases) but at the same time I think if the tor exit node operator is protected from prosecution for illegal material passing through the node, then the person passing on the mysterious package should have exactly the same protection.

dewey2• 14 years ago

his twitter account with some further information http://twitter.com/str0AT [german]

film42• 14 years ago

I will need to wait for his local news to confirm the story before I will donate. I trust him, but you can't just say I need all of your money without proof, that's like a certain Nigerian prince.

I really hope this is fake because its really sad to see people like William get caught in the middle of a situation like this. However, with my gut feeling this is real, I will be waiting for confirmation to submit my donation.

JohnTheRipper• 14 years ago

William has a long history on LET, he runs a hosting company and is among the most well-known users on the site.

iamtherockstar3• 14 years ago

If you go to a bank, rob it, and then walk outside to a waiting taxi, and have the taxi drive you home, is the taxi driver an accessory? I think that in the US you'd really have to make a case that the taxi drive had knowledge of what had transpired.

swalsh• 14 years ago

The thing is, if you're operating a TOR node you should have full knowledge that people are going to use it as much for illegitimate uses as much as legitimate uses.

groby_b• 14 years ago

And if you're operating a cab, you should have full knowledge that people are going to use it as much for illegitimate uses as much as legitimate uses.

Your point being?

baak7• 14 years ago

If you go to a bank, rob it, and then hand the money to your friend for hiding, then your friend is an accessory. (Possession of Stolen Goods at the least)

Did he rob the bank? No. He may have just been at home, not involved in planning at all, you show up with $50,000, ask him to hide it and tell him it's stolen.

He was just used to transfer the goods, but he's still breaking the law.

Likewise laundering the stolen money is illegal, even though you didn't steal it.

anonymous7• 14 years ago

Your scenarios are about knowingly transferring illegal goods. The Tor operator didn't know that illegal data was being transferred over his equipment. In the same way a webhoster isn't liable for the data his clients are hosting.

tomku6• 14 years ago

It seems like a lot of people are objecting to the raid/seizure itself in addition to the possibility of conviction, so I have a question. Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he's an exit node operator?

The way I see it, it's their job* to determine whether the traffic in question was relayed, or whether it was the exit node operator himself generating that traffic. In an ideal world, they could just call him up and ask nicely - but if he was actually guilty, he'd say "No, no way it was me!" and immediately start destroying any evidence. On the other hand, raiding someone's home or server rack and confiscating all of their computers isn't a great solution if most exit node operators are not guilty themselves.

I'm not aware of a good solution that avoids inconveniencing exit node operators without giving them some kind of blanket immunity to investigation that goes beyond just relayed traffic.

* - I'm aware that this might be impossible, but you can't know whether it will be ahead of time. It's possible that they could raid him and find no proof, even if he's guilty. It's also possible that they could raid him and find exactly what they were looking for. Like many investigation tactics, there's no guaranteed payoff.

arrrg• 14 years ago

It’s a separate issue, but raids and seizures itself are very problematic. The police will usually take everything with them and keep it for months.

That made sense some decades ago when they took mostly binders with paper, now it in itself can act a lot like a punishment. Computers are not just vessels containing data, they are also tools. It’s unreasonable for the police to take away tools for months.

cloverich2• 14 years ago

What is the reasoning for taking anything more than the Hard drives?

wahsd2• 14 years ago

That precedent will also need to be tested. Taking someone's equipment, especially when devices are becoming more and more concentrated, is beyond reasonable search of focused investigations. Think about it; when you take someone's laptop, tablet, and smartphone, you are also taking their camera, filing cabinet, scanner, copier, mailbox, picture frames, flashlight, catalog, telephone, gaming console, accounting records, financial documents, pens, wallet, cash money, watches, personal records and records, random people's belongings, keys, notebooks, drafting table, ... and on and on.

What the government in this case, just like all similar cases is doing is essentially as if the FBI came busing into your house and had goons investigating and randomly milling around your house continuously for months if not years. It, at least in the USA, does not hold up against Constitutional protections of reasonable search and seizure. I just don't think it has been tested thoroughly enough.

There is a reason you are not legally just allowed to seal off and load up someone's house, office, business, and cars and keep them hostage indefinitely because some random person may have committed a crime on your property. The precedent for physical evidence has been set and it equally applies to the digital, if tested properly, whether gov't or their corrupt henchmen can wrap their puny, deranged, atrophied, and primitive minds around it or not. Why don't we just go back to the "BAD.....SMASH!" system of legal jurisprudence if blanket taking of everything plus the kitchen sink is ok.

jre• 14 years ago

Wouldn't it help if exit node were run by associations renting some office space instead of individuals ?

I mean, the president (and other members) of the association can still be charged with criminal offence, but having a legal structure might help. At least they should raid the association's office instead of the member's homes.

csense4• 14 years ago

It's probably part of the police mentality of "He's a suspect, that means he's guilty, but if we can't prove it in court we know he'll get off."

So they punish him extrajudicially by taking as much stuff as they can, delaying as long as they can sending it back, and sending it back in as poor condition as possible.

If they Google him and realize he's begging for legal defense funds online, they'll know he's not strong enough to sue them.

paweln• 14 years ago

It is reasonable if the government wants to kill the tor network and start censoring internet, by scaring people off running tor nodes. If they succeed in this case more countries may follow, so it is important to win this.

tomku6• 14 years ago

So given that attitude, how do you deal with the problem of exit node operators possibly performing illegal activities themselves? Should running an exit node give you blanket protection from any kind of investigation due to traffic coming out of your network?

drcube• 14 years ago

It wouldn't be that big of a deal if the cops just searched his computers/hard drives, concluded he wasn't involved in the child porn, and gave him his hardware back with a "sorry for the inconvenience".

But it doesn't happen that way. If Austria is anything like the US, he will never get his property back. So it isn't a temporary inconvenience, he's been punished permanently before even getting a trial. And when this case does go to court, even if he wins he'll be very lucky to get his property back.

tomku6• 14 years ago

I absolutely agree that seizure rules need to be SEVERELY reformed, and that the way that seizures are currently carried out is unacceptable. However, I don't think that it fundamentally changes the situation in this case. Until seizure rules end up getting reformed, law enforcement plays with the hand they've got, not the hand we wish they had. If the choices are between "permanent" seizure or just walking away from a suspect, they'll go for the seizure every time.

Seizing equipment for at least some period of time is absolutely necessary for any kind of forensic examination. It's part of the cost of having laws, and the imperfect nature of human justice means that that cost will occasionally be paid by the innocent as well as the guilty. I agree that that cost should be lower so that innocent people are not unduly punished, but there will always be a cost.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

In the strict public policy sense you could argue the raid/seizure either way; The pro-raid argument would go "This activity harms society by allowing criminal activity which is part of the economics of exploiting children, thus it is right for the state to step in and make these raids to identify and contain those threats." Then you could make the anti-raid argument, "The economic disruption of taking a legitimate business off-line and possibly causing irreparable harm to innocent citizens does not warrant such a drastic measure without solid evidence of complicity in the commission of a crime."

In the United States there is an analogous situation which is that of the 'high speed pursuit.' In the pursuit situation the officers have strong reason to believe the driver of a vehicle was involved in a crime and seek to arrest them. The driver of the vehicle doesn't want to be arrested and so they drive away quickly. If the officers give chase, they greatly increase the chance that harm will come to innocent bystanders. If they don't give chase they risk losing their suspect. Generally those debates come down to things like "what crime might they have committed?" and if it was failure to stop for a right turn, that is seen as not being as 'reasonable to chase' as hit and run vehicular manslaughter.

I tend to fall into the "Do the police work to figure out who the crooks are and if you need the co-operation of an end-node provider then get a warrant to compel that co-operation." But I also have spoken to officers who feel that such restrictions are 'red tape' and keep them from doing the job they were paid to do.

In this particular case we don't have the police version of the story. Perhaps they think this guy is complicit? Did they raid/seize any other end nodes? Did they have a warrant and what did it say? Had this person been involved in other questionable activities? "Presumption of innocence" is not a principle that extends outside of US borders so its always difficult to contextualize police action in other countries to Americans who take their constitution for granted.

morsch3• 14 years ago

> "Presumption of innocence" is not a principle that extends outside of US borders so its always difficult to contextualize police action in other countries to Americans who take their constitution for granted.

What? There's nothing particularly American about the principle, it's an accepted core tenet of all democratic countries and many of the others.

matthewowen• 14 years ago

Sorry, what? Within America, that principle ultimately derives from English common law (from which the legal systems of most former colonies are derived). Moreover, it is a specific part of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which all EU members are party.

Of course it doesn't necessarily apply everywhere in the world (though it'd be foolish to expect any legal doctrine to apply universally, although in this case the doctrine is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which makes it about as close to universal law as is possible) - but it clearly extends beyond the borders of the US (and in fact, the notion of it 'extending beyond the borders' is pretty offensive, as it suggests the US as the origin of the principle).

barrkel• 14 years ago

In the United States there is an analogous situation which is that of the 'high speed pursuit.' [...] If the officers give chase, they greatly increase the chance that harm will come to innocent bystanders.

Not only that, but they increase the risk to the person they are pursuing. It is general policy for UK police not to pursue motorbikes whose riders aren't wearing helmets for this reason. Presumably causing the person to die in a crash is worse than most offences they would be pursued for. It would also cost the taxpayer a lot more.

rmc• 14 years ago

"Presumption of innocence" is not a principle that extends outside of US borders so its always difficult to contextualize police action in other countries to Americans who take their constitution for granted.

No, many countries have "innocent until proven guilty" laws/standards.

e.g. Artictle 6.2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_6_of_the_European_Conve... ) says:

> 2.Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

The ECHR is more than just EU, e.g. Russia is bound by it. (USA is not and would be in breech of it because they have capital punishment).

Article 48.1 of the Charter of Fundamental Freedoms of the European Union ( http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_... ):

> Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

discostrings• 14 years ago

"In the United States there is an analogous situation which is that of the 'high speed pursuit.' In the pursuit situation the officers have strong reason to believe the driver of a vehicle was involved in a crime and seek to arrest them. The driver of the vehicle doesn't want to be arrested and so they drive away quickly. If the officers give chase, they greatly increase the chance that harm will come to innocent bystanders. If they don't give chase they risk losing their suspect."

I think any similarity in these situations is only superficial. In a high speed pursuit, the suspect is alerted to the police's interest in their actions and chooses to run, which is an indicator the suspect has something to hide as well as a crime in itself. The act of running from the police is breaking the law.

The exit node scenario is nothing like that--the person being raided is not aware of the police interest and there is no evidence the operator committed a crime. Even if the the suspect was notified in advance and refused to willingly submit their equipment for investigation, it still wouldn't be the same situation unless they were legally compelled to provide the equipment.

AnthonyMouse6• 14 years ago

>Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he's an exit node operator?

Realistically, no. It's a fishing expedition -- it's like raiding the phone company's offices when someone has used a prepaid burner phone because they have the ability to spoof the IP address or phone number of any of their unidentifiable customers. There is no more reason to suspect that the exit node operator is at fault than any other ISP. Especially given the amount of harassment these raids cause for the victims -- can you reasonably state that the police should be able to enter a telco hotel and shut down and confiscate all of the equipment because not all of the traffic passing through it can be traced to an identifiable source? If not then what makes this different?

>I'm not aware of a good solution that avoids inconveniencing exit node operators without giving them some kind of blanket immunity to investigation that goes beyond just relayed traffic.

The solution is to rely on less disruptive investigative means until sufficient evidence is available to determine whether the exit node operator is the likely source of the traffic. For example, get a warrant and wiretap their phone and email and see if they're trafficking in illicit materials through those channels. Have an undercover cop chat them up and set up a sting if they're doing something illegal. Standard police work.

Udo3• 14 years ago

The fundamental misunderstanding here is that police (and, down the chain, other authorities) actually care about the nature of an exit node. From their perspective all they see is that this guy's IP address was used to distribute child pornography. All his stuff is gone, and they will persecute him for that offense. In all likelihood the court trial will go like this:

  Defendant: "But I was merely running a Tor exit node!"

  Judge: "What's that?"

  Court-appointed expert: "It's a computer program that allows 
    pedophiles to exchange pictures online."

  Judge: "I see. That'll be 10 years jail time plus court costs. 
    Also, please stand by for your copyright infringement trial
    that came out of searching your computer equipment. Thanks.
    Next!"

wissler4• 14 years ago

I think the root problem is that modern governments aren't trustworthy with our freedom of speech, which leads people to try to hide their perfectly legitimate free speech activity, but criminals want to hide too so it's an inherently dodgy proposition. The only really good solution is to fix the governments so we can have an era where people can feel free to exercise their freedom of speech without repercussion from barbarians.

stinkytaco6• 14 years ago

No, the root problem is not modern governments, it’s modern social norms. Which, frankly, aren't a problem, they just are. That is why anonymity and security are important, despite the government's position (which will often reflect social norms). Try to engage in unpopular speech and then later apply for a job. Or simply try to be a public figure whilst trying to have some privacy.

There will always be a place for these tools because there will always be people not just governments, who disagree with you and are willing to show you how much.

downandout• 14 years ago

Depending on the specific laws in Austria, being an exit node operator may make him as guilty as whomever was actually perpetrating the crime. Even if this specific case works out, governments in general won't take Tor or similar services lying down. For every privacy innovation, there is a lawmaker with the will and the means to destroy it.

As Tor becomes a part of more and more investigations, courts and lawmakers will begin to address the issues such networks present. Based on the unsavory reputation of the Tor network as a whole, prosecutors will begin arguing that the exit node operators know of the strong likelihood that they are enabling criminal activity, and will start asking juries to convict them as co-conspirators. If that doesn't work, they will begin lobbying their lawmakers to codify criminal responsibility for them.

lazyjones4• 14 years ago

> Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he's an exit node operator?

In theory, you are right and the police would probably need to examine his servers to determine whether Tor was involved in this. In practice, they will probably just harrass people in the hope that they will confess and keep his servers for a long time (or forever) because they lack the expertise for such an investigation.

jborden13• 14 years ago

People are working to verify that this isn't a scam.

WilliamAT6• 14 years ago

http://raided4tor.cryto.net/ and http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-char... (has scan of the search warrant) should be good enough for now :)

synthos• 14 years ago

Personally, I have 2Tb, and it's not legal (but not immoral). I can't imagine what legal uses an individual could have for 100Tb of storage.

Nyr2• 14 years ago

He owns one large ISP in Austria and has multiple personal projects. And no judge has ever said that running a Tor exit node isn't legal AFAIK.

dewey2• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure he's an employee of the company (edis.at) not the owner (http://www.firmenabc.at/edis-gmbh_EBkc).

acuozzo• 14 years ago

> I can't imagine what legal uses an individual could have for 100Tb of storage.

An example:

Raw captures (e.g., digitized home movies) can take up a lot of space, even if they're losslessly-compressed with a codec like Huffyuv or Lagarith.

I have five raw captures of the same 2-hour VHS movie sitting on my HDD, as I plan to average them to reduce the appearance of artifacts due to tracking differences. Each capture is losslessly-compressed with Huffyuv and approximately __50GB__.

That's ~250GB right there.

seanc7222• 14 years ago

If you do anything with video/photo's and many other types of things the space adds up quickly. I had 2TB filled with just games that I had purchased. Just my steam folder alone is pretty massive. Files are getting a lot larger with the amount of storage we have access to. Just compare a floppy disk to a CD to a DVD. You've only used floppy's and someone comes up to you and shows you a CD... "WOW! what legal use could you POSSIBLY have for that!"

csense4• 14 years ago

This line of reasoning is very troublesome.

Your argument seems to be: "Don't make waves. Don't do anything out of the ordinary."

To many people, having Linux installed on a computer is something that people have no legitimate reason for.

No innovation or individuality. Everyone has to be exactly the same.

Also, your line of reasoning goes against presumption of innocence. The suspect doesn't have to explain why he has that much storage. The police/prosecutor have to explain what criminal acts he's doing with that storage.

WilliamAT6• 14 years ago

It's mainly server backups (encrypted by PGP even) (50% of storage), Movies, Music, Documentaries, Apps (legal and/or free/opensource) (30%), and empty space i had added a few weeks ago for more backups (switching from daily to 3hourly)

hosay123• 14 years ago

This is William of Edis.at, the company offering the free Raspberry Pi hosting deal posted here a few weeks ago.

venomsnake• 14 years ago

Well ... go on authorities. These pirate parties need votes. They are only at 5-6% now. Let's ensure that they can get at least 20% on the next elections.

shocks4• 14 years ago

I feel like I should post this here too:

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en#WhatAboutC...

hcarvalhoalves2• 14 years ago

I can't empathize. With great power comes great responsibility. If you're protecting someone else's privacy by publicly running an exit node for Tor under your name, that's expected.

The open Wi-Fi analogy doesn't fly here. It's more than pure unawareness, you need to purposefully install Tor and route anonymous traffic to the internet. That entails being held accountable for what this traffic is used for.

If an analogy is needed, the right one is giving the key for your P.O. box to anyone with a mask, then complaining you're being charged because they've found child pornography there.

Retric• 14 years ago

I think a more reasonable analogy would be someone selling drugs in your stores parking lot. Your opening a private resource up for public use and someone is using that resource to break the law. However, I have no idea what the case law is and while I suspect the owners are left alone in the vast majority of cases, there may be some culpability.

morsch3• 14 years ago

You're begging the question. Why does routing someone's traffic make you accountable for the traffic? Because someone needs to be accountable?

I'm not sure analogies are very helpful.

hcarvalhoalves2• 14 years ago

> Why does routing someone's traffic make you accountable for the traffic? Because someone needs to be accountable?

The evidence is on him now, so he has to prove it wasn't. Given Tor's anonymity, that's rather difficult, but it's his problem. Which is stupid in the first place, because he dug himself on this hole, and that's why I can't empathize.

khill• 14 years ago

If this guy isn't held responsible for the content, you would be creating a loophole in the law.

If I wanted to distribute illegal content safely, I could just run a Tor exit node and claim that the illegal content originated from somewhere within Tor instead of from my machines.

flyinRyan8• 14 years ago

>you need to purposefully install Tor and route anonymous traffic to the internet. That entails being held accountable for what this traffic is used for.

This is utterly ridiculous. An ISP has to go to a hell of a lot more effort than that. Does that also entail being held accountable for what the traffic is used for?

The guy most likely installed Tor imagining helping groups like wikileaks, not Jimmy Savile.

jeremysmyth• 14 years ago

Tor can be used for good and for bad. It's the very same problem that Cory Doctorow talks about in his lectures about the War on General Purpose Computing, and it's not an easy problem to solve.

I'm an admin on a social/gaming site (a MUD with appendant forum, blogs, and other community elements), and we have had to make a few decisions about Tor in the last couple of years.

Some background: the site is quite old, and we have historically encouraged users to sign up without needing to provide a unique ID such as email address. They _can_ provide one, but don't have to. In the last few years we have had the problem of occasional griefers log on and cause whatever social havoc they can.

Now, my personal feelings about Tor are generally quite positive, and I like the freedoms it provides people who are otherwise restricted by their ISPs or governments from accessing legitimate resources. Like many others have said, Tor is a tool that, while it can be used to do illegal things, is also used to provide a very useful service to people who need it to get on with things you and I take for granted.

Now, back to our griefers: We have a number of banning mechanisms based on IP or domain, and they tend to be successful because griefers usually get bored when they can't access the site for a couple of hours. However, because a tiny minority of griefers are more persistent, more technically adept, and figured they could use Tor to damage our community, we did a little bit of analysis and found that few if any legitimate users of our site came from Tor exit points, and we chose to block them. The alternative was to require a unique identity during the sign-up process, and frankly we wanted as few hurdles as possible to new users (anyone who knows the MUD community knows that it's in decline, and low-friction signups are pretty desirable). So we blacklist Tor exit points from our signup process.

The unfortunate fact is that some Tor users do bad things with the fantastic tool at their disposal, and end up spoiling it for the legitimate (and extremely valuable) use cases that make it such an amazing tool. Yet its very anonymity means that there is no easy way to allow one set of uses while disallowing others. This is a hard problem, and one I'm not smart enough to solve.

jamoes• 14 years ago

This problem may very well grow as IPv6 gains adoption. IP address won't be a viable indicator of identity.

What we need is a distributed, pseudonymous reputation system. In this way, honest users would have no problem signing up for services such as yours, but griefers would have much more trouble, because there would be a very real cost each time they destroyed one of their pseudonymous identities.

flyinRyan8• 14 years ago

I'd be interested to know what MUD it is. :)

systematical• 14 years ago

So can an ISP be raided because child porn went over its network at some point? I didn't think so...so I don't see the difference here.

cwkoss2• 14 years ago

Wow.

William has received more than $1300 in Bitcoin donations in the past 3 hours.

http://blockchain.info/address/1CPKAMtD4bcLrh8SRHfSxBBMmQQ5c...

WilliamAT6• 14 years ago

Yea, um, trust me i didn't expect that - In fact i didn't even look until i read this now and it's true: balance 124BTC (I had around 7 before)...

Now i need to think how i can pay Bitcoins back when this is done (as i don't know if the source addresses are valid then still (if they ever were and not just a proxy source) and who sent what amount at mass sends...) Tricky, probably can't pay bitcoin back :(

cwkoss2• 14 years ago

Yeah, if they paid you directly from an online wallet, sending funds back to the address you received them won't necessarily get deposited in their account. And if they don't hold the private key, they can't sign a message to you with it...

You probably can't pay them back.

rsync2• 14 years ago

You should not be running a ToR exit node from your home.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

WilliamAT6• 14 years ago

The exit in question was located in Poland - Not in my home, i never had any exit running at home. The server used in Poland was however (naturally) registered on my name.

haarts2• 14 years ago

Why?

lazyjones4• 14 years ago

I'd honestly like to know how he paid for all this stuff: up to 30TB/day traffic according to arstechnica (costs surely more than 1-2k euro/month), loads of servers - all with the salary of a 20 years old ISP employee?

qwertyoruiop2• 14 years ago

I'm a 15 year old 'kid` that has been pushing 30TB/day traffic thru a few Tor exits for months just fine, because I truly believe in freedom of speech.

You know, money isn't that hard to get. For me, a few weeks of coding got me a few thousands of euros. He was running an ISP apparently, and selling VPSs. I've been sysadmining a few boxes for a few VPS hosting companies and got enough money to run a few Tor exits pushing over 2Gbps for months.

(Also, I think that it's hilarious that me having my 15-year-old girlfriend pics is considered illegal, thanks to CP laws. )

I truly believe in this: http://datalove.me/

lazyjones4• 14 years ago

A TB of traffic will cost at least around €2-3 from most european (and other) ISPs with VPS so you basically claim to have enough spare change lying around at the age of 15 to pay €2000-3000/month just for Tor traffic because you're an idealist and after buying all the stuff a 15 year old normally buys first? ;-) I call BS, or rich parents.

(and btw., WW was not running the ISP, he wrote somewhere in this thread that he is just a normal employee)

Tor exit node operator raided in Austria

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