
Tor exit node operator raided in Austria - Nyr
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/6283/raided-for-running-a-tor-exit-accepting-donations-for-legal-expenses
======
tomku
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.

~~~
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
morsch
> "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.

~~~
hkmurakami
There is a wide spectrum for how strictly "presumption of innocence" is
followed in various societies in practice though.

The creator of the Winny filesharing program in Japan was dismissed from his
Tokyo University Research Assistant position as he went to trial:

 _"On May 10, 2004, Kaneko was arrested for suspected conspiracy to commit
copyright violation by the High-tech Crime Taskforce of the Kyoto Prefectural
Police. Kaneko was released on bail on June 1, 2004. The court hearings
started in September 2004 at Kyoto district court. On December 13, 2006,
Kaneko was convicted of assisting copyright violations and sentenced to pay a
fine of ¥1.5 million (about US$13,200).[3] He appealed the ruling. On October
8, 2009, the guilty verdict was overturned by the Osaka High Court.[4] On
December 20, 2011, Kaneko was cleared of all charges after a panel of judges
agreed that the prosecution could not prove that he had any intention to
promote the software for illegal use.[5] [6]_ "
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winny#Criminal_procedure>)

He was definitely treated by society as if he were guilty of the crime as soon
as he was arrested.

~~~
marvin
By that standard, suspects are often presumed guilty by society even in the
USA (for instance, suspected rapists and other sex offenders). The presumption
of innocence is still considered one of the core principles of democracy
and/or the rule of law.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its a fair point, its much more codified elsewhere than it was at one time.
And to be fair the US has been doing things like locking people in Guantanamo
without due process which is disturbing in itself. The point I was trying to
make clear was that I recognize trying to interpret a story involving the
actions of a the police in a country which doesn't have the same legal climate
as the one I live in, it fraught with dangers in making assumptions that don't
or won't hold up.

------
AlexMuir
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.

~~~
chollida1
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.

~~~
DrWhax
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!

~~~
chollida1
I did not know that.

Thanks

------
drzaiusapelord
>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.

~~~
mistercow
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?

~~~
ahelwer
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?

~~~
btilly
I like how you jump from not being well-established to being definitely wrong.
Everyone is telling you that citation is needed because it very much is. On
topics like this a lot of people have strong opinions, far fewer have well-
informed ones. We want the latter.

Here is my, I believe, moderately informed opinion.

As
[http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pd...](http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf)
makes clear, evidence that we now have says that widespread availability to
porn has coincided with a massive decrease in rapes. Caused? Very hard to
prove (as with most social statistics). But definitely coincided and there
likely is some causal effect.

If that happens with regular porn, the natural expectation is that it is
likely to happen with specific kinds of porn as well. If so, even though we
don't have proof (and proof will be very hard to come to), we should be
inclined to believe that the "harmless outlet" concept is likely valid.

Moving on, let's address your "paraphelia" comment. My opinion is that
paraphelias are sexual orientations that we dislike for fairly good reasons.
However all evidence that I'm aware of says that sexual orientations exist,
have poorly understood causes, and are permanent. Penalizing homosexuality did
not stop it, nor did allowing it create more. When we didn't have operations
to allow transgendered people to become their mental gender, they still wanted
it just as much. And so on and so forth.

Pedophilia is just another sexual orientation. (Actually many subdivisions
exist, some are interested in girls, some in boys, some in both, some also are
attracted to adult women, etc.) You aren't attracted to men or women, you're
attracted to children. As with homosexuality, it isn't likely to ever be
cured. Unlike homosexuality, there can be no possible consent, and expressing
it is fundamentally against our moral values. Unfortunately sex is a very
strong urge, and denying tends to fail in the long run.

There is no evidence that _any_ sexual orientation is affected by availability
of stimulating materials. Therefore it is unlikely that child porn contributes
to the existence of pedophilia. As for incentivizing - anyone who thinks that
sexual beings need to be _incentivized_ to try to do what they are wired to do
doesn't understand sexual drives. Full stop.

I give it better than even odds that if you get to this point, you'll think
that I'm a "child porn apologist". You'd be wrong about that.

Why?

Because, as I said, child porn is interesting to pedophiles. Evidence that
I've seen says that pedophiles actually will abuse children. Repeatedly. If
you can track them down through child porn, and book them for that, you're
probably doing the world a service.

It is kind of like going after Al Capone for tax invasion. It is not exactly
what we didn't like him for, but it was what we could get him on.

Incidentally my opinion on whether child porn should be criminalized will
change very quickly if I ever run into evidence that some combination of
therapy and availability of child porn can allow pedophiles to remain in
society and abuse at an acceptably low rate. (The idea of an "acceptable" risk
of child abuse is revolting to many, but public policy accepts the idea of an
"acceptably low" risk of all sorts of things, like death, dismemberment, etc.
And, honestly, we're implicitly accepting that there is an acceptable risk of
abuse every time we underfund programs to find and help people who are at
risk...)

~~~
ahelwer
hey look at all those fucking words you wrote defending child pornography. I
didn't read any of it, but you should forward it to your family, I'm sure
they'd be very proud.

Glancing up I caught the phrase "just another sexual orientation." There's no
point in arguing with this crap.

You people need to get out of this virtual bubble where child pornography is
somehow a divisive issue and into the real world, where real children suffer
real abuse at the hands of real people so they can get their rocks off. The
lack of empathy is just stunning.

~~~
Confusion
Hey, look how you seem incapable of arguing politely and convincingly, just
because the issue is child pornography.

Pedosexual acts are forbidden because there is no possibility of free,
informed, consent. There is an asymmetric power relationship between an adult
and a child that the adult is probably not aware of. For this reason, and this
reason alone, pedosexual acts are forbidden.

It's entirely reasonable to believe an adult and a child could have a healthy
sexual relationship and some people will testify they had such relationships
as children. The crucial point is that it is never possible to ascertain this
was actually the case and is ever actually the case. If you are a pedophile in
a sexual relationship with a child, it is entirely unreasonable to believe
your relationship is a healthy one. To be on the safe side and because we
cannot possibly differentiate, there is a blanket ban on such relationships.

Pedophilia is not forbidden. Like homosexuality, it is a minority sexual
preference. However, unlike in the case of homosexuality, society is unlikely
to ever allow relationships in which the physical acts to which this
preference leads can have a place. As such pedophiles need to learn to ignore
their feelings. They need help in doing that and we should support every
single one that acknowledges his problem and seeks help.

Pedophiles are not people that abuse children. People that abuse children are
criminals. Usually they are also pedophiles, but that doesn't mean you may
interpret it the other way around. Most thieves are heterosexuals.

Now as to the issue of the Tor exit node. The fact that this instance deals
with child pornography is entirely irrelevant. It may as well have been
illegal medicine sales, exchanging stolen information or other illegal
activities.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he
will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

Coincidentally, most of opinions here are being expressed with the help of the
(optional) pseudo-anonymity allowed by Hacker News. Few would be willing to
have such discussions with the same level of honesty offline or on Facebook
given the public's level of hysteria. It would put a person in real physical
danger.

------
jeremysmyth
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
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.

------
error54
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.

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

~~~
iamtherockstar
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.

~~~
BCM43
The Software Freedom Law Center has stated that in their legal opinion it is
legal, however this does not mean that you won't get raided or harassed by law
enforcement, it simply means you probably won't go to jail.

~~~
Hannan
>> it simply means you probably won't go to jail.

...for a super long time. My bet (admittedly founded on nothing) is that they
book you regardless.

------
film42
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
William has a long history on LET, he runs a hosting company and is among the
most well-known users on the site.

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

~~~
finnw
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.

~~~
joepie91
The validity of that analogy strongly depends on whether local activists make
a habit of passing packages with encrypted contents through your place, to
avoid prosecution of a tyrannical government.

------
haarts
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.

~~~
tomku
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
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.

~~~
tomku
I agree on the general point, and don't think that he should be found guilty
if he was just relaying traffic. However, I think that you have to be very
careful about analogies like that because there's a wealth of subtleties. I'd
like to investigate a couple of them here.

Most of us would probably agree that convicting the post office would be
crazy, yet there's an entire continuum of package delivery services including
the government postal system, private delivery services like UPS, professional
couriers and asking your friend Steve to drop something off on his way home
from work. If Steve gets caught delivering a package that contains drugs, his
claim of being an unknowing "relayer" would likely be viewed with more
suspicion than the same claim coming from a UPS truck driver.

That reasoning makes sense to us because we know how package delivery systems
work, and have a vague idea of the probabilities involved. However, Tor is new
and niche enough that you can't rely on an arbitrary person (or even a police
officer or judge) knowing enough about it to make those same judgments. They
don't know whether Tor is more like Steve or the postal service, and it'll
take time before that knowledge is assimilated.

------
hcarvalhoalves
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.

~~~
morsch
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.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> 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.

------
hosay123
This is William of Edis.at, the company offering the free Raspberry Pi hosting
deal posted here a few weeks ago.

------
cwkoss
Wow.

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

[http://blockchain.info/address/1CPKAMtD4bcLrh8SRHfSxBBMmQQ5c...](http://blockchain.info/address/1CPKAMtD4bcLrh8SRHfSxBBMmQQ5cqahPZ)

~~~
WilliamAT
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 :(

~~~
cwkoss
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.

------
synthos
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.

~~~
Nyr
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.

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

~~~
WilliamAT
Correct, i don't own it - I just work there.

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

~~~
throwaway125
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...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
talk/2012-November/026616.html)

------
venomsnake
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.

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

------
lazyjones
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?

~~~
qwertyoruiop
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/>

~~~
lazyjones
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)

~~~
qwertyoruiop
> A TB of traffic will cost at least around €2-3 from most european (and
> other) ISPs with VPS

The average bandwidth price I got from all the ISPs I used in the past was ~1
dollar/megabit. The ISPs I used for my Tor relays were ISPs I was using
already for bandwidth-intensive HTTP hosting, so I already had quite a few
deals for dirt cheap bandwidth.

I've been paying ~600€ per box (1Gbit, of which I was using at least 60% 24/7,
getting to 100% during day hours).

> 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

Yep. I got it mostly by selling iOS Tweaks on Cydia Store, private consulting
with a few companies, freelancing, and sysadmining.

> and after buying all the stuff a 15 year old normally buys first? ;-)

The only thing apart from my tech equipment and servers that I'm interesting
in buying is weed anyway.

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

Thanks for clarifying that he was not running the ISP. I misread it, probably.

------
shocks
I feel like I should post this here too:

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-
abuse.html.en#WhatAboutC...](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-
abuse.html.en#WhatAboutCriminals)

------
jborden13
People are working to verify that this isn't a scam.

~~~
WilliamAT
<http://raided4tor.cryto.net/> and [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/11/tor-operator-char...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/11/tor-operator-charged-for-child-porn-transmitted-over-his-
servers/) (has scan of the search warrant) should be good enough for now :)

------
systematical
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.

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

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

~~~
WilliamAT
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.

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iamtherockstar
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.

~~~
baak
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.

~~~
anonymous
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.

