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Raided for running a Tor exit - Accepting donations for legal expenses
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That wasn't anonymous, we know who and why, and the information was shared.
Still means someone knows who you are. In some cases 1 person who can identify you is exactly 1 too many.
And didn't a VPN provider recently release customer information? Not so cool when they supposedly guarantee anonymity.
I don't think any freedom fighter in the history was using some kind of anonymity. I'm not sure how you can hide behind a computer with pizza crumbs on your shirt and fight for democracy
Say, you gathered people around you using TOR under a manifesto. Everyone is using TOR. So all anonymous. Alright. Then what happens? They need to meet in person to actually do something, right? What about one of those trusted guys on TOR was a government agent?
I'm sorry but I think it's useless for people who are actually after doing some revolution.
I am not sure what you mean, NSA was operating secretly. They were lying about the scope in principal but in many other aspects.
Apparently that's their right, because they're entitled to privacy, remember.
VPN doesn't guarantee anonymity. VPN guarantees to use a third party IP for your internet usage.
You cannot be anonymous in a physical world. They'll see you face to face when you interact with other people.
What has changed in the last 10 years and people started to want to hide their identity?
In the end it won't matter what you try to hide behind, because your ISP still traces everything you do. Sure, you can mask yourself from the websites and IPs you connect to, but as long as you aren't your own ISP, then they'll just log all of your connections. You can't trick them by trying to use Tor or even a VPN.
One could use kali-linux to hack into a WiFi connection and use that connection behind a offshore VPN. Use Google translator through a few languages to prevent language profiling & never make any prolonged direct contact with any persons or release private information. Tails OS is a plus too.
This isn't HF, and your method isn't legal and will get you in bigger trouble for breaking into a secured domain.
I know that, and you know that, but most people don't. And the copy on most VPN websites doesn't make it easy for most people to understand. I just loaded up 5 random VPN provider pages, and 4 of them specifically mention anonymity. The 5th didn't mention it on the main page, but did on another page.
10 years ago there was only experimental video surveillance. The internet was more or less secure, in the sense the state was only starting to realize the power of so much data, so much private dirt to dig on various people and force them to resign or shut up, imagine if they could not find out about Petraeus affair, it was almost impossible to sack him, he had a great reputation, in the best case scenario would have taken months if not a year to dig up his "grave", and there will be more and more strange rulings by judges, will you ever know why did they rule like that? Unlikely.
But, even 10 years ago there was identity theft, in the days of today's surveillance, identities are even more valuable, but also easier to come by as more and more people are online and the average IQ is diminishing, we notice this every day, for example people consider transparency is the right of the state to know what the citizens are doing in private, because they are guilty until proven innocent and only by keeping tabs on each and everyone law and order can be kept. And people believe that, soon they wil ask for warrantless searching rights for their homes, since they have nothing to hide. Once police can enter at any time, they can plant anything.
Ahh I see.
So hosting a tor exit node that was used to traffic/pass-through child porn is legal? The OP knew the risks assosicated, and deserves the consequences for the actions he did willingly. He understand what the tor network is, what it's used for & the legal burden that came with running exit nodes, or any nodes for that matter within the TOR network.
I mean, let's see.. we have several large drug markets running via tor, we have child porn, we have a wikipedia-like directory for hit-men & god knows what else.
If you think he deserved what happened to him, then you deserve to be castrated in order to prevent future generations of people who think as ignorant as you. His intent was not to promote child porn or anything illegal. His intent was to promote internet freedom and fight censorship for those in countries who are blocked with a national firewall. Hosting a Tor exit node isn't illegal, it's what it is used for that determines legality issues.
When you use Tor, the only thing your ISP can log and trace is the fact that you're connecting to the Tor network (or not even that, if you use Tor Bridges with an obfuscated transport). Sure this on its own also can be considered "suspicious", and that's why the Tor project advocates that more people use Tor for various reasons including of course the more benign ones, as it will become harder to track down among them those who are doing the real deal stuff (such as dissidents and whistle-blowers).
...and he did dick-all to prevent abuse.
He does deserve what happened, I mean we've only heard his side of the story so far but even given that he still seems like he got a slap on the wrist
It probably wasn't - but he KNEW that it had the potential to be used for such activity and with such association there comes legal consequences.
This probably was his intention. There are other ways to promote internet freedom and censorship, not through ways that have the potential of one of his nodes being used to pass-through child porn (as demonstrated in this case); the tor network is very commonly a hub for activity that isn't legal, he knew this, the court knows this. Censorship & internet freedom is a very debated topic.
Exactly! In this case a service owned or rented by him was used to harbour (pass-through) child porn. He's responsible for every bit of that.
He's helped some mentally sick person obtain child porn and thus should be prosecuted accordingly by the law. I know the whole community loves him, but hey, he helped someone obtain child porn, he's responisble for it. It's basically like he's downloaded the child porn himself.
It depends, did he know it MIGHT be use for something bad? Yes. Did he know that if someone else is doing that he will be paying for it? No.
Police's job is to find the perpetrator, the punishment or retribution is done to serve a purpose, mainly to stop the crime, in this case child molesting, however, William was not punished for child molesting, nor punishing him keeps him from doing it "again", and to the people that claim otherwise, can you really say with a straight face that if they have found anything, any shred of proof acceptable in court, they would have NOT punish him for child porn and choose to give him a lesser sentence out of the good of their heart? Or bad, in this case, because leaving a child molester free is criminal.
Once again, the punishment and harassment does not serve any purpose for the society, in fact harms it:
1. There was a lot of money and time badly spent. The police could have used it to infiltrate those rings and find some real criminals;
2. A life is destroyed, a productive member of the society becomes an assisted, a liability;
3. Fear of retributuon for using their right to privacy as well as the right to a fair trial is instilled in the population at large, harming democracy and the freedom of speech;
4. Child porn thrives because the police is following untamed ornithoids.
The justice and law enforcement system is supposed to benefit the society and protect the people, when they are working against the people and leave real criminals alone, then we have a problem, but that is difficult to see for the crackheads that never experienced a true police state and are ready to give up their rights for some illusory safety despite of all the evidence of the disastrous consequences in the long recorded human history.
Yeah, uh, ignorance of the law has never ever been a valid criminal defense
@Maounique @vienna
Please occasionally hit the enter key, reading your texts is very hard without them :-(
Actually, he knew the law, and the law says the criminal should pay. He is not a criminal, nor he helped a criminal willingly, so, justice was not served, the criminal is free and the bystander is guilty.
Tough luck.
Sorry to disappoint you, but proper formatting isn't going to give you much extra in regards to coherence in those posts
Just like the guns! Guns kill people, right?
/sarcasm
In the same way a bus or a cab driver helped someone rob a store far from their home.
He didn't help that mentally sick person to obtain child porn, he (unwillingly) helped them to reduce the risk of getting caught.
Yes actually, we do have laws regarding reckless behavior with guns that results in unintentional death! Who knew?
You are actually defeating your own point here, and this is "it is impossible for the police to track criminals because anonimity online exists". You need to decide your argument, either it is possible to find criminals through normal police methods and in this case the crackdown on privacy and the rule of law is completely unjustified OR (not AND) it is not possible for the government to track them down due to stupid laws that guarantee privacy. You cannot use both arguments as it suits you.
So, you say police can do their work and find the real criminals, in this case picking up on William is a gross misconduct and criminal behaviour since he was seriously injured in the process. This is what I am claiming all the time, if police would do their job instead of harassing people which value their rights, we would have less crime, hence less of a need to crackdown on privacy.
If they cannot do that, then Tor is really helping democracy and transparency as well as free speech. Civil liberties and human rights cannot be collateral damage in fighting crime, losing those means the end of the society the law should protect. Law will be unusable in a police state, a simple pretext for abuses.
Pretty sure it was willing*, William does know what Tor is afterall
Anonymity is neither a civil nor human right, and never has been
Privacy is. There is a reason why police cannot search your home at will. You cannot be private on the internet without anonymity.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Dragging out the internet to find something to harm your honour and reputation should not be allowed. Instead law enforcement can pose as anyone they like (save a real person which does not agree prior to that) and then gather evidence as long as it is not entrapment.
As @serverian said, even a policeman can infiltrate a child porn ring and lure the criminal with undoubtedly vast material they have. What did they do before the internet? Or there was no crime before?
This isn't true