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Raided for running a Tor exit - Accepting donations for legal expenses
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Wish I could empty-quote that enough times to fill a page so maybe William/Mao would read it
FWIW (IMO) the law that the OP was charged with does appear overarching in itself, but the best they could come up with to bring a case to court. What's likely needed is more up to date laws to address these cases, not that there's an easy answer or way to describe what's OK and what's not (that everyone can more or less agree with).
It is funny, how in a forum that members are mostly technology geeks, there are so many people that don't mind about privacy, anonymity etc. Tor and other similar technologies can be used for legal or illegal actions.
Also, what is legal and not legal, can be moderated by a government or a lobby that control governments, countries etc. For example, in some islamic countries that has adopted Saria law, it is illegal to talk against the government's methods and rules. A group of people using the internet just to discuss their hate to the undemocratic rules of their country, is breaking the law and will face sentences of many years in prison, or even execution for willing to drop the status. Is this a reason, in your opinion, for those people to use tor?
Another example. A group of people run a small company, their executives are living in long distance each other. Those people are about to complete a new invention so innovated, that will crush a giant company with a lot of sources and lobbying to US or EU. Have you heard about industrial espionage? There are plenty of examples that big companies and/or/together with governments are spying to companies from other countries or competitors to their donors, illegally. Is it legal for our small but brilliant company and their staff to use tor for communication and exchanging data along with cryptographic methods, in order to prevent discover their conversations and the people are involved in?
Julian Assanse received thousand of documents from Edward Snowden. US Government has charged accusations even to the email company Lavabit because it didn't "cooperate" with NSA to give all the private details from all of their client to the authorities, in case someone or something of the million of data has anything to do with Snowden. Snowden has revealed illegal action by his government. Has he (or anybody in his case) the right to protect himself by using tor for sending those information to the public?
An antiregime in North Korea, want to ask for help for escaping from his country, because he is going to be arrested. Has he the right to use tor for contacting to the outside world?
You have to see that in all of those cases, our people are doing "illegal staff" according to the law and their legal system. But, those actions can turn to legal if, for example in N. Korea, people overthrow the regime. In that case, what was illegal before, now is heroic and will be a public hero for his actions.
Yes, tor can be used also (and IS used) for many illegal things. Odious child pornography is one of those things. But it is like a knife: the knife itself can be used for cutting bread and meat, can be used for killing people. Can we forbid the use of the knife? No. Is the store that sold the knife responsible about the killing? Of course, not. What can we do is forbid killings and find ways to find a killer and prosecute him to Justice and then, to jail.
There are a lot of reasons, people should be able to be anonymous and private to the net. There are a lot of examples of governments or officials braking the laws they wrote, turning people to live in a fear. Privacy is not an unnecessary thing. We shouldn't give one of the biggest human rights that great people wrote and fight for, speculated by the governments and officials. Don't bite this propaganda.
P.S. I am totally with @Maounique in this and I totally support @William in his case.
I think William thinks of this as a funny BS. He cannot really enjoy it as he is the one in this absurd situation, but at times you must bow to the absurd and have a laugh.
There are now some moderate people as xyz here
I agree with the rest of his statements, but this is somewhat obvious.
Of course they can be caught, like they were caught before the internet era, like they were caught before the phone era too, by doing some actual police work, with witnesses, infiltration, psychology, baits, etc. The secret of correspondence was in effect at that time too in many countries, yet criminals were still being caught.
It has been argued that the electronic communication greatly hinders law enforcement and enables the criminals.
That might have been true if the criminals were using the internet and the policemen had to ride from UK to russia on horseback. However, that is far from being true, so, while the criminals hide behind screens and keyboards and use fake identities (like I do as some people wisely pointed out so I am also a criminal), policemen and women can do the same, can pretend to be other criminals and offer a great wealth of material they confiscated as bait, most of the time getting one member of the ring actually gets them all as they will identify each other for lower sentences, they are big and bad wolves only in front of scared little girls, but little lambs facing other adults.
The police can also cooperate across countries, this is why Interpol has been invented and when the job is done properly, international rings are easily caught. They have been caught. so it obviously can be done.
Haha, @texteditor are my wild theories and analogies the work of a crazy person? Once the law gets crazy and we only look at aspects we want to see, there is no limit to how much more absurd it can get.
Doesn't matter if I think it is reasonable, because they don't use tor. They use cell phones and regular social networking sites, not esoteric crypto tech.
Even if they did, so what? Anonymity doesn't buy you free speech, anonymity is cowering in the fear of restricted speech. Anonymous people are, at best, doing a service to their oppressors by leaving them unchallenged.
Read my post from the last page, I said that you are probably reasonable at some point, but you like to mix reasonable points in with your cocktail of insults and disjointed off-topic craziness and anonymity-absolutism
If you are not anonymous, you have no privacy online. The widespread surveillance made anonymity a necessity for having privacy. Wiretapping does not need warrants online and while, supposedly, NSA does not spy on americans, does not mean that UK services cant and then trade data, even if we imagine we live in a perfect world and spies are actually telling the truth.
When the dragnet is crawling through mountains of data and gathers a database, it is easy to follow the threads.
There is no point in facing a regime in the open when you have to prove you are innocent. The only way is to remain anonymous and alive so the struggle can continue. There are also many other reasons anonymity is needed in order to have privacy today. You probably did not try to add things up and do not understand how things go in the age of total surveillance.
Indeed, so the French Resistance during the occupation was a bunch of cowards, they should have set up clubs and register as an organization to the Gestapo to prove their manhood.
Anonymity allows you privacy on interactions with untrusted parties. e.g. using startpage.com to access google web search (or the same via Tor)
See, this is you conflating privacy and anonymity. Try mentally separating the two; we have different words with completely different definitions and etymologies for a reason, they are very much distinct concepts.
Tell me more about the things you assert I do (or don't do) for not agreeing with your personal assessment of privacy.
Not really, it is exactly to the point:
1. You cannot invoke any right in a police state, the simple fact of doing so puts you under the microscope even this forum accuses people of being criminals because they wish to use their rights and;
2. When you have to prove you are not guilty, you would better be anonymous.
You do not expect people which leak sensitive information which should have been public because there is a constitution and should be some accountability be treated fairly and to walk free after saying they served the public interest, do you? People like that have to flee the land of the free, imagine how it would be in other countries...
This would be a valid point if anyone did this on Tor; however the serious leakers attach their identity to their leaks on purpose: it gives the leaks legitimacy. No one would care about the Snowden stuff is the source was "anonymous asshole from the internet", because anonymous assholes on the internet make more grandiose claims every goddamn day.
Take it from an American, it's pretty bad as it gets. I can't believe people are so blinded.
Are you really that much of an asshole? Actually I will answer that, you clearly are.
I never said I do not like other opinions, I am saying that yours are confused, badly translated and very dictorial in there presentation.
So just because of my views you feel it's appropriate to suggest I go to a different board. Did you see what you did there?
As a fellow American, this makes me laugh:
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
@texteditor Yes, anonymity and privacy is not the same thing. They are two things that have to work combined to protect several people, in some cases for ethical reasons and in some others, for unethical. As for law, is about the perspective caused by the period, the country, the religion etc. (in the 30's it was very natural in US that women and black people couldn't vote)
If the logic that criminalized Will was followed to its conclusion the central banks could be charged with the crimes of issuing currency that drug dealers, arms merchants and all kinds of low lives use to transact business anonymously.
Being unable to monitor the thoughts and actions of the populace is a nightmare for governments, and this is why governments follow the principle that anonymity is fine so long as it is not anonymous to them.
If they don't have aiding child pornography as a reason for criminalizing people they will find something else, and indeed they always do.
I read somewhere that on the New York metro, occupying two seats or stepping across the path of a police officer is a crime. Apparently if you fall asleep and keel over or you happen to move from one side of the train to the other just when a police office comes around you are in trouble. So much for the land of the brave and the free.
By far the majority of banks are regulated and have process that is designed to detect/prevent these kinds of transactions. Now you can argue how successfully but that process and regulation exists.
No such process or regulation exists for Tor so it is not a relevant comparison.
A big difference between knowing something is happening and trying to stop it compared to knowing and ignoring.
It's Tor, not ToR.
Corrected before someone tells me that it's the reason I don't understand anything about privacy or anonymity.
@W1V_Lee How about cash? Does issuing cash for transactions make banks liable for facilitating the crimes cash is used for, knowing very well that cash is used in crimes?
The simple fact is every thing which has a good, legal purpose can be used to facilitate a crime. Where do you draw the line?
It s like when some senator in the US wanted Bitcoin to be banned because it could be used in secret drug transactions. Apparently someone forgot to remind him that the dollar issued by the Federal Reserve and doled out of cash machines is the currency of choice in 99.99999% of all secret, anonymous criminal transactions.
Indeed, but you know what, this thread will go on forever. Every post a new example to try and replace the previous one.
Each example somehow manages to get worse, as well
That's because we have Maonique, the advocate of everything drama-like on the Internet, who solely contributed half of the posts in this thread.
+1