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Raided for running a Tor exit - Accepting donations for legal expenses
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i know is an old thread, and all the shit, but i just open the page of the first post
and i see an image, looks interesting, but WTF with those bullets on desk?
http://raided4tor.cryto.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NvRfT.jpg
i dont belive a **** of this.
On his defense... Thank Allah we have a MaoUnique
Maybe not related to topic but just read http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist-forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+linuxjournalcom+(Linux+Journal+-+The+Original+Magazine+of+the+Linux+Community)
and supposedly code for NSA's XKEYSCORE program http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/xkeyscorerules100.txt.
If you click on first link you could get flag'd as extremist by NSA.
Right... Each bill has a unique identification number, this makes it impossible to use cash on illegal things, people buy them with gold or bitcoin, therefore we should forbid those.
Also, even non-central banks, even credit cards processors are used in internet crimes, who do you think is processing the cards with which people buy child porn online, so much for the big and strong regulation, as I proved time and again, criminals do not care about laws and regulations, they do not care if there is privacy or anonymity, they dont need that.
Entering a bank with a ski mask on your face and guns is forbidden, yet most banks are robbed that way (there are variations, some people use bike helmets or similar), entering a country without valid documents is forbidden, yet millions of people are doing it all the time, in many countries guns are forbidden for the general public, yet, every day gangs kill someone with those, drugs are forbidden and they kill directly but mostly indirectly through the crime associated thousands a day. Prostitution is forbidden, human trafficking, slavery, child labor, millions of things are forbidden, but they are forbidden because are harmful (even though in some cases forbidding things makes them harm more, but that is a different topic), while privacy and anonymity are not harmful for the society, they are so only for the police state.
I just saw the following topic on a Dutch IT news site: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97098/beheerder-tor-exitnode-veroordeeld-voor-verspreiden-kinderporno.html
I'm pretty sure its about @William
IIRC the police also seized drugs and weapons (which he claims were legal) in William's flat.
They were legal, the court decided so, otherwise would have nailed him for those.
Edit: Interesting:
Jouw IP-adres (93.115.xxx.xxx) is herleid tot het land met code A1 en dat land staat helaas in dat systeem. Daarom is jouw IP-adres momenteel uitgesloten van het plaatsen van reacties op Tweakers.
thanks, that article and comments are a VERY important contribute to this discussion.
"The court ruled that the exit node of the 22-year-old man 'intentionally' facilitated the spread of child pornography."
and people are discussing that
"He was convicted for his statements about running a Tor exit relay, not hosting a Tor exit relay or others abuse it"
And that is perfectly fine, condemning someone for out of context statements. And how would article 12 apply to that? He facilitated child porn through statements?
@Maounique, that's an article i cite, so i just hope things written there are correct. But Maybe you didn't get the part of INTENTIONALLY facilitate and the part where "in an interview said that the 'no interest' to him that Tor can also be used for the dissemination of child pornography. In chat logs the man Tor would also have recommended for anonymous hosting content, including child pornography"
I think we're discussing a very different thing here now. Maybe the article is wrong, or the court is wrong. But problem is INTENTIONALLY facilitate and recommend using TOR (his node) for hosting content including child porn.
Don't ask me how article 12 apply and how he facilitated through statements. I don't knwow that, But that's not the problem here. Debatement has ended and he was found guilty of INTENTIONALLY facilitate. And if you read the article problem was especially with the 'intentionally' part and his statements.
That's not how Tor works. You don't host content on someone else's Tor nodes, they act just as an intermediate carriers of traffic and don't know or even need to know what exactly it is that they are carrying.
Acknowledging illicit uses of the Tor network as an inevitability -- and acknowledging the anonymity it grants -- is now active facilitation of the illicit uses if you are an Austrian exit operator; possibly even if you are a relay operator.
Depressing.
Nope, that is not so simple.
First, you cannot recommend one particular node for hosting anything. Only the owner has access to the node (he didnt offer access to anyone else) and if he put cp there, you can be sure he would have been in jail for 100 years by now. It would have not mattered if he actually hurt a child or not while people bombing kids are heroes, but that is besides the point, he would have been guilty by using the results of others harming kids. Instead, he is now convicted for facilitating others to use the results of the actions of the actual molesters. Do you think that the court would have let him go if he put some content there? I dont think so. So it is safe to assume he didnt.
Second, I also have no interest that the internet can be used to disseminate child pornography. This means I am guilty for INTENTIONALLY facilitating it, no doubt, since i handle webservers and other internet services and I know those can be used to disseminate child porn, heck, I know for sure some users did, at least, host CP on VPSes over here, and I know it will happen again, no matter what I do (except shut down everything and go home), no connection with Tor, so I am even more dangerous because I facilitate it over the plain text internet where even kids with almost 0 technical knowledge can go, as opposed to using Tor which requires a bit of knowledge. If I say now that I am concerned that the internet can be used to disseminate child porn, suddenly, I am off the hook. So basically, it is a conviction on opinions, because nothing else changed.
Yeah, except you rightfully cancelled those users, whereas William said he didn't give a shit about abuse
Do you see the difference?
you can't read, apparently
Yes, however I cancelled the users I know about, not me nor william can do anything about users we know nothing about, nor in cases of hacking or whatever. I cannot care less for the things I cannot prevent, it is dangerous to go that route. As long as our users have privacy by law and his users too, we cannot start random sweeps to check, nor is that possible, to some extent. I mean it is possible but does not guarantee the elimination of the problem while also being illegal and immoral. Sure, if you think privacy is illegal in US, you can conduct those searches there, but in EU it is not illegal, at least not yet, on the contrary.
@rm_ while i certainly agree with you on most technical aspects, please bear in mind that i'm just citing an article goggle translated and in this ruling the court, as far as i can tell, has given a lot of weight to that part.
If it is true (and we have no reason to believe it's not true) that he suggested using tor for hosting (maybe a bad automatic translation?) child porn, and that he said in a public interview that he just has no interest about the fact that tor can be used for disseminating child porn, we must discuss something different now.
not the technical part about what Tor is, but a ruling the seem to be based on the assumption that he INTENTIONALLY facilitated a crime.
if i understand correct it's quite different to do all you can to AVOID facilitating a crime, and arguing in a interview that you don't care if the service you offer can be used for a crime or even worse to recommend that service to perpetrate a crime.
FWIW i'm pro privacy but i think people must bear responsibility and accountability for their action, and i'm also a father. And the sentence here is about INTENTIONALLY facilitating child porn.
So, the court says he is intentionally running Tor to facilitate crimes. All that based on some forum post.
I am sure that if you read many of my posts here taken out of context, I can be INTENTIONALLY running Tor to facilitate crimes too. I know it can happen, I know I cannot prevent it, I dont do anything to prevent it. As we speak, some terrorists can have Skype discussions about how bombing you might advance their cause you over my Tor nodes. Since I knew it can happen, did nothing to prevent it (monitor ALL traffic as well as decrypt it) and stop it in real time, since I also admit this here, I am guilty of your death. They may never get the criminals but your family will at least be happy there was someone found responsible. This is, of course, instead of actually trying to fight crime but concentrate on reading tech forums in search for evidence to condemn people which value their rights to teach everyone a lesson. Replace Tor with VPS business and it is exactly the same.
In a police state, the state is more busy with maintaining the subjects under obedience than actually fighting crime, in most cases it devolves into a mafia state where the state and mafia cooperate in "taxing" the subjects and sharing profits. The state will spend more time and resources to find and punish dissent than to actually fight crime, mostly petty theft from people not affording to pay the tax on their "business".
Still, that says nothing about using his node specifically.
You can host a website via the Hidden services mechanism, and no one will know where it's actually hosted. Technically it's still hosted on your machine (running a specifically configured Tor client), but with the help of the Tor network, no one can know or prove that fact. By the way exit nodes are not even used at all in this case. Those are for connecting from Tor to the "regular" Internet. Hidden services, on the other hand, are wholely "inside" Tor.
So as you can see this makes it logical to conclude that Tor indeed can be a suitable way to host stuff that is considered illegal in some jurisdictions. But I'm not sure how one can be convicted for making logical conclusions from public and very well known facts.
@Maounique, you still don't get the point. So i'll try to be more clear.
If someone says that he doesn't give a fuck if his actions facilitate spreading of child porn my only comment is rot in hell.
so i do hope it was just a bad translation and not the real feeling of some pro tor activists.
I do get the point, however, if he cannot prevent it even if did give a fuck, why worry about it? Besides, he did not facilitate any dissemination, he facilitated the privacy of private communications which is legal. The fact he gives no fuck if privacy can be abused for no matter what, the way it can be abused is not an issue here and you being a parent should also not matter in issues about privacy, is his opinion, nobody should be condemned on opinions.
It would have been a completely different thing if the police contacted him and asked to take control of the node to check it giving the proper warrants and he said no, even if he did shutdown the node when asked by the poles and would have not mattered anyway. Interfering in an investigation when all the proper warrants were issued, is criminal and I would have agreed he is guilty.
But the police did not contact him (the austrian police), the node was already down at the request of the polish police in an unrelated case, instead the austrian police chose the confrontation, they decided to raid him instead of asking for cooperation, when the raid didnt give them any evidence, they started to base their case on intentions and used threats and harassment to achieve a plea in which he would not appeal because they know the case would have been quashed in eu courts.
I see this as some police department got desperate to get a conviction of any kind in order to justify blunder after blunder in this case and the methods used (starving someone of income to fight the case further, block his accounts, harass their boss to kick them out as well as other things such as threats with extradition when they knew damn well it cannot happen because it was not asked and he complied with the demands of the poles anyway) show this is about right.
I wonder how much this "victory" against a "hardened criminal in league" through some forum opinions with the child porn sharers costed and how many molesters could have been caught by using these resources to actually fight crime and not privacy.
In this case the police is guilty of negligence and gross misconduct for squandering resources against people having some opinions instead of fighting crime. How many kids were molested because of their failure? None through Williams action, but I can bet some criminals had more time to do it because police was busy with this. As a parent, that is what should concern you, why your taxes are misused when crime thrives, why police is targeting opinions and not actions, why they try to block human rights and people "facilitating" their use instead. You should be angry on police, the fact they managed to make it look like Tor or William are the problem here is a major victory for them and criminals, sadly, against us, the citizens that pay the police and suffer the criminal actions.
Can't you all see that the decision of the court is very strict? Police didn't probably find the child abuser or the trafficker of child pornography, and had to find a victim to justify the operation and its costs.
Also, the decision will be used as a fear example for any provider, individual or organization wants to run a tor network in the future or are currently running. In this case, it is about cp. In another case, maybe will be about personal or public freedom.
And, just to see that if Police really want to catch a cyber criminal, even if he uses tors, this is a press report that published yesterday in Greece and has to do with an international crime:
Police arrested two Greeks for coding and spreading a virus/malware (they called it Lecpetex) that infected 100's of thousand pcs all over the world. Via the malware they steal e-wallet usernames and passwords and they used the computers for bitcoin mining. They used tor for spreading the code, mixing services in virtual currency and transfering their revenues from the hacked pcs.
The police didn't arrest the persons that did tor hosting and they didn't close the network. They traced the real criminals and arrested them.
So, in this case, the criminals are not the people than hosting or running tor but those that did illegal activities.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/04/austrian_tor_exit_relay_op_found_guitly_for_ferrying_child_p0rn/
From William's blog:
"Yes, this logs existed – Yes, i recommended Tor to host anything anonymously, including child pornography – Yes, this is of course taken out of context."
Feel free to find me any context where this advice is acceptable
Well that's rather easy. From the same blog post https://rdns.im/part-15
That's called gaining trust, in order to obtain what you need. I bet law enforcement agents under cover say much worse things on ocassions during the process when they need to infiltrate a mafia organisation, for example.
NSA specificly tracks TOR users - http://rt.com/news/170208-nsa-spies-tor-users/
And this is why americans agree Tor is bad because even their government is targeting it. Somewhat schizophrenic, though, since the same government sponsors it, but, hey, that is the land where everything is possible.
You may wish to extend that, after defending Tor people will say you are a child porn advocate too.
William not only isn't law enforcement but doesn't have any proof that he said those things particularly for that reason, as if "if you tell a cybercriminal you can host anything including child porn on Tor, he'll spill all sorts of criminal secrets to you!" is a believable story in any way.
...but enough about your posts :P