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Raided for running a Tor exit - Accepting donations for legal expenses
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I will have to agree with that, however, it is police's duty to prove it was meant to advocate child porn, beyond any reason of a doubt. If they would have found anything on his computers, then we would have had probable cause, but running a Tor exit is not criminal and he was convicted for that plus the fact he knew it could be abused.
As for he is not the law enforcement, well, he does work in IT and defending from cybercrime is something which comes more or less with the job, you do not hire the police only to keep your computers safe, you do investigate DDoSes to the best of your ability to give police evidence (they dont act on it, but that is another topic). If you can get that information by talking to someone in a forum, you do. Having an opinion was not illegal at that time and he could not foresee it will be now, so he didnt take precautions to censor himself.
yes all Americans are sheep, please enlighten us
IIRC they used his statements to police too, not just some leaked chatlog
So? Did he tell police he wanted CP to go through his Tor node or that he set it up to help people spread child porn? I doubt it. From what I know he admitted he was aware it could have happened and this is what I say, he was convicted because he run a Tor exit and he knew it could have been abused.
I think what it is effectively akin to is criminal recklessness (in US law terms)
Not really. Trying to criminalize open Wi-Fis failed there, so, nope, that is not so even in the land of the free.
@texteditor Well, the article from theregister.co.uk is pretty good and dismiss a lot of your arguments.
Maybe William is a bad or irresponsible person, or maybe William had a long conversation with some other people and had to use those phrases in a whole conversation to stand up for his support to tor technology.
It is unethical and unfair to cut a couple of phrases in a long chat, maybe a chat that continued or came from other sessions, lasted maybe for days or weeks, that used those phrases. It is not good to put in jail somebody that is saying "yes, I think that knifes can be used also for killing people", even if he did ever used a knife for that purpose nor willing to do it.
But what (at least) I want to defend here, is not William but the wright for freedom and that include anonymity, privacy and tor technology / networks.
Authorities want to reduce the usage and spreading of methods like tor to the public (although they want to have such methods for themselves).
They can easily use arguments like "some people will use it for child pornography or stealing money", because all they want is not to be used for actions against them: criticizing the governments, starting revolutions (like in Middle East), organized in active communities that will discuss unfair laws and actions of governments, reveal illegal actions from officials to the press/public.
And it is easy for them to do: imagine that you run a tor network and your countrie's authorities turning against you, with an irrational claim. They have money, power, the majority of the mainstream press and a bunch of very good lawers to crush you down. You have peanuts of money, a a mediocre lawyer and no support. Yes, the authorities will win the case and use it as a res for any other similar case in the future.
In Europe, if you lose in regional courts, you can go to the European Court. But the cost, just to deposits the papers (not for lawer expenses, legal representation in the court etc.) is 1.500 euros. For a small case, the whole cost can rise to 15-20K euros and for complicated cases with appeals, can rise to 200-300K!!!!!
We have an expression in Greece: He has the knife, he has also the watermelon. That means that this guy (the authorities in our case) can do anything he wants because he has everything in his own and can decide if he will cut the watermelon, in how many slices will cut it and to whom will give the pieces...
P.S. I don't use tor, but I want to have the wright and the ability to use it in the feature, if I need it, for protecting myself (as just an example, I am a journalist and maybe will have to contact or exchange staff that shouldn't anybody can trace to me)
Authorities want to reduce the usage and spreading of methods like tor to the public (although they want to have such methods for themselves).
They can easily use arguments like "some people will use it for child pornography or stealing money", because all they want is not to be used for actions against them: criticizing the governments, starting revolutions (like in Middle East), organized in active communities that will discuss unfair laws and actions of governments, reveal illegal actions from officials to the press/public.
Well then I guess you should be mad at William for being the idiot who set a really bad precedent then? I pointed out many times upthread that this was the result of him making a series of poor choices and wanting to set a legal precedent that caused this.
Here we say "are painea si cutitul" meaning has the bread and the knife.
We should start looking for associations such as EFF in our countries and start contributing, if not satisfactory enough, start your own, so you can represent poor people in the fight with the government, it is the only way to preserve your rights. Some kind of mutual fund for defense against the state.
While I agree that did happen, it was not foreseeable for William that the police will win or it will be so costly, from what I know the Austrian legal system is not that bad, it was bad luck in this case, not his fault.
@texteditor Read again the article, I didn't watch the trial, neither did not you. If I believe theregister.co.uk, I think that William wasn't the evil in this case. Maybe he poorly handled the situation or his tor network, but that is not a crime ans shouldn't be.
Here is England/Wales types of culpability, I'll try and find Austria's later, but this is effectively the true indicator of his level of guilt that led to his sentence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England_and_Wales
What he did falls somewhere being Recklessly and Knowingly culpable, depending on which of his statements he's made the judge took into consideration
I never said he was evil, but poorly handling his situation/network does fall under some form of negligence/recklessness which is a concept most legal systems do have (and should)
Well, Mao, what I do for living has a role in that (even if the majority of my proffesion are not so ethical...). As a journalist I have (and it is an obligation to do that) a role for protecting people and reveal / highlight what the powerful people are doing against us. I'm trying to do that, even with my limited abilities.
But I am disappointed when I see opinions on a large portion of the world, which wants to limit their rights ...
Running a tor exit isn't a human right, never was, never will be
Nope, saying you do not care is different than saying you wish for something to occur. And, even in UK, open Wi-Fis are legal even today. Assuming you are from there, which I doubt. Your opinions are from US, so maybe you came to UK recently or you moved to US from UK early in life.
@texteditor Let me use your argument (negligence/recklessness) in another example in your country (you live in US, don't you?). The case of Lavabit.
The owner is facing charges because Snowden used his cryptographic email service to send to Wikileaks the famous documents. The owner of Lavabit ordered to give the details of all his users (!!!!!!) and access to all the documents / staff they have in their account. Isn't that an assymetrical requirement? Can the owner of Lavabit accused for "negligence/recklessness" because in the way he handled his business / operation / service, Snowden did reveal government secrets?
Yes, that is how justice works there, they are also saying it is the fault of the people that leak the data US is involved in war crimes, dealings with criminal regimes, are despising and spying on everyone else including their allies just like any other regime out there, because if nobody knew, they could have claimed the moral high ground. This is lowering US status in the world and it will cost more and more to bomb countries into submission because the majority of the population will rally behind the regime there, no matter how unpopular before, it is at least their man, while the US regime would be an occupation one. The times when americans were expected to save people from oppression and was enough to show up to topple regimes are long gone, and that is because such revelations, therefore it is the fault of those traitors.
@Maounique All true, but it is not the US alone. Powerful EU countries (Germany, UK, France) and the smaller ones as submissive (including my country) involved, if not leading, bombing and occupation of other countries. We, as country, have bankrupted but we still have troops in Afghanistan (!!!!!!!) and buy with 10's of billions of euros, submarines and fight aircrafts from Germany, France and the US for... our protection. So, people have to understand that the problem is not the "evil" US but also the "evil" Greece, Romania, Austria and all that are playing their profit games on our back...
Assuming you are from there, which I doubt. Your opinions are from US, so
I know they are different, the page I linked said they are different, but they both carry culpability in the eyes of the law in most, if not all, legal systems
Open Wi-fi is very much not an adept analogy
Also, yes, I am from the US, but my opinions are more from an actual understanding of how culpability works as a legal concept than some nationalistic drivel you invented.
It's the international dream where the companies operate everything, while 1% are rich, and 99% are poor. This is one of the ways they're doing it.
@jvnadr
Nope. Our countries are the victims here.
Greece cheated and cooked the books, at least, but romania had no guilt, yet basescu decided to play the austerity game because angela merkl saw it is not doing any good to anyone and needed a "success story" to prove it worked, kinda giving bad medicine to a healthy man, he would feel bad for a while, then recover and say it was that the medicine worked. There was no real crisis here before Basescu started to cut wages and pensions. He was suspended by the parliament and voted down by the population in a 9:1 proportion but EU and US cried suspension is a coup by the parliament supported by the tanks of the referendum (a procedure described in the constitution), and the troops of the population in the streets, he used his secret services to blackmail one of the judges in the constitutional court he did not control so he was reinstated by cooking the population numbers and say the referedum did not have 50% of the voting population only 46.6 or something. The last census showed his population figures are wrong but it was not yet validated more than a year later by his statistics men so he used figures from the times romanians could not travel anywhere, 3 millions more than in reality.
Here too, the people used social media to organize protests, as well as phones with prepaid cards (so now they outlawed them) and people involved in the protests are still traced today, one military man has been only recently re-activated after winning the court case, but if he could remain anonymous he could have had no harm. Also people are harassed because they urged the population to vote in the referendum, INCLUDING those that asked family members and neighbours to do it.
There are big battles ahead to win back the right to control our governments, in the end, general strikes will work because they cant function without our work and taxes, but can kill unlimited numbers in the street. How can you organize then if you are not anonymous?
LOL? Why so? The operator of the open wi-fi does not keep any logs and even if he did, MACs can be forged, they are even more the target of criminals because Tor is used by people in oppressive regimes to organize and for people to leak documents to the press, while and open wi-fi will be used by someone in that country so it is expected it will be blocked and controlled like any other connection there therefore there is no motivation to be used for political purposes. There are people operating them specifically to provide free service for the neighbourhood:
https://openwireless.org/
http://freenetworks.org/
So they know those can be abused. Yet, open wi-fis are legal and attempts to convict people for running those of criminal negligence or whatever is that called in your law, failed.
The better question is how can you organize with anonymity, given that you generally need to be able to trust your compatriots for success, and anonymity throws that out the window
You see, you do not know what you are talking about. This is not the kind of resistance movement you see in the movies where people need to meet to carry out strikes and fight with weapons and bombs, this is happening in countries where guns are illegal and you can only march peacefully or organize general strikes. For that you do not need to know who someone behind a certain nick is and it is better not to know so in case of torture you cannot give him up to the police even if you are the hero in the movies which can take any amount of torture (nobody really can and in time will go insane at least, those that survived were not really tortured by the book) and your ordeal will be much easier knowing that not even drugs can make you tell them what you do not know.
You only need to put up sites where people organise and democratically decide. Like lets start the movement in this town with a march, others might say no, that is not good, lets try this town, people here are more motivated due to x cause, ok, we will do it in 3 days at 9 AM.
Do you need to know who those people are? Police will know when the march takes place, obviously, but if there are hundreds of thousands of people, even if they occupy the meeting place, people will gather around and unless the police has at least 1/3 of the numbers, they cannot stop it. Start killing and arresting people seen on "security of the government" cameras and the next step is general strike and that will succeed. No need to gather and put up bombs or attempts on politicians or army/police chiefs.
Presuming police will manage to seize those forums, sites, force social media sites offline one way or the other, people will move on, you see desperate attempts when they cut off internet and phones, but the government still falls.
+1.
If you hide a criminal in your home after they commit a crime, you will be charged with aiding and abetting. If you buy stolen merchandise, you will be charged with possession of stolen goods. See what I'm getting at?
It's easy to pretend that you don't know what your exit node will be used for, but in reality, everybody with the technical experience to setup a Tor exit node knows very well what it will be used for. Tor was like a trap house; People found out where it was, and it was spoiled.
^ This is it.
Ultimately it's a conscious decision if you're mentally fit. It becomes an argument of what is the lesser of two evils, or in Mao's case, looking at a fundamental change in the way society works.
Why not? Open wifi, just like Tor, can be used for both legal and illegal things.
Not at all. William did not hide any criminal or crime and the police visited him and tried to find evidence of that, but failed. They could only prove what he admitted, that he was running an exit node in a datacenter and that he knew those can be abused as many other things can. That in itself is no ground for any retribution from the police, but he got plenty as well as the people around him, even his employer.
He was ultimately condemned for an opinion, without it there would have been no case, and even that taken out of context and not a ground to convict anyone in a normal justice system. Note I suppose that is truly his opinion since he cannot prove otherwise sufficiently well, even if the other guy is in jail, but the burden on proof should not be on his shoulders, nor should he be asked to disprove he had an opinion anyway.
It is obviously a conscious decision as it is to run a VPS company or other kinds of hosting, including forums. You know your users can share illegal stuff in anonymity on your forum, who is actually reading all PMs in a big forum, who is supervising all chat rooms in IRC even private ones, and if you do, you will only be able to ban one IP or two, those people can always get others, from Tor or botnets or stolen phones/laptops or open proxies, or open/hacked wi-fis or accounts bought with stolen identities and cards or hacked VPSes or even websites used to redirect, whatever.
The ultimate tool to share illegal material is not even Tor, but something like freenet where you connect only to trusted peers and they cant know what you are doing either not what you are inserting, nor what you are downloading, even if you cook it, it has everything, chatrooms, websites, mail, it is even hard to prove someone is using it unless you are on the friend list used by the victim to connect. This is the future of privacy and anonymity, it has all, including padding the connection so you cant even trace the number of bits, it can function over UDP on random ports, one day you will be able to create totally encrypted instances to float free over the internet in the shared resources of your peers, impossible to prove your VM is even using someone's computer, not to mention who is communicating with, or, even better, the big mesh everyone will join for free out of control for any authority.
If I were the police I would not even try to fight privacy online, it is a lost battle as long as encryption is allowed and links become faster and computers more powerful. Police and the law should fight crime, not privacy/anonymity.
Taking a bunch of wrongs to prove something is right, or at least "not any more wrong" isn't a compelling argument, which seems to be your prevailing way of thinking... and probably doesn't do the general case a favour.
Funny how someone who claims to be raised under an oppressive regime can be so vocal about freedom of information and a right to privacy.
Maybe if you were more adherent to the laws of the lands you could come up with even more enlightening ideas, perhaps even more coherent
)
Just as another side comment/ramble/opinion... freedom is like a carrot on a stick.
What are you talking about?
I prove criminals dont need Tor nor are they caring about laws.
I also proved that this case did not good, not one kid was saved, not one hour cut from their ordeal, on the contrary, harassing a few people and cooking the case to eventually get a conviction you could have gotten directly from the forum (yes, he said he is running exits, yes he said he does not care what passes through it which is the basis for the conviction), staging raids, fake interrogations, going to unimaginable lengths to make sure the guy ends up bankrupt and cannot appeal, costed much more in man hours (policemen have fat wages as well as prosecutors) and resources spent than what could have destroyed at least a real ring of molesters or at least some people making money from selling CP and adding to the problem by doing normal police work instead of working against privacy and anonymity.
So, the target was not crime, they did not care less for the kids, they wanted to prove William is a pervert and failing that at least drive him mad and broke so people searching privacy online will not try again.
@texteditor @ricardo
1. Can you honestly say with a straight face this prosecution and conviction serves the purpose of protecting the kids from William or other Tor Exit operators?
2. Are these really going after kids, taking pictures of them, raping them, selling the results, profiting in any way, even assuming they should have known better the risks of fighting for theirs and other people's rights?
3. Can you honestly say one kid or one hour of their ordeal has been saved through this?
4. Or they are even one step closer to the one which used the node in the first place?
5. Are you even sure that guy was an actual child molester or harmed any kid?
6. What happened with beyond any shadow of a doubt, with the purpose of justice to, well, make justice to the victims by punishing the perpetrators, what happened to the cash strapped police in time of crisis which cannot pursue just any small case of people mugged or car stolen, but can go after people re-affirming their constitutional rights?
Yet you are full of hate and quick to condemn SOLELY because of the subject at hand, since it was a conviction of an austrian guy by the police for alleged child pornography even tho no evidence of that has been found. You do deserve your fate
This was never the question and you know it, stop being disingenuous