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Raided for running a Tor exit - Accepting donations for legal expenses
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lol. whatever oppressive regime you were under were doing the rest of us a favour.
If a person asks the head of the central bank whether receiving payment in cash makes a transaction untraceable, and the central banker answers truthfully, and it turns out that some people engaged in untraceable criminal transactions using cash, can and should the executives of central bank be indicted for facilitating crimes?
Consider this example. A person walks into a car showroom and in the discussion with the salesman he ask whether a 50mph collision with a human being will kill the human being, which the salesman answers truthfully. The person then buys a car later, not necessarily at the same car dealer and deliberately runs over a person. Is the salesman he spoke to guilty of facilitating a crime?
What about client control? Other services implement various methods of client control, including: MaxMind, GeoIP filtering, phone verification, blocking outbound traffic on SMTP/mail-related ports, accepting & responding to DMCA and other abuse complaints, and having terms of service in place.
I don't think Tor is evil. I think running an exit node is a risk at this point.
And that is exactly why Willliam has been dragged through this, to show police can make your life hell if they want to and dont need any evidence you committed a crime and not even a crime to obtain conviction, some forum post should suffice, even though it does not even show intent, but rather indifference.
It wasn't a morally repugnant statement, it was admission to the crime of criminal recklessness
jesus christ you guys, at least read a bit before replying
lol for fuck's sake mao
We forget one thing, the node WAS ALREADY DOWN, due to a complaint by the polish police months before. So, if he had any logs, they would have been lost already because aut police is busy following some untamed ornithoid not really fighting crime AND he proved he does listen when the police calls. If he was that hardened "criminal" hellbent on playing the don quixote of human rights against the madness of the state and fellow humans which the state represents, he would have told them to have a good one because running Tor is not illegal.
So, they convicted him on a declaration CONTRARY to his actions proving that opinions and ideas are more important in a court of law than the actual actions. Because they fear the spread of words and "dangerous" ideas and not crime.
So, they convicted him on a declaration CONTRARY to his actions proving the opinions and ideas are more important in a court of law than the actual actions. And they are right to fear them, the word is more powerful than the sword.
So you didn't actually read anything William said, good to know
I don't get this, does Romania not have laws on the books for drunk driving or manslaughter or any other crime where the perpetrator takes unnecessary risks that can or do result in a terrible outcome, though not intentionally? How is this hard for you to grasp? This legal concept is at least as old as fucking Babylonia.
In what way is his statement an admission of criminal recklessness? Did he make it known to the parties he was conversing with that he operated Tor servers, and did he invite them to use his network?
Was the fact that he was involved in such a discussion come out before his arrest or was it later during the investigation that it was discovered?
His conviction is nothing more than a warning by governments to those who threaten to undermine their ability to monitor and spy on the population.
Is that the only Tor exit node from which CP has been tracked or what? Why haven't lots of Tor exit node operators in Austria been arrested and convicted by now? To me it seems that the CP angle is being emphasized as a means to gain public support for an impending crackdown on Tor.
Take Silk Road for example which is operated behind Tor. Why haven't more Tor exit node operators been convicted for facilitating drug dealing?
That is not the issue here, intention was brought on by the court and should have had no place in the ruling because that post does not show intent, merely that he knew the risks and he is not ready to do police work unless he wants to, while actions prove he even acted on the warning by shutting down the node.
So, the issue is like this: Does Romania have laws on the books that forbids people from picking up some hitchhiker when they know they could be carrying anthrax with them, even though they know the risks and say they do not care, if not are they required to do a cavity search for drugs, take a picture of their ID and keep it for more than a year. Not to mention that they dumped him as soon as there was a hint of that.
I will make my final note before I head off, got a plane to catch.
The real issue with Tor for me is that there is no discussion to be had really, the nature of Tor is that you need to accept it for what it is, warts and all. You can't say "let's put x process in place to stop bad things" because that likely then breaks the integrity of the system and leads to that veil of secrecy being eroded and lead to identification.
That is really why Mao is going all keyboard warrior on the subject and can only reply in his usual style of "I am right, you are wrong, the world is against me and my way, none of you understand" when something does not go his own way. Only being able to reply with pointless scenarios is the only way you can attempt to defend Tor with others that are unwilling to accept it because your argument for it is entirely finite.
Now ultimately for me, if you setup Tor you know what you are doing, why and the opportunities you are providing to others. In doing that you accept that something like what has happened to William could come your way. If it does soak it up, don't come begging for money and support. There are so many people that have made a stand in the world that need real help and support, William is not one of them.
If you provide a service that allows illegal activity and you know that is likely to happen then I believe you are part of the problem and are proportionately responsible whether you knew precisely what was going through your system or not, you know it's very likely something illegal is. You were a willing facilitator of the data whether you knew what it was or not.
If you want to protect yourself against the risk of being held accountable then ensure whatever goes through your network can be tracked/traced. But of course that would not be Tor. But you know that and again the risk you take.
Now I am fairly familiar with the world we live in, I am willing to lay some good money on the fact that Tor is used more for illegal than legal activity. Crime is bigger, far, far bigger than freedom or privacy and as a result Tor is just too good for criminals not to make the absolute most out of.
On the point of child porn. Whilst the removal of Tor would definitely not stop this it is just as much about dealing with the distribution of what is already out there as much as the perpetrators themselves and therefore in my view can't be ignored.
I understand Tor more than I used to, I understand it's benefits and where it can be a very good tool but refer back to the 2nd paragraph up.
Put your polls out there in the little geeky communities saying should we ban Tor and the result I am oddly sure will be No. Put the poll out to the world explaining clearly the pro's and con's I am willing to be the answer would be to ban it.
Anyway, enjoy your evening.
Of course not, I'm sure it has been tracked to many exits, here is where William fucked up:
No more comment required on this.
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97098/beheerder-tor-exitnode-veroordeeld-voor-verspreiden-kinderporno.html
That is not what it means. He knows anything includes child porn, not that he specifically recommended it for that. It enters the realm of he knew the risks. When I say you can host anything on Tor, does it mean I ask people to do illegal things? Even if someone comes and asks, hey, may I host CP on Tor with minimal risk and I say, yes, that is answer to a technical question, not a recommendation. Of course they can, it does not concern me the content, I am the technological person that shows how a legal technology operates not the law enforcement that is required to police it as you were quick to show when it suited your argument.
Read the second roughly translated half of the quote Mao, stop cherry-picking.
He told investigators that he knew people were use Tor and his exit for child porn and that he didn't care.
Had William said what you just said here to investigators, and not some variation of "yeah I'm inadvertently facilitating crime but I don't care", the outcome probably would have been different
And i would have said the same, I do not care because it is not my job to check it, many technologies can be used for that and really harm minors not just share some files, from phone cameras to sophisticated 3D ones, from pharmacology to hypnosis, all the info to use those in a bad way is on the internet available to anyone, it is not the job of the people posting it there to make sure it is not misused, that is police work.
Try and get Uncle Sal to adopt this policy if you truly believe it, I'm sure he'll tell you no
I am sure he will let me post in the forums how to operate a tor node, from a to z, but this is better illustrated elsewhere. We have many chinese and iranian customers as well as people from the gulf monarchies. There is plenty of potential readers to make good use of their boxes, however, Exit nodes are forbidden here, but I did tell people they can host .onion sites because that does not create problems with the police not to mention we at least did host gateways tot he .onion sites, maybe still do, that is not illegal and does not create drama with the police, not even in Italy.
And we are actually following the law, we respect people's privacy and will only look for Tor nodes in public lists, including relays on Biz plans which are forbidden because we strive to give the maximum of burst capability there and constant relay traffic would have eaten a chunk of the port, not for other reasons and volunteers supporting freedom out of their own pocket do not go for the expensive products anyway.
By self-policing your network and saying "we don't want child porn coming into or out of Prometeus' network" you are already lightyears ahead of what William said in regards to reasonableness and legality
Seriously, if this were a more reasonable Tor Exit operator in Austria that got arrested and said "I know it could be used for child porn, but I don't want it to be" charges would have been dropped
William isn't reasonable, however
And you just proved my point that he was convicted for an opinion.
Not an opinion, intentional recklessness which he admitted to
Then why let him off the hook if he did that just for a few words? Anyone who is running a Tor exit knows there are risks, he is also a techie and even if he said he didnt know nobody would have bought that. I would have said even more, I am sorry it did, but cannot be helped, he stated more bluntly that he doesnt care, in the end the result is the same, I say I am sorry and I am let off the hook even if I did not take the node down, he says he does not care but takes the node down months before on a lesser crime involving some fraud, so he proves he helps child porn flow even if we agreed that is not the case and he actually protected the identity of people sending traffic through his nodes.
The police had no warrant to check it because they did not even know who was that person and not really what an exit node is and why people run them so he did not interfere one bit. If anything, explained the police what are they dealing with, possibly not taking into account their limited capacity of thinking beyond an IP address=one criminal thesis.
good lawyer I guess
edit: oh, if you are referring to my 'reasonable Austrian exit operator', the difference comes down to intent once again
Like I noted/linked yesterday, determining intent for crimes in more complex than yes/no, there are many kinds of intentions by which weigh responsibility for a crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#England_and_Wales
The person I described would fall under negligence, where as William would probably fall under recklessness (or oblique intention)
These differences are generally the same as the kind we use to separate manslaughter from 3rd degree murder, 2nd degree and first degree
Perhaps, but in that case you have a clear prejudice, someone died, we have a corpse without which there would be no conviction in most cases, here we have no evidence there was even one kid harmed, many people forget that kids are not kidnapped through the internet, nor are they raped online and these things happened before Tor, before internet, even before electronic communications, it could have been argued some actual CP producer benefited somehow materially, unlikely, though, since it is highly unlikely for purchases to be accepted through Tor.
This is how police was conducting investigations before internet and Tor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux#Criticism_of_police_investigations
It was not privacy and anonymity, the man had none as he was convicted before (even under video surveillance) and there was clear evidence against him (even his mother WROTE to the police he has girls chained in his basement), it was gross negligence and misconduct that made possible AND aggravated his actions. Privacy does not stop police from doing their job, incompetence does, the privacy stuff is a red herring to avoid being held accountable. In a police state nobody would have dared to question their "investigation" (jesus christ, we did not watch the surveillance tapes because we didnt think to buy or borrow a video player and all policemen on the case were so poor they could not afford to have one at home or so selfish not to take it one day at work?) and they would have been able to say they did their job and even get medals for it. In that case the evidence came to police, they had to do 0 work to infiltrate his circle of suspects and gather evidence for conviction, it was on their table for years, yet they failed to act on it. I wonder how many cases like that are going on while the police is busy raiding and constructing bizarre cases against Tor operators and using the consequences of their negligence as a justification (there is child porn online because we fail to find the producers, therefore we must crack down on privacy online, even though kids cannot be kidnapped or raped online)?
NOVEMBER 2014: BAN TOR ADVERTISEMENT
@ihatetonyy It's sad because it's true.
"ohhh look, a new black box. You can send and receive any information you like through it. It's better than all the older boxes because no one can eavesdrop on you! It's a special black box! Now it's mine you can't take it away from me. If you do want to take it away from me you must be a backward-thinking oppressive fool who doesn't understand the black box!"
"I heard people use the black box for their own selfish means. Nevermind about that. I use it for good things, and anything I think I want to say or anyone else wants to say is more important than that. It's my right as an individual!"
"Don't take the black box from me because the bad things will still happen."
I can't wait for the next major scientific advancements to be discovered by [anon] from [anon]. And those criminals, so stupid. They could be committing crime the good ol' fashioned way and getting caught red handed by "good old fashioned police work". Seems 99% of the world is really clueless about what they're missing out on.
Tor users, let us know when you discover something really useful that's unique to that ...... protocol.
http://www.murderpedia.org/male.D/d/dutroux-marc.htm
Nnnope. That man kidnapped and raped kids for 20 years, and sold porn to politicians and policemen in impunity without using Tor when there was plenty of evidence already on police hands and most of the time he was already convicted and at times under video surveillance. Another austrian man raped his daughters for 24 years. Still without using Tor. Police has 0 arguments to blame it on privacy then, I am sure the austrian guy was not even able to understand what a computer is. You cannot commit those crimes through Tor, no matter how you try to twist it and they cannot be hidden by using Tor. Keep ignoring that.
There is nothing unique to Tor, it is not even the only way to protect your constitutional rights. Not to mention Tor is not even a protocol, it is a way of routing packets over TCP. You will see, after governments finally manage to ban Tor, they will start other campaigns against VPN-like routing and ultimately encryption, that is the mother of all evils, making it harder for governments to read your correspondence and files.
The UK is already well on its' way to ban encryption entirely.