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German TOR Servers Seized
mrogers writes "Servers participating in the TOR anonymizing network have been seized by public prosecutors during a child porn crackdown in Germany. TOR provides anonymity for clients and servers by redirecting traffic through a network of volunteer-operated relays; the German prosecutors may have been trying to locate an anonymous server by examining the logs of the captured relays."
"On what legal basis?"
Actually, under the auspices of the Because Act, this is entirely legal. This little known piece of international legislation is, in fact, at the heart of many of the most prominent legal actions in the world today. Much loved by the RIAA, MPAA and the US due to it's implicit allowal for random search and seizure, legal 'fishing trips', non-judicially warranted wire taps, and it's espousal of 'guilty until proven guilty' legislature; the entire text of the Because Act has been reproduced below: -
Because Act
1. Because.
1.1. Just, because.
Yes, finding those poor child porn collectors sure would be a bad thing.
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
Not your life, maybe.
1.2. I've answered why already twice, are you going to be making trouble?
Well said, Jeff.
qntm.org
Inconvenient? No, when my garden needed a good digging over, I just called the police 'anonymously' to report that 'my wife' had disappeared for over a week after some serious arguments. I denied everything (after all, I hadn't done anything). And now the garden is looking better than ever...
Meta-Translation: you are deluded into thinking that you are.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
It's perfectly logical. "i" before "e" except after "c" or when sounded like "a" as in "neighbor" or "weigh" unless it's the "cies" in the plural of a word ending in "cy", a gerund like "being", a word starting in "i" prefixed with "re", or one of these exceptions: albeit ancient atheist caffeine casein cleidoic codeine conscience counterfeit deficient deity efficient eider either feisty financier foreign forfeit glacier gneiss greige greisen heifer heigh-ho height heir heist kaleidoscope keister leisure leitmotiv monteith neither omniscient onomatopoeia peignoir phenolphthalein phthalein prescient proficient protein reveille Rotweiller science seismic seize seizin sheila society sovereign specie species sufficient surfeit teiid their weir or weird. That about covers it.
In the UK they actually have another act, specifically to protect the right of governments to use the Because Act. It's the great Watchagonna do 'bout it? Act of 1843. It was enacted because Lord Featherbottom, a member of parliament, had been getting grief from a certain Mr. Parsley who had succesfully used the What defence against the good Lord. The court case was closely monitored in the media at the time, even though it has gone down in history as the most boring trial of all time. Excerpt from transcript:
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
LORD FEATHERBOTTOM: Because!
MR. PARSLEY: Because what?
And so on and so forth. It was a war of attrition, and on the fourth straight day the elderly lord collapsed, and thus his case was lost. Following that incident, Featherbottom made a rousing speech to the parliament and got his act, well, enacted.
As an interesting historical sidenote, Featherbottom and Parsley eventually became good friends and formed, and were the first presidents of, the London Fine Cheese Society, an organisation famous to this day. Britannia never smelled the same.
Captain, I can't row in a straight line!
I see your problem, you're using an exclusive oar.