German Police Arrest Admin of Tor Anonymity Server

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a data center, over 500km away. In the last year, Germany has passed a draconian new anti-security research law and raided seven different data centers to seize Tor servers. While back in 2003, A German court ordered the developers of a different anonymity network to build a back-door into their system."

Comments

Typo?

[Anonymous Coward]

should it be from the good guys never win dept.? or am i missing something about the almightiness or Tor?

Securty vs Freedom

[downix]

People that trade freedom for security shall recieve neither.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[h4rm0ny]

Good luck to this guy. Tor is very useful in preserving our privacy. Electronic communication has been a massive free party for government and police surveillance as people have been sending their communications around in ways that are as secure as a postcard. Now people are catching on and taking their privacy back and these agencies are reacting with aggression. If they want to snoop on someone then they can go through the traditional channels and not crack down on the anonymity and privacy of all of us, which serves a vital social purpose.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Original Replica]

Does anyone recall the French Revolution?

Our leaders, both in the EU and the US, paid careful attention to the lessons learned in the French Revolution, namely that as long as you keep your people well fed and entertained, you can do whatever you damn well please. In the French Revolution, the people storming the Bastille had nothing to lose. But our level of comfort is carefully maintained to keep actual violent revolt from ever happening. Even the poor in our countries have too much to lose (thanks to government programs)to risk anything angrier than waving a slogan on a posterboard sign.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Wowsers]

Generally, we have no politicians with a degree in IT, but all useless subjects like politics, art, history etc. and these people are the ones pulling the technology strings of government (and hence your country). Many politicians don't even know how to send an e-mail!!!

Politicians only believe in headline grabbing nonsense like we must crack down on internet porn, without understanding what they are saying and complexities. It helps that the masses are equally as thick so don't see right through the politicians, so they can say what they like.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Daimanta]

Does anyone recall the French Revolution? Does anyone recall the bloody results from the French Revolution?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

Don't sanctify it.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

You are a brave man.
I gotta warn you, I know of localities where the cops break down doors. If that ever happens in your area, to your door, who are you gonna call? Or do you just plan to break out the ammo?

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[jc42]

... US soldiers get to see how effective terrorist tactics are against an better trained and equipped force, and bring that knowledge and experience back home ...

Hmmm ... The same lesson seems to have been "learned" by US soldiers back in the 1960s and 70s. But there's little evidence that the general population or the political system has incorporated any of the lessons. The current US government certainly didn't learn anything from Vietnam; few if any of them were over there, and they seem to be actively inviting the same sort of fiasco. A current joke: "How is Iraq different from Vietnam? George Bush has been to Iraq."

It's also quite clear that the current crop of US soldiers have never been taught anything about the Vietnam War. It's a topic that's rarely if ever mentioned in the history classes in the US school system, for which history seems to have stopped 50 or 60 years ago. What little is known by the current crop of military recruits was mostly learned from Hollywood movies. See "Rambo" for details.

It's true that military historians have studied guerilla warfare in great detail. But there seems to be little evidence that our leaders have ever looked at such studies. To see a detailed example of this, google for "Battle of Algiers". This is a thoroughly documented topic. George Bush and his crowd claim to have read the famous book about it. But looking at their actions, you'd conclude that most have only seen the movie, if that. They certainly didn't learn any of the lessons, because they're making the same mistakes that the historians describe the French government making back in the 1950s, with the same results.

History definitely does seem to be repeating itself. And it doesn't even rhyme ...

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Daimanta]

The best sailors stand on the shore line.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

"BECAUSE I DID NOT GIVE THE POLICE ANY AUTHORITY OVER ME"

Did you take the considerable time and money to actually purchase some land or do you just own real estate?

If you just own real estate you don't own ANYTHING, as real estate is an indefinite agreement of lease.

If you just own real estate someone else actually owns "your" land and you have no claim of authority over it.

If you just own real estate and some company finds an interest in "your" land - guess what? eminent domain switcharoo - not your land - too bad for you.

Ignoring a monster might make you less stressed but it won't help you if that monster comes for you.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that in the homeland laws exist that make it possible for law enforcement to access your house? Even if you're not around? Just like they can pick you up from the streets? Without telling you why you are going to jail? Without having the right to talk to a lawyer? Oh, and they can torture you as well to get you to tell the truth.

The rights one has have changed and.. Ohhh look! The final episode of Friends is on!

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[OrangeTide]

Last I checked you don't need a broadcasting license to print and distribute a newspaper. If it is for-profit all you need is a business license from ANY local government. And in this case the federal government is relatively weak because it lacks the influence at the local government to stop them from giving out business licenses to specific "undesirables".

People wish there were all these big conspiracies, but any Katrina victim knows that the US government is not evil, just incompetent. I know there are plenty of other governments here in the New World that are ran, to one degree or another, just as badly as the US. I would not be surprised, but I don't know for certain, that some first world European nations are also ran by incompetents.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Dun Malg]

it's considered suspicious when someone refuses to answer the door to the police. if they know you are there, they will bust down the door and drag you down to the station and eventually release you a few hours later. There is nothing you can do to stop them because in that scenario nobody is going to be on your side. That's absurd. Nobody rational would consider failing to answer the door at midnight, even for peole claiming to be police, "suspicious".

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing you can do to stop them because in that scenario nobody is going to be on your side.

Remeber that when you next time hear the word "innocent". Police are backed up by the gov, the gov is backed up by the people. Only kids are innocent.

We all believe that we can pass the buck of responsibility around in our elaborate and complex social and jurdical systems. We believe that somehow, when it's passed around enough it diminishes and vanishes and nobody's responsible when we all are "just doing our jobs".

You, me, them, we are all equally responsible to the kills and injustices our govs commit as the soldiers and lawyers are. Silent acceptance = pulling the trigger.

What had this to do with your comment? It is this: when they aren't on your side, they are against you. Your neighbour is your enemy. They are all your enemies. All those who aren't on your side. It isn't their fault though, people form up complex systems when all they want is live happily and secure. Then those systems are let loose when all people forming them are only doing their jobs. Those systems become runaway animals. They start bashing down doors while single individuals even inside them think somebody is still controlling them somewhere somehow.

Re:Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom

[marcello_dl]

> Come on, Eurotrolls, what do you have to say now?

Four words:

No Software Patents (yet).

A little perspective for everyone thinking that

[patio11]

He was arrested. He will now go into extended negotiations with a prosecutor, during the entirety of which he will have a lawyer present. If the negotiations don't go favorably for him, he will have a fair trial. He will probably be convicted of it, which is an occupational hazard of doing things which the government has illegalized. After being convicted, he will be given a first-time-offender wrist-slap, probably a few months of probation and a stern warning not to do it again. Perhaps he will spend a few months of not-terribly-rigorous time in jail -- I'd bet against it but I'm not German. He'll lose quite a bit of money to attourney fees, less whatever the Tor community raises for his defense (I'm not optimistic), and probably have some equipment seized.

You know what doesn't happen?

He doesn't get summarily executed.
His wife doesn't get raped at gunpoint.
His child doesn't get burned in an oven.

People throw around the word fascist to describe any policy they don't like (that core observation is the heart of Godwin's law). Excepting the geographical accident that places both of them in Germany, there is NOTHING analagous between Nazism and the actions of the government in this case. If you want to convince people of the rightness of deploying a Tor network, keep a cool head and do not use any goose-stepping analogies, because they will brand you as a perspectiveless fanatic who is not to be taken seriously.

Re:A little perspective for everyone thinking that

[Lord Kano]

Excepting the geographical accident that places both of them in Germany, there is NOTHING analagous between Nazism and the actions of the government in this case.

Except, of course, for the fact that the Nazis made something illegal that was perfectly legal in the rest of the sane world.

LK

Re:A little perspective for everyone thinking that

[bhima]

I think you have completely missed the points of people who make comparisons between the fascists of the 1930's and today's western governments. It isn't about the actions of the fascists of the 1940's... summary executions, rape as a weapon of the state, state sponsored genocide being perpetrated now, today but rather people fear that the signs we see today will metastasize as they did in the 1940's.

One can see in the news and on the internet these changes in Character of the United States:

        * Nationalism in the United States has turned to nasty xenophobic bigotry with splash of jingoism with a patriotic veneer.
        * Human Rights so important to the founders of this country have been reduced or abandoned.
        * Many right of center Americans have identified Muslims as enemies of the state and immigrants as the cause of financial hardships and increased violent crime in their community.
        * The US spends more money, today on its military than the rest of the world *combined*.
        * The US media has changed in recent years, the is one outlet which is a blatant propaganda arm of the current administration and the others are controlled by select few very, very wealthy men.... today the news reported in the US is markedly different than the news reported in other nations (and the assessment of freedom of the press has plummeted in the last 15 years).
        * The national obsession with security is also remarkable... many experts decry the stupidity and ineffectiveness of this yet nearly monthly there are reports of egregious and or silly interference of security officers.
        * Religion has become a remarkably scary thing in the US. Politicians are expected to profess belief in Christianity, yet politicians of other faiths are viewed with suspicion and men who profess no beliefs are reviled. A sizable minority of Christians today believe that the United States should not be a secular national but rather a Christian nation and there are Christian Reconstructionist groups in government today furthering this goal.... it's a plank in ideology of the NeoConservative group the Project for a new American century whose members have been in power in the US for the last 7 years.
        * Corporations are held above citizens in todays America. The interests of corporations are promoted within the government by a byzantine system of lobbyists and special interest groups who wield far more power than any citizen's group.
        * Cronyism within the administration of George W. Bush has been significant and harmful. Do I really need to list all the incompetent people in positions of power, or can I just say "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job".
        * The elections today have significant irregularities and those people in government irresponsible for them have done little to ensure and accurate and fair count.

Now it's true that to date there are a few examples in the above list that equate to violence seen in 1940's Europe. As it is also true that United States of America does not demonstrate all the qualities of Fascist States.

However it's also true than everything on that list is worse than it was 10 to 15 years ago. So I my opinion it's time to stop objecting to the comparison.

Re:A little perspective for everyone thinking that

[kocsonya]

People throw around the word fascist when they see something charactersitically fascist. For example, when the 'state' trumps anything 'civil'. When the individual does not matter any more. When the state and the corporate world become intimately intertwined.

Fascism is *not* summary executions, torture, rape and pillage. Fascism is an ideology which values not human beings but abstact constructs such as the state, glory, heroism, nation and whatnot.

However, fascism, since it states that the individual is nothing, tends to constantly evaporate any civil liberties still remaining and of course more and more strictly dictate what the citizenry can (or must) do. Keeping people in fear is a very efficient way to achieve the above. Now you can use all sorts of things to plant fear in people, starting from the 24/7 propaganda about the dangers of an imminent nukular ter'ist attack, through the black car with people in dark leather coats at your doorstep at 3 in the morning, to the less subtle police SWAT raids on your home, to publicly executing innocent people on the Underground, up all to the more extrame cases of child rotissery you mentioned.

Nevertheless, those are just methods from which a fascist state can choose from. Torture is not an indication of fascism; torture happens where fascism is not involved and fascism can be instated without any sort of torture. A state which marches on the way of taking away individual rights while empowering the state/corporate elite *is* fascist, whether it does summary executions on the spot or not.

Re:A little perspective for everyone thinking that

[hackus]

"He doesn't get summarily executed.
His wife doesn't get raped at gunpoint.
His child doesn't get burned in an oven."

Mmmm....mighty fine line there what you describe.

How many times in history can we define where governments take small steps up to the above, and each time citizens proclaim it fascism?

Right now in the USA, the constitution of our country is looked upon a merely a "historical" document, nothing really practical to base a government on.

I mean, right now you have people arguing that the right to bear arms is really not needed anymore, and that it causes too many problems for example. Even arguing that the only people who should have the right to arms is the military or police.

These people honestly believe that the USA government couldn't possibly turn on its citizens, or its systems of law and justice could not either.

I point this out because the government has already marginalized most of the population in this country as both the democratic and republican parties themselves are widely known to be corrupt and simply corporate fronts to tame the populace. (i.e. as long as the population THINKS voting is making a difference and they THINK they are choosing candidates, they will not interested in what is really going on.)

Small steps to fascism do not need to be compared against its extremes. History shows us they are all the same and have the same tragic results.

Almost all of it is due to human greed, and the lust for power.

The only sure thing we can count on, is that in the end all governments, with no exceptions, crumble to dust and the tyranny they leave behind form better lessons for us to begin again.

The USA will not be any different.

-Hack

Didn't we just get a Microsoft forced upgrade??

[Anonymous Coward]

"We know this because the JAP operators immediately warned users that their IP traffic might be going straight to Big Brother, right? Wrong. After taking the service down for a few days with the explanation that the interruption was "due to a hardware failure", the operators then required users to install an "upgraded version" (ie. a back-doored version) of the app to continue using the service."

So JAP was ordered to put a backdoor in their program and they forced an upgrade on everyone. Didn't we just get a forced secret upgrade from Microsoft?

HELLO, has anyone dissembled that upgrade?

Re:silly germany

[ScrewMaster]

it works in every country.

Except in those countries which offer their people no accountability or transparency from the outset, and consequently have no need to rationalize their self-serving behavior to said people. I don't presently live in one of those places, but as things are going, I will end up in one of those places by simply staying where I am. There's something very wrong going on here.

Whatever this is, it's not just the United States that is affected. A number of nations are going down this road ... I don't know if fear of terrorism is an adequate explanation. I agree, it's being used as a template for justifying all kinds of authoritarian activities, but there's a lot of high-level multinational power mongering going on and we're not privy to the details.

The excessive desire for power (is there a medical term for it? Megalomania perhaps?) needs to be something for which politicians are regularly checked (much like high-end call-girls are regularly tested for disease), with not having it a prerequisite for holding public office.

Re:gestapo

[flyingfsck]

Yup, the Nazis are very close to the surface in Germany. They are a real and continuous threat. Hitler actually won his elections...

you make it all sound so reasonable

[Scudsucker]

But I don't see any reasonableness in prosecuting an inherently reasonable law. Like that (black) high school student who had the book thrown at him for having sex with his (white) girlfriend because she was a couple years younger than him and broke an asinine law in Georgia.

People throw around the word fascist to describe any policy they don't like (that core observation is the heart of Godwin's law). Excepting the geographical accident that places both of them in Germany, there is NOTHING analagous between Nazism and the actions of the government in this case.

So what? Was Mussolini German?

Scare tactic.

[ScrewMaster]

People are making a big deal out of supposed incompetence of the German police in that they didn't even get the actual Tor server. Who cares? That's irrelevant. This is not about taking down a single Tor node. This is about sending a message ... run one of these and you are at risk, and when we decide to confiscate your property we're not going to be too careful about what we take. They probably figure that will be enough to keep a bunch of nerds in line.

Re:gestapo

[Anonymous Coward]

> Hitler actually won his elections

Actually he manipulated and rigged the elections. Thank god that sort of thing never happens today...

... nazis, gestapo (tagging beta)

[mi]

In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July.

Had it really been the Nazi's Gestapo, he would not be posting anything in September...

Zonk et al. really need to glue a nicely printed and framed quote of the Godwin's Law on their beds' footboards, to make it the first thing they see waking up...

Godwin's Law /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

Re:Kind of makes sense.

[BitterOak]

It would be different if this was just a hosting provider who provided service in good faith that someone took advantage of, this is someone running something INTENTIONALLY untrackable.

Built into that statement is the implicit assumption that law enforcement has an inherent right to track any Internet traffic back to its source, and that any intermediate service providers have the obligation to build their systems in such a way that this tracking is possible. Essentially you are saying that no one has the right to anonymous speech.

Like any technology, however, the anonymizing power of Tor can be used for both good or evil. It can be used by whistle-blowers to expose government corruption, and it can be used by pedophiles to distribute kiddy porn. It can be used by Chinese dissidents to criticize their government, and it can be used by terrorists to disseminate instructions on manufacture of explosive devices. So the question is, do we punish those who provide the technology because it can be used for evil? Evidently the German government has decided the answer is "yes". It's hard to argue for one side or the other because I think it comes down to personal values. I value free speech including anonymous speech, but I grew up in the American culture. Thomas Paine distributed his widely influential document Common Sense anonymously and it is possible the American Revolution would have ended differently had he not done so. One does wonder if highly oppressive regimes like the Nazis would have been able to hold power so long if the citizens had easy access to anonymous speech.

I think the value of services like Tor outweigh the disadvantages, so I do hope the German policy is not emulated by other countries.

Re:Misquoting Benjamin Franklin

[BillyBlaze]

Franklin is not placing limits on the types of liberty and security that it's acceptable to trade, but rather making a blanket statement that liberty is essential and security is temporary.

That said: anonymous speech is pretty darn essential. I hope we can agree that free speech is essential, and in the face of governments that happily restrict it, anonymity is a necessary tool to exercise that right without getting imprisoned or killed. And the security we would gain is temporary - if the ter'ists, pedophiles, Holocaust deniers, or pirates are using Tor, and we shut it down, they'll just switch to something else.

Re:A little MORE perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascism doesn't appear instantly, it's usually a process. Having the Tor network made illegal seems to me, clearly, a part of that process. What we have here is yet another government requesting access to all their citizen's communications, and that is, IMHO, a surefire way to reach true fascism soon. Backdoors made mandatory? the police busting his door and arresting him at night for no serious offense? We should all be VERY afraid of this kind of behavior by our governments.

Re:German gov hasn't outlawed anonymity (yet)

[Chandon Seldon]

Malum in se --> Bad in and of itself. These are true crimes. Anyone who has them done against them will object to these... they have victims that can always be identified. These crimes can always be identified as the initiation of force against a victim of some sort. Even the dumping of chemicals into the water supply has human victims.

Not all crimes that, as crimes, appear to meet the criteria for this category are crimes in themselves. Consider a law against fat guys going shirtless at the beach. If the law becomes culturally integrated, people will flip out when they see a shirtless fat guy and claim to be horribly victimized - but there's no real harm caused by fat people not wearing shirts. Further, if it became culturally accepted that seeing shirtless fat guys traumatized children then there would be actual cases of children being horribly traumatized by it - simply because of the social feedback from the people around them that they are expected to act that way.

Re:German gov hasn't outlawed anonymity (yet)

[DaedalusHKX]

Yes, but in any free society, you can also pick on the fat guy.

Maybe if it happened, more fat guys would get in shape. I did it. Long story, but if a man wants to do something, nothing stops him. Same for the ladies.

On the other hand... who's the idiot who came up with the idea to teach our kids that seeing something will traumatize them? It is the fear of excelling that makes most people complacent. Afraid of blood? Take a class on first aid. Afraid of sharks? Go shark fishing. Afraid of guns? Take a rifle or pistol class. Afraid of freedom? Try it :) Challenging fears and beating them down is more liberating than all the fancy documents written by our ancestors. Hence why I love coming on here now and arguing in my free time.

Ill remember to avoid those groups

[unity100]

with that tradition :

There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

nazis are one of the biggest lessons that have happened to mankind. if some bunch of idiots can not realize that there are places that this example should be recalled, then its not worth to waste words with them.

Re:German gov hasn't outlawed anonymity (yet)

[Chandon Seldon]

On the other hand... who's the idiot who came up with the idea to teach our kids that seeing something will traumatize them?

This is actually more important and basic than that. The question is this: What sort of idiot parent would *ever* let their kid be told that they should be mentally traumatized over anything? I don't care if your kid just stepped on a land mine and lost his leg - you tell him "you'll be fine" and smile at him as you apply the tourniquet. Hysteria or "omg that's so horrible" will just create mental damage on top of the physical damage.

There is no permanent security

[gnuman99]

You do not seem to understand the basic concepts behind the words.

Security is always, ALWAYS, temporary. You CANNOT gain permanent security. EVER. Even if you locked yourself up in a fortress, protected by 10 battalions of heavily armed private militia, that is NOT permanent security. The circumstances of your security are ALWAYS temporary. The current government is temporary. World order is temporary. Your life is temporary. Franklin underlines temporary security, because it never lasts. EVER.

Similarly, an essential liberty refers to any liberty as essential. Liberties like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, right to your life, etc are all essential. There are no liberties that are non-essential. This is by definitions of what liberty means. You lose any part of that definition, and you lose more than you ever gain through some temporary security.

  * autonomy: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence
  * freedom of choice; "liberty of opinion"; "liberty of worship"; "liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases"; "at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes"
  * personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression

http://www.google.ca/search?q=define%3A+liberty&hl=en

These are very general freedoms and we are losing them one chip of the security hammer at a time. Yet, we will NEVER get security because true security is a state of mind. Think about it - you are never physically secure in this world.

Example. People in UK allowed CCTV cameras to be put everywhere. They lost their liberty of freedom of movement (at least anonymous movement). They "gained" their security because they thought "it will fight crime". Result is that crime rate has not decreased. But the liberty will not be restored. Citizens of UK, and London especially, lost liberty and gained nothing.

Re:gestapo

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I don't think the problem lies with Germans so much as it does (in varying degrees) throughout all people. Let's face it, people are a sucker for some well-delivered rhetoric. Thankfully, we've now passed Hitler, and we are more aware of what extremes Nationalism can get to, as well as the charisma of a person doesn't necessarily correspond with their leadership skills (or their sanity). I know some would argue that this is a sign that we haven't learnt from Nazi Germany, but I disagree. Any curtailing of rights != fascism. There's a long way between banning certain software tools and an isolated arrest and fascism like Nazi Germany had. I guess that's why we have (had?) Godwin's law.

Re:Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom

[trifish]

Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom

What does this got do with freedom? If someone turns you in telling the police that he received bomb threats from your IP address (which happened in this case), the only thing the police can do is investigate. And that inherently involves obtaining physical evidence, in this case seizing the computers as soon as possible before the suspect (yes, a potential criminal) destroys the evidence.

Now if there had been no freedom in Germany, the man would have not been released within a few hours with explanation he is innocent.

Re:Mush, room and cloud

[ardor]

Name your source for it being an actual nuclear bomb. And the Islam thing. Schäuble said there is the danger of a dirty bomb but NOT an actual warhead. Nuclear warheads are no simple devices, they require skill to handle, otherwise it doesn't detonate, or it may even blow up while being armed etc.

As for the integration, while there are too many unintegrated ones, 100% is way too high a number.