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Tor Project Experiments With Funding Fast Exit Nodes
mask.of.sanity writes "The Tor Project is considering paying exit relay hosts to make the network faster and more secure. The project has called for discussion on the idea, notably from relay hosts. Its founder has suggested $100 a month would attract fast and diverse nodes. Exit nodes are the last hopping point on the Tor network and are critical to its performance and safety."
The problem: "But lately the Tor network has become noticeably faster, and I think it has a lot to do with the growing amount of excess relay capacity relative to network load ... on today's network, clients choose one of the fastest 5 exit
relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their choices come from a
pool of 40-50 relays. ... Since we're
not doing particularly well at diversity with the current approach,
we're going to try an experiment: we'll connect funding to exit relay
operators so they can run bigger and/or better exit relays." As to funding: "We've lined up our first funder (BBG, ...), and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to sponsor 125+ fast exits."
I mean, even if you are paid much more than $100 a month, being legally and financially responsible for the shit that goes on through your server (since you are the EXIT node) could get you sent to jail for life and cost you huge amounts of money. Sounds completely insane for anyone to willingly run such a thing.
It's a public service, helping to preserve people's ability to practice their right to free speech. Plenty of us believe extremely strongly in that, and I'd consider it at least as worthy as many other philanthropic causes. If I had a decent amount of money (i.e. enough to consult a lawyer beforehand, take reasonable legal precautions, and kick up a stink rather than just disappearing if I ever were taken to court) I'd do it like a shot.
This new version also features 2-3 times more harassment from the government.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It would be nice to think that everyone would all do it, making it basically impossible to harass individual exit nodes. That's certainly the theory behind Tor. And it's a noble idea.
But then again, let's face it, most people are leechers. And unless you could find a way to encourage mass adoption of Tor, combined with a default (perhaps even mandatory) setting of "allow exit node", it's probably not going to work.
Maybe they could bundle it in with some really popular apps or games. Offer "This game $10 for the regular version/free with Tor" specials.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It would be nice to think that everyone would all do it, making it basically impossible to harass individual exit nodes
Like how it is impossible to harass individual pot smokers? Even if there were millions of exit nodes, the police would be harassing exit node operators, just to keep everyone afraid.
Palm trees and 8
Do not pass go. Collect $100.
[anecdote]
I had legal troubles* as someone used my exit node for downloading child pornography. after nearly 2 years the prosecutor closed the proceedings as he found nothing punishable.
*) including some officers searching my flat at 7 am and all my hardware was confiscated
Hi, I help run an exit node. Specifically NoiseTor - http://noisetor.net/ Yes, we do get police/FBI/etc calls regularly. Most of the time it takes a few min of explaining what tor is, we have no logs, and there's nothing we can do to help track down where the traffic came from.
It's invaluable to run exit nodes, and the risks are fairly minor.