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Raided For Running a Tor Exit Node
An anonymous reader writes "A Tor Exit node owner is being prosecuted in Austria. As part of the prosecution, all of his electronics have been held by the authorities, including over 20 computers, his cell phone and hard disks. 'During interview with police later on Wednesday, Weber said there was a "more friendly environment" once investigators understood the Polish server that transmitted the illegal images was used by Tor participants rather than by Weber himself. But he said he still faces the possibility of serious criminal penalties and the possibility of a precedent that Tor operators can be held liable if he's convicted.' This brings up the question: What backup plan, if any, should the average nerd have for something like this?"
Lots of money.
Look at Kim Dotcom.
If a TOR exit node can be prosecuted for traffic passing through it, should the ISP and backbone router owners not also be held responsible for traffic passing through their nodes? If the ISP and network operators are not held responsible then neither should the TOR node owner.
If you ship contraband via FedEx, is FedEx a criminal?
It's hard for the average nerd, you either have to be so small and invisible that you can take off at a moment's notice, or maintain shell corporations that own all the stuff that might get taken. If you own a house, or have a family that you care about, fugetaboutit.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I've wondered, from day one, why anyone would be crazy enough to run a TOR exit node. Why would you willing serve as the front man for someone else's unknown but likely illegal activity? It's just crazy.
Running an exit node is just begging to get arrested for child porn. I'm positively amazed that it doesn't happen a LOT more often.
The problem is not the exit node, no information of any value contains there, and nothing that can incriminate you will be on the exit node.
The problem is the complete raid of everything of value you own and depend on that had no part in the exit node, no matter what is stored on the machines. Likely keeping them for months, even years depending on how far they want to go with the case.
c++;
As usual, the global population spans the entire spectrum from massive government censorship and oppression and from relatively free communication. Tor enables those in free countries to operate exit nodes for the benefit of those in oppressed areas. Those operators are basically modern-day information Robin Hoods.
That your government is willing to raid you is a sign that you live in one of those oppressed areas and should not be running an exit node. So, you should prepare to face the consequences if the reach of The Man can grab you.
More Twoson than Cupertino
You can tell them that... but they're not going to buy it. First off, ISPs operate under legally-established safe harbor provisions, which require them to do certain things. If you haven't also done those things, then you're not operating under the safe harbor provisions, and thus, the rules that apply to you aren't the same as those that apply to the ISPs. It's not simply a matter of not knowing what data goes through your network - there are other things you have to do, which include keeping certain types of records about your users... and TOR by design does not do that.
Second, prosecutors have leeway to choose which cases they will prosecute - so your "you must also prosecute" is simply not true, and the prosecution and judge both know this. So they'll simply ignore your speech, and instruct the jury to do so as well.
Now, whether these things are right is a separate question - but there are definite legal differences between an ISP and you, if you're operating a TOR node.
No, in both cases the pawn shop owner (or Tor node operator in this case) wasn't explicitly aware that their business (or Tor node) was being used to steal goods (or illegal online activity). The pawn shop owner (or Tor node operator) is likely aware that running a pawn shop (or Tor node) carries the risk that illegal goods (or illegal online activity) will be filtered through, though predictive knowledge itself is not a crime. Rather than seeking the assistance of the business owner (or Tor node operator) in tracking down the perpetrator, the authorities chose to instead implicate the business owner (or Tor node operator) directly for the illegal activities of the perpetrator who utilized the business owner's (or Tor node operator's) property to carry out those illegal activities.
See how that analogy works there? If they arrested all pawn shop owners who had facilitated the stealing of stolen goods without explicit knowledge then likely all pawn shop owners would be arrested.
The original question was how does a Tor-running geek prepare for a computer seizure by authorities. One answer is to backup your data to the cloud, so even after they have your computers, you can at least go buy a new beige box and keep working. That's what the GP was getting at.
Or the more sensible thing is unless you have a couple hundred grand in the bank for the lawyer's fee don't be running Tor until we get better laws.
I know many want to do the whole "fight the power!" stance but the laws on kiddy porn are so messed up right now that frankly you don't have to look at squat, just the fact that your connection was used could be enough for you to be looking at 10-20 in PMITA prison.
The way I had it explained to me was thus: Imagine somebody gives you a safe to haul to somewhere, even though you don't actually have the keys to the safe if the cops stop you and open it and find drugs and CP, even though you had zero way of knowing they can still charge you with facilitation and distribution since what you were doing helped a criminal commit a crime.
So you can scream Tor and Freenet is about "freedom!" all you want, all a prosecutor has to do is say CP anymore and the odds of a jury having common sense and letting you off is virtually nil, and of course the judges don't understand dick when it comes to tech so either way you are screwed. If you have a family or anybody that counts on your paycheck? Then frankly you would be insane to run Tor, this guy is gonna have the next couple of years of his life tied up in court and God have mercy if he can't afford to lawyer up, because he's dead meat with a public pretender.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.