Tor Project Sued Over a Revenge Porn Business That Used Its Service

redletterdave writes: The Tor Project has been sued in the state of Texas over a revenge porn website that used its free encrypted communications service. The plaintiff in the case — Shelby Conklin, a criminal justice major at the University of North Texas — alleges a revenge porn site called Pinkmeth "gained unauthorized access to nude photographs" she owned and posted them to the internet. She also said Tor, which The Economist once called "a dark corner of the web," was involved in an active "civil conspiracy" with Pinkmeth because the revenge porn website used the anonymous communications service to prevent others from tracking its location.

Comments

Redneck roadhouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas has "the Internets" these days? Did they wire up the trailer parks?

Re:Redneck roadhouse

[SuricouRaven]

It's also a state where you can be imprisoned for owning a sex toy.

Texas's economic success masks the widespread archaic views of the population.

Re:Redneck roadhouse

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

I lived there for 5 years before migrating back to the West Coast. The larger cities (Austin and Dallas) were perfectly livable. The smaller towns though have definitely done everything they can do to live up to the uber-conservative, racist, and ignorant stereotypes foisted upon them. At the time I was dating a lovely black girl I had met in school, on campus and in the larger cities nobody shot us a second glance. As soon as we got to bumfuck country though, all bets were off...and I'm a goddamn Mexican!

Re: Redneck roadhouse

[Anon-Admin]

before we quit running Cat 5 through our mothers basements.

Look a Yankee

There are almost no basements in Texas.

Re: Redneck roadhouse

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I'm SUING the manufacturers of BOX CUTTERS for the complicit CONSPIRACY they participated in on 9/11/2001!

-- Mayor 9u11iani.

Re: Redneck roadhouse

[painandgreed]

Southerners do, dumbass.

Actually, we usually say "damn Yankee".

IETF next

[GameboyRMH]

They set the standards for the TCP/IP protocol, the one used by the packets which conspired with the Tor network to move data around untraceably!

Re:IETF next

[amicusNYCL]

She's on quite the fishing expedition. Here is another lawsuit filed by her, from 2012, suing Pinkmeth (again), Katz Global Media (for the crime of providing anonymous hosting), and Verisign. Yeah, she sued Verisign. Maybe that suit didn't work out so well, so she thought she would try her hand against Tor. Not exactly the best way to make a name for herself as a criminal justice major. I suspect that pursuing suits like these will serve is much more of a "loss in earning capacity" than a porn picture ever would. She might also be interested that her Facebook profile is open for the world to see. Here she is.

Maybe she's just trying to clog up the Google search results for her name with information about lawsuits instead of her actual pictures. You have to go to page 4 to find this one (which is not Pinkmeth), page 6 for this one (also not Pinkmeth), and page 8 for this one (again, not Pinkmeth).

I'm assuming she has no proof that would allow her to sue the person actually responsible for distributing the pictures (you know, other than her). Life lesson learned, I suppose. Try not to clog up the justice system.

Re:IETF next

[CanHasDIY]

Civil engineers are sued when they make mistakes designing a road.

Yea, but they don't get sued for the things people use the roads they designed for. Which is what's happening here.

Pretty sure this won't work

[GameboyRMH]

On the Tor darknet are sites which host and trade enormous amounts of child porn, and one which specializes in leaked nude photos of celebrities, some of which have been successfully removed from the web. If it were legally possible to sue the Tor project over .onion sites, it would have been done a looooong time ago.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[l0ungeb0y]

You forget that this case is in Texas and that Porn and the Internet are involved. Quite literally anything can happen here.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes although I'd bet money that Shelby Conklin is going to discover how unpleasant the Streisand Effect can be. She will probably now be known as the revenge porn woman.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[NotDrWho]

I can't wait for the confusion when the judge orders that Tor be executed.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, she is doing it wrong. The nobility of her intent does not excuse the harm caused by the ignorant execution thereof.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[CanHasDIY]

Which is a pity. I am seeing a lot of terrible comments lobbed at this woman and people giving a free pass to whoever obtained her images and the site for hosting them.

Nobody's "giving a free pass" to the revenge porn site. We're just not talking about it, because the revenge porn people, in this particular case, aren't the ones making a public ass of themselves. "This woman" is, and thus, shall be the subject of our collective ridicule.

In that, hey, how sad is it that she's making herself look worse than a revenge porn site?

Yeah it was stupid of her to name Tor as a defendant, but that can be explained by her simply not being part of the tech culture and thus not really aware of how things go together. Keep in mind she is only a student.

Yea - a law student. Who apparently doesn't actually understand the law. Again, not helping her own case here, both literally and metaphorically.

But people seem to be focusing on just that, which is pretty much just victim blaming.

No, suing Tor because "people use tor for porn" is victim blaming. This is pure mocking of stupidity and lack of common sense.

It is the same crap people pull on rape victims all the time, finding some way to socially punish them for trying to bring consequences for their attacker's actions.

You know, as a close relative of a victim of violent sexual assault, I take offense to your supposition that what my family member went through is exactly the same as what this woman is doing to herself. Don't bandy about the term "rape" for everything you disagree with, as it desensitizes people from the severity of that particular crime.

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is she's not trying to bring consequence for her attacker's actions, you colossal moron, she's lashing out at tangentially related parties. We're not "giving a free pass" to the revenge porn scum - that guy simply doesn't even enter the current discussion, which is about her suing Tor.

It's like suing Ford Motors because a drunk on a Prius hit you (and when people say "are you dumb?", a white knight jumps in to cry "But why are you giving drunk drivers a free pass?!?!?!")

Re:Pretty sure this won't work

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You know, as a close relative of a victim of violent sexual assault, I take offense to your supposition that what my family member went through is exactly the same as what this woman is doing to herself. Don't bandy about the term "rape" for everything you disagree with, as it desensitizes people from the severity of that particular crime.

All the internets sir. You win them.

Author of Excel to be sued next

[Anonymous Coward]

In breaking news, Microsoft will be sued by the state of New York for authoring and distributing the malicious software called Excel. Investors on Wall Street have used this nefarious software to destroy the world economy while raking in billions of dollars for themselves.

Streisand effect

[johanw]

I'm looking at her pictures right now. Unfortunately Pinkmeth is SLOW right now. Might have something to do with all the fuzz about it. :-)

Gun Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

So if they go after Tor for a service someone else provided using Tor, isn't that like going after gun manufacturers for the murders their products help commit? Not trying to start a flame war or anything but this seems kinda close to that notion to me. I'd have a really good laugh if Texas set some legal standard for going after gun manufacturers in the US with this.

Re:Moral of the story

[Ukab the Great]

Especially when you are majoring in criminal justice, a field known for having the policy that any bit of dirt found on you can and will be used by someone who wants to hurt you with it.

Why yes, we should blame the victim here

[MikeRT]

Don't want your nudes to end up in public? Don't take nudes that you wouldn't want the public to see. Then you can be a true victim. The whole concept of "revenge porn," insofar as it applies to nudes and porn freely made and disseminated, is ever so much "I want my freedom.... but I don't want my choices to have consequences of which I don't approve."

We have a term for that behavior. It's called behaving like a child.

Re:Why yes, we should blame the victim here

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Under what logic is it okay to publicly disseminate, often for the express purpose of humiliation, someone else's private photographs whether obtained illegally, surreptitiously, or shared in confidence with you?

She's not being a child. She's taking a stand against someone else's repugnant behavior.

Re:Why yes, we should blame the victim here

[compro01]

She's taking a stand against someone else's repugnant behavior.

By suing what appears to be everyone except that someone else?

Hey Shelby Conklin...

[fallen1]

THANKS for letting me know there are nude photos of you on the internet -- and where to find them! YOU are a font of information and those of us who never even knew this site existed are thankful you are too stupid to realize you just made yourself even more of a search topic. And your lawsuit will fail.

Congrats! :)

except that it didnt.

[nimbius]

Tor isnt a service, its a technology and accompanying data protocol. There is no corporate entity or backer that "crontrols" the network or if there were, the federal government would have beaten this attorney to the punch long ago. Its like trying to sue LUKS deveopers for a hard drive that cant be read by the NSA.

Re:Bill Gates

[tbuddy]

The Joint Photographic Experts Group probably had a hand in this too.

Re:This one will be quick.

[qeveren]

Pretty sure you need a massive lobbying brigade in order to qualify for Safe Harbor protections. :P

Re:Moral of the story

[jythie]

Ah yes, it is not the boyfriend's fault, he has no control over his actions.

What is it with people wanting the person who actually did something crapy to not have any consequences? Well, at least when women are the victims and something like sex is involved.

TEQUILA!

[Thud457]

There are almost no basements in Texas.

Except the one in the Alamo.