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Tor Project Claims FBI Paid University Researchers $1m To Unmask Tor Users

Posted by timothy on from the beats-a-wrench-to-the-knee dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Have Carnegie Mellon University researchers been paid by the FBI to unmask a subset of Tor users so that the agents could discover who operated Silk Road 2.0 and other criminal suspects on the dark web? Tor Project Director Roger Dingledine believes so, and says that they were told by sources in the information security community that the FBI paid at least $1 million for the service. From the article: "There is no indication yet that they had a warrant or any institutional oversight by Carnegie Mellon's Institutional Review Board. We think it's unlikely they could have gotten a valid warrant for CMU's attack as conducted, since it was not narrowly tailored to target criminals or criminal activity, but instead appears to have indiscriminately targeted many users at once," noted Dingledine. "Such action is a violation of our trust and basic guidelines for ethical research. We strongly support independent research on our software and network, but this attack crosses the crucial line between research and endangering innocent users," he pointed out.

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Innocent? by plover · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "this attack crosses the crucial line between research and endangering innocent users." Since many of the 'endangered users' were then charged with various crimes, are they innocent?

    If a student doctor treats a patient with a gunshot wound, they are still obligated to report the wound to the police. Is the student not learning, and if so, is that materially any different than what the Tor researchers were doing? The gunshot victim may be innocent, or may have been taking part in a crime, but that doesn't change the doctor's obligation.

    Or if a Law Enforcement student is participating in a community event and witnesses a crime, we don't raise a red flag if they apprehend the suspect.

    The circumstances all seem pretty similar to me.

    --
    John
  2. At least 2 reasons why this is not a good stance by klingens · · Score: 4, Interesting

    for the FBI and the university to take:
    If they are allowed to decrypt messages which are passing through "their" property, then:
    a) Pay TV hackers must be allowed to decrypt the Pay TV signals ending at the cable box or coming from a satellite
    b) Any ISP or whoever owns a router which transmits encrypted traffic is allowed to decrypt and read it.

    Either the FBI and the university have to be punished like cable signal hackers and other bad guys, or the law covering those offenses is not worth the paper.