Seattle Police Raid Tor-Using Privacy Activists (thestranger.com)

Frosty Piss writes: Seattle police raided the home of two outspoken privacy activists early on March 30th. Jan Bultmann and David Robinson, a married couple and co-founders of the Seattle Privacy Coalition, were awakened at 6:15 a.m. by a team of six detectives from the Seattle Police Department who had a search warrant to examine their equipment. They claimed to be looking for child pornography, however Bultmann and Robinson believe the raid is because they run a Tor exit node out of their home. They said they operated the node as a service to dissidents in repressive countries, knowing full well that criminals might use it as well, much like any other communication tool. The Seattle Police Department acknowledged that no child porn was found, no assets were seized, and no arrests were made. Seattle's blog The Stranger notes that the FBI has conducted many other Tor raids across the country, and Friday quoted a tweet from the co-founder of Seattle's Center for Open Policing addressing the police. "You knew about the Tor node, but didn't mention it in warrant application. Y'all pulled a fast one on the judge... you knew the uploader could have been literally anyone in the world."

Comments

More Information

[Frosty Piss]

More about it here...

Not the first time in seattle for Police Spying

[Frosty Piss]

This is not the first time the Seattle Police have made forays into spying on the citizenry.

Re:Standard tactics

[sumdumass]

How? I mean it doesn't matter if you run TOR or your neighbors use your WiFi, it is not a get out of jail free card so you can run something sleazy. Suppose they were the source of the kiddie porn ? Does the fact they run TOR mean that the cops cannot investigate?

No, this was handled properly. Suspected illegal activity was investigated and they were quickly found to not be part of it with minimal inconvenience. I'm not sure why this is even a story. Guess what, if you are around a store that gets robbed or some other crimes the cops will investigate also.

Re: Standard tactics

[lgw]

There is no evidence of a lack of probable cause though.

Do you understand the difference between "probable" and "might possibly be"? It seems like you don't, but "probable" means "more than 50%". If you know it's a TOR exit node, what are the odds? Ultimately, it's the judge's call, but being a TOR exit node dramatically changes those odds.