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Developer Of Anonymous Tor Software Dodges FBI, Leaves US (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: FBI agents are currently trying to subpoena one of Tor's core software developers to testify in a criminal hacking investigation, CNNMoney has learned. But the developer, who goes by the name Isis Agora Lovecruft, fears that federal agents will coerce her to undermine the Tor system -- and expose Tor users around the world to potential spying. That's why, when FBI agents approached her and her family over Thanksgiving break last year, she immediately packed her suitcase and left the United States for Germany. "I was worried they'd ask me to do something that hurts innocent people -- and prevent me from telling people it's happening," she said in an exclusive interview with CNNMoney. Earlier in the month, Tech Dirt reported the Department of Homeland Security wants to subpoena the site over the identity of a hyperbolic commenter.
She should be heading to a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US.
When was this? This isn't new. As Ronald Reagan said: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
AFAICT: You're quoting Reagan out of context. He was speaking about farming and government subsidies. This is what Reagan actually said:
"When I first started traveling abroad as President, especially to our annual economic summits, I suggested that the best foreign aid or development program the United States could give the world was a crash study in free enterprise. And this idea was, to say the least, greeted with skepticism. But when America's economic miracle took over and as we created during the past 67 months 17 million new jobs, I noticed that the idea of fostering growth through encouraging the entrepreneur began to take hold -- even to the point where the emphasis on agricultural subsidies, once so sacrosanct in other nations, is giving way at these summits to ideas on how to develop more free enterprise. There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time: that the 10 most dangerous words in the English language are, ``Hi, I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.'' [Laughter]
Well, of course, sometimes government can help and should help -- natural disasters like the drought, for example -- but we need to look to a future where there's less, not more, government in our daily lives. It's that philosophy that brought us the prosperity and growth that we see today. That's why we've proposed nothing less than a total phaseout by the year 2000 of all policies that distort trade in agriculture, and I'm speaking of worldwide. This proposal reflects one of my abiding beliefs -- I think it's a belief that you share: The solution to the world agricultural problem is to get government out of the way and let farmers compete."
https://reaganlibrary.archives...
The FBI agents refused to deal with her lawyer, and intimated that they would pick her up off the street to interrogate her without a lawyer present.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
I don't think their actions are the actions of people who are operating within the rules of law. Their actions are the actions of people who are afraid of being caught violating the supreme law of the land.
Another fact that the CNN article didn't make clear : the developer was already in the process of moving to Germany.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The Underhanded C Contest provides plenty of ideas how a smart developer can subvert a system even in face of thorough code review.
And in Isis' case, if she was forced to make such a subversive commit, she could either:
* refuse to be a traitor -- certain contempt of court
* do it and get caught (immediately or after the fact) -- likely charge of contempt of court (they'd suspect she tipped the reviewers)
* do it successfully -- and be a traitor of what we believe in
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Lame attempt to change the subject into an irrelevant rant about "etymologies". Seriously, who cares?
An arrest warrant is a licence to lock you in jail, with conditions. A subpoena is a licence to lock you in jail, with conditions. An arrest warrant can be fought. A subpoena can be fought. That's the similarity. The difference is that one is an ultimatum, forcing obligations upon you and allowing you to avoid imprisonment if you are willing and able to fulfil those obligations, whereas the other protects you against such obligations and puts the responsibility on your accusers.
Now you can examine word origins with your magnifying glass on your own time, but please stop trying to project your fixation onto me. Your evasive complaints about the word "subpoena" mean nothing, and I'm not interested in your theories on etymology or magick.
You are clearly not looking hard enough. She is the lead developer of BridgeDB and has been working on OONI:
https://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople.html.en
Looking at the checkins on BridgeDB shows that she at least has been very active:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/bridgedb.git
Sure she hasn't done much on the git repo, but her cv which is hosted on a Tor site, seems to suggest she's been pretty involved with the project for a while.
Exactly. Only one person can actually commit, so if several people collaborate on some code, only one gets the credit. I collaborated with a lot of developers for one open source project, but never made a single commit... But all the developers knew me, and if I e-mailed one a code snippit, it was likely to be used.
This is false; Isis does a lot of valuable work on Tor and on some related projects like bridgedb, but she does not have commit rights on the Tor daemon itself. The people who do are me (Andrea Shepard), Nick Mathewson and Roger Dingledine. All patches are reviewed by at least one committer other than the patch author.