Getting that list of addresses and comparing it takes time,
Really, a comment like this on/. of all places? You are talking about search a list of strings for a particular string, and not even a very long list. The bottleneck is in the amount of time it takes the police to enter the query into their computer.
what's supposed to happen between when the suspect says "I'm running Tor" and when they come back saying "no you're not?"
Then you have someone who lied to the police (which is evidence that can be used against them), and if they destroyed the incriminating evidence, they are guilty of another crime -- destruction of evidence.
Can law enforcement even get historical lists, to show that the guy wasn't actually running the node at the time the crime was committed?
They could maintain their own up-to-date list of Tor exits, or just download the list before they go ahead and get a search warrant. It is really not that hard, and given how many years Tor has been around and how widespread its use is, this sort of thing should be automatic during computer crime investigations.
warning that "this could happen again" is simply honest
I view it as a threat -- they are telling the guy that he will have to go through this entire situation again if he continues to run a Tor exit.
Mr. King should take this opportunity to set up logging, so he can quickly show what connections came through the node
Why? He was never committing a crime to begin with, so why should his behavior change? ICE did shoddy investigative work by relying on only an IP address; the fault lies with ICE, not with the exit node operator.
Next time ICE shows up,
...he should sue? ICE has no business showing up at an exit node operator's home.
Suppose that law enforcement is investigating a child pornography forum. The forum operator may have an IQ larger than his shoe size, and when law enforcement IP addresses show up, he is going to destroy all the evidence and possibly send a warning out to the forum's members. The police use Tor to avoid that problem -- it is even more effective since the members of those sorts of forums are often Tor users themselves.
every criminal could simply operate a Tor exit node and be out of reach of investigation.
Or they could just use Tor, and avoid being investigated in the first place. Which is what happened in this case.
The "every criminal will use this excuse" theory is baseless. If an IP address is the only evidence that someone committed a crime, then that person should not be convicted -- and we should be examining what sort of laws led to a situation where IP addresses are the only evidence needed for a search or arrest warrant. I share an Internet connection with several other people; should we all be arrested if the IP address happened to be an endpoint of illegal data? There are dozens of people who have SSH access to my research group's server, and it is possible that any of them could use that server as a proxy -- should the server and all of our computers be confiscated, and all of us arrested, if the IP address shows up during an investigation?
IP addresses are not a form of identification, and even less so when a Tor exit node has that IP address. Anyone could be a criminal, but we should have higher standards for evidence when it comes to issuing warrants and confiscating equipment.
Traffic through ISPs is expected to originate with the customers
A provably false assumption even when Tor is not involved. I share an Internet connection with several other people, and my name is not the name of the account holder. When I was in high school, my (nerdier) friends and I used to grant ssh access to each other -- someone who was not even a resident of my home could have been using my Internet connection. I once discovered that a network administrator had not changed the default password on a router; I could have used that router to relay any traffic I wanted. Then there is this:
As the EFF said, an IP address does not identify a human being, and it does not necessarily identify a specific computer. An IP address may be helpful in an investigation as a clue, but a lot more evidence is needed before you can claim that any person or residence is responsible for the traffic originating at an IP address.
Running an exit node is like volunteering yourself for anything. You might end up helping someone commit a crime.
Parking your car in the right spot on the street might help someone commit a crime. So what? Even the police use Tor, when for example they are investigating illegal websites and don't want to reveal that they are law enforcement. Exit node operators should not face this sort of harassment, especially not in the United States (the country that started the Tor project).
The point here is that an IP address does not identify a person and that the fact that illegal data was received at that IP address is not "probably cause." There is just as much reason to believe that an ISP employee is using a customer's IP address as a cover to download child pornography as there is to believe that a Tor exit operator is using Tor as a cover.
If police want to investigate that traffic and you tell them "sorry, I'm just running TOR" and they just take your word for it and go away...that would be some pretty incompetent police work.
If the police had received more than 3 hours of "computer training," they would know that they can get a list of Tor exit node IP addresses at no cost from the Tor project itself. They can verify any claim that a person is running a Tor exit by checking that list, just like they can verify a claim that a particular server is owned by an ISP or that there are millions of websites hosted on that server.
As I have said, what makes it clear that this was a case of harassment is that they threatened the exit node operator when they returned his equipment.
So why not treat corporate ISPs the same way -- after all, one of the ISP's employees might be using the ISP's equipment to download child pornography, and attempting to disguise that as if it were one of the ISP's customers. Why is ICE not seizing routers and other equipment from ISPs as part of its investigation?
Right, because individual citizens are not supposed to be providing communication services, only registered corporations are supposed to be doing that sort of thing.
An employee at an ISP could download child pornography and disguise it as traffic from a customer. Why, then, does ICE not seize the ISP's equipment as part of their investigation, just to see whether or not that is the case?
The way you know that this has nothing to do with legitimate investigatory techniques is that ICE threatened the guy when they returned his equipment, telling him that he have to deal with more law enforcement harassment in future should he continue operating a Tor exit. This is a straightforward case of harassing the exit node operator because ICE was unable to defeat Tor. Aside from the minority of law enforcement officers who understand that law enforcement agencies benefit from Tor, law enforcement officers in general disdain Tor and think that it is a tool for criminals.
Right, that's why ISPs constantly have their routers and DNS servers seized, because so many people are using those computers for criminal activity.
Oh, wait -- ISPs are corporations, so we treat them differently. When it is some guy running a service out of his home, then the other set of rules applies, where the service operator is harassed by ICE and threatened when his equipment is returned.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If you are downloading child pornography across US borders, it falls under the jurisdiction of ICE. Of course, harassing Tor exit node operators should not fall under the jurisdiction of any agency, but in Soviet America, harassing service operators who are not registered corporations is what we do.
They were successful because they were manufactured cheaply and in great quantities by clone makers which they could do because clean room BIOS reimplentations were deemed legal and Microsoft didn't have an exclusive contract with IBM for DOS. User freedom had little to do with it.
Thus explaining why the cheaper, more widely available (at the time), and unquestionably legal terminals, which could have provided people with access to technically superior (mainframe) hardware and software, were not being installed in everyone's homes in the 1970s. As early as the 1960s, people were talking about selling computing as a utility and how people were going to pay for their computer time the same way they pay for electricity or telephone service. Yet for home computer users, terminals never really caught on, despite being developed for decades longer than personal computers and granting access to more robust software. Personal computers won despite being far more limited than mainframes, running lower quality software, and forcing home users to deal with repairs and upgrades.
It was about the freedom to use your computer in whatever way you see fit, to actually own your computer and not having to submit to the authority of your "computation utility" the way you submit to the phone company. That is why personal computers won, and that is why personal computers are never going away.
It is not just about the freedom to tinker or hack -- most people simply lack the technical skills needed to do such things, and unfortunately Lee Felsenstein's idea that people should design computers that can survive tinkering mistakes has not really been realized. People do like being able to install software that was not vetted by their computers' manufacturer, they like being able to copy files without hitting toll booths or speed bumps, they like being able to get uncensored entertainment. People have enjoyed those freedoms for many years with their PCs, and I do not think most of them will be willing to give those freedoms up.
Personal computers were successful precisely because they are not managed by a large company -- they are owned, operated, and controlled by their users. There is a certain line that people will not be willing to cross, and I would point to the terminology that people use as an indication of where that line is: iPads, cell phones, and video game consoles are not referred to as "computers" by most people, yet devices with similar form factors (e.g. tablet PCs) are or have been. Most people know that there is a difference, even if they cannot articulate what the difference is or why it matters.
We are not supposed to be doing those things. The fact that we are is an embarrassment and needs to be corrected immediately. the Chinese do not get a free pass just because the US government is hypocritical.
You have not seen people give up their PCs entirely though. No matter how many consoles, tablets, phones, and other locked down devices people buy, they still keep a PC around. People are not going to give up their PCs because of the freedom their PCs afford them -- people do like to do things that are not approved by the companies that sell computers.
This is why we read the entire post before replying:
Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
The majority of consumers want to use a clean, simple product
A clean, simple product that they can use how they want to use, without having to pay for every packet they send over the Internet or every CPU minute they consume, and they want to be able to connect hardware that might not be "approved" and view websites without censorship. You really think people do not care about freedom? See what happens when all the freedoms people have enjoyed because of the PC revolution are taken away from them.
Some of your accusations don't even make sense. Attacks on reporters?
So "freedom" and "open" will always be around and available for the people who want it. And I'm glad that's the case. But for me and right now, I'd rather have computers and devices that just work and do so well. If that means they are so-called "closed", then so be it.
I don't think you are fully appreciating what "openness" means. We are not just talking about "open source" or "open standards" here.
You think you do not care about openness? How would you like to be charged by the CPU-minute to use a computer?
And all computers *won't* be like the iPad. This is a scenario that is invented whole cloth out of an irrational fear you and many other people here hold. You will always, for the rest of your life, be able to buy a Linux PC, Linux tablet, Linux phone, Linux whatever. Or possibly replace "Linux" with whatever open system replaces it if that happens during your lifetime.
Do you know why that statement is true? That statement is true because people do care about openness and would not be happy if all computers were like the iPad.
It was designer Steve Jobs that focused on the systematic problems of computer usage that changed the world.
What on God's green earth are you talking about? Steve Jobs was not the one who saw a problem with the corporate vision of computing-as-a-utility. Wozniak was the one who aligned with people like Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club, and Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs did not envisioned the GUI interface, the mouse, video games, WYSIWYG, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, or anything else that has made Apple a successful company.
Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
The majority of computer users have had it easy so far: they have personal computers, which aside from licenses (that few bother to read) and generally under their users' control. There are a few attempts here and there to stop people from doing what they want to do, but in general PCs give people freedom that they do not receive with cell phones, video game consoles, or cable boxes. Most people do not realize that anything else is even possible.
As a case-in-point, most people still do not consider the Xbox to be a computer -- a "computer" for most people is a PC, and anything else is some other category of electronics. If all computers were like the iPad, people would be angry that all the freedom they used to enjoy was taken away from them. People care about openness, even if they do not understand what "openness" means.
Probably because PCs (yes, this includes Apple's line of computers, sorry fanbois) are so widespread and people still hold significant control over their own computation. If all computers were like the iPad, you can bet that more people would care about openness and all the things that gave rise to the PC revolution in the first place.
I believe you are thinking of that other Steve who used to work at Apple. Steve Jobs abandoned the spirit of openness and respect for computer users from which Apple itself was born a long time ago. The iPad, the attacks on hackintoshes, the attacks on reporters, the enormous and complex licenses they expect people to agree to...these are not things that make the world of computing better.
Slashdot Mirror
Getting that list of addresses and comparing it takes time,
Really, a comment like this on /. of all places? You are talking about search a list of strings for a particular string, and not even a very long list. The bottleneck is in the amount of time it takes the police to enter the query into their computer.
what's supposed to happen between when the suspect says "I'm running Tor" and when they come back saying "no you're not?"
Then you have someone who lied to the police (which is evidence that can be used against them), and if they destroyed the incriminating evidence, they are guilty of another crime -- destruction of evidence.
Can law enforcement even get historical lists, to show that the guy wasn't actually running the node at the time the crime was committed?
They could maintain their own up-to-date list of Tor exits, or just download the list before they go ahead and get a search warrant. It is really not that hard, and given how many years Tor has been around and how widespread its use is, this sort of thing should be automatic during computer crime investigations.
warning that "this could happen again" is simply honest
I view it as a threat -- they are telling the guy that he will have to go through this entire situation again if he continues to run a Tor exit.
Mr. King should take this opportunity to set up logging, so he can quickly show what connections came through the node
Why? He was never committing a crime to begin with, so why should his behavior change? ICE did shoddy investigative work by relying on only an IP address; the fault lies with ICE, not with the exit node operator.
Next time ICE shows up,
Suppose that law enforcement is investigating a child pornography forum. The forum operator may have an IQ larger than his shoe size, and when law enforcement IP addresses show up, he is going to destroy all the evidence and possibly send a warning out to the forum's members. The police use Tor to avoid that problem -- it is even more effective since the members of those sorts of forums are often Tor users themselves.
every criminal could simply operate a Tor exit node and be out of reach of investigation.
Or they could just use Tor, and avoid being investigated in the first place. Which is what happened in this case.
The "every criminal will use this excuse" theory is baseless. If an IP address is the only evidence that someone committed a crime, then that person should not be convicted -- and we should be examining what sort of laws led to a situation where IP addresses are the only evidence needed for a search or arrest warrant. I share an Internet connection with several other people; should we all be arrested if the IP address happened to be an endpoint of illegal data? There are dozens of people who have SSH access to my research group's server, and it is possible that any of them could use that server as a proxy -- should the server and all of our computers be confiscated, and all of us arrested, if the IP address shows up during an investigation?
IP addresses are not a form of identification, and even less so when a Tor exit node has that IP address. Anyone could be a criminal, but we should have higher standards for evidence when it comes to issuing warrants and confiscating equipment.
Traffic through ISPs is expected to originate with the customers
A provably false assumption even when Tor is not involved. I share an Internet connection with several other people, and my name is not the name of the account holder. When I was in high school, my (nerdier) friends and I used to grant ssh access to each other -- someone who was not even a resident of my home could have been using my Internet connection. I once discovered that a network administrator had not changed the default password on a router; I could have used that router to relay any traffic I wanted. Then there is this:
http://www.itworld.com/security/84077/child-porn-malwares-ultimate-evil
As the EFF said, an IP address does not identify a human being, and it does not necessarily identify a specific computer. An IP address may be helpful in an investigation as a clue, but a lot more evidence is needed before you can claim that any person or residence is responsible for the traffic originating at an IP address.
Running an exit node is like volunteering yourself for anything. You might end up helping someone commit a crime.
Parking your car in the right spot on the street might help someone commit a crime. So what? Even the police use Tor, when for example they are investigating illegal websites and don't want to reveal that they are law enforcement. Exit node operators should not face this sort of harassment, especially not in the United States (the country that started the Tor project).
If police want to investigate that traffic and you tell them "sorry, I'm just running TOR" and they just take your word for it and go away...that would be some pretty incompetent police work.
If the police had received more than 3 hours of "computer training," they would know that they can get a list of Tor exit node IP addresses at no cost from the Tor project itself. They can verify any claim that a person is running a Tor exit by checking that list, just like they can verify a claim that a particular server is owned by an ISP or that there are millions of websites hosted on that server.
As I have said, what makes it clear that this was a case of harassment is that they threatened the exit node operator when they returned his equipment.
So why not treat corporate ISPs the same way -- after all, one of the ISP's employees might be using the ISP's equipment to download child pornography, and attempting to disguise that as if it were one of the ISP's customers. Why is ICE not seizing routers and other equipment from ISPs as part of its investigation?
Right, because individual citizens are not supposed to be providing communication services, only registered corporations are supposed to be doing that sort of thing.
An employee at an ISP could download child pornography and disguise it as traffic from a customer. Why, then, does ICE not seize the ISP's equipment as part of their investigation, just to see whether or not that is the case?
The way you know that this has nothing to do with legitimate investigatory techniques is that ICE threatened the guy when they returned his equipment, telling him that he have to deal with more law enforcement harassment in future should he continue operating a Tor exit. This is a straightforward case of harassing the exit node operator because ICE was unable to defeat Tor. Aside from the minority of law enforcement officers who understand that law enforcement agencies benefit from Tor, law enforcement officers in general disdain Tor and think that it is a tool for criminals.
Right, that's why ISPs constantly have their routers and DNS servers seized, because so many people are using those computers for criminal activity.
Oh, wait -- ISPs are corporations, so we treat them differently. When it is some guy running a service out of his home, then the other set of rules applies, where the service operator is harassed by ICE and threatened when his equipment is returned.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If you are downloading child pornography across US borders, it falls under the jurisdiction of ICE. Of course, harassing Tor exit node operators should not fall under the jurisdiction of any agency, but in Soviet America, harassing service operators who are not registered corporations is what we do.
They were successful because they were manufactured cheaply and in great quantities by clone makers which they could do because clean room BIOS reimplentations were deemed legal and Microsoft didn't have an exclusive contract with IBM for DOS. User freedom had little to do with it.
Thus explaining why the cheaper, more widely available (at the time), and unquestionably legal terminals, which could have provided people with access to technically superior (mainframe) hardware and software, were not being installed in everyone's homes in the 1970s. As early as the 1960s, people were talking about selling computing as a utility and how people were going to pay for their computer time the same way they pay for electricity or telephone service. Yet for home computer users, terminals never really caught on, despite being developed for decades longer than personal computers and granting access to more robust software. Personal computers won despite being far more limited than mainframes, running lower quality software, and forcing home users to deal with repairs and upgrades.
It was about the freedom to use your computer in whatever way you see fit, to actually own your computer and not having to submit to the authority of your "computation utility" the way you submit to the phone company. That is why personal computers won, and that is why personal computers are never going away.
mess with computers
It is not just about the freedom to tinker or hack -- most people simply lack the technical skills needed to do such things, and unfortunately Lee Felsenstein's idea that people should design computers that can survive tinkering mistakes has not really been realized. People do like being able to install software that was not vetted by their computers' manufacturer, they like being able to copy files without hitting toll booths or speed bumps, they like being able to get uncensored entertainment. People have enjoyed those freedoms for many years with their PCs, and I do not think most of them will be willing to give those freedoms up.
Personal computers were successful precisely because they are not managed by a large company -- they are owned, operated, and controlled by their users. There is a certain line that people will not be willing to cross, and I would point to the terminology that people use as an indication of where that line is: iPads, cell phones, and video game consoles are not referred to as "computers" by most people, yet devices with similar form factors (e.g. tablet PCs) are or have been. Most people know that there is a difference, even if they cannot articulate what the difference is or why it matters.
We are not supposed to be doing those things. The fact that we are is an embarrassment and needs to be corrected immediately. the Chinese do not get a free pass just because the US government is hypocritical.
You have not seen people give up their PCs entirely though. No matter how many consoles, tablets, phones, and other locked down devices people buy, they still keep a PC around. People are not going to give up their PCs because of the freedom their PCs afford them -- people do like to do things that are not approved by the companies that sell computers.
Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
The majority of consumers want to use a clean, simple product
A clean, simple product that they can use how they want to use, without having to pay for every packet they send over the Internet or every CPU minute they consume, and they want to be able to connect hardware that might not be "approved" and view websites without censorship. You really think people do not care about freedom? See what happens when all the freedoms people have enjoyed because of the PC revolution are taken away from them.
Some of your accusations don't even make sense. Attacks on reporters?
Yes, attacks on reporters:
http://www.eff.org/cases/apple-v-does
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-suit-foreshadows-coming-products/2100-1047_3-5513582.html
You must have missed the part where I gave Jobs credit for his marketing talent.
So "freedom" and "open" will always be around and available for the people who want it. And I'm glad that's the case. But for me and right now, I'd rather have computers and devices that just work and do so well. If that means they are so-called "closed", then so be it.
I don't think you are fully appreciating what "openness" means. We are not just talking about "open source" or "open standards" here.
You think you do not care about openness? How would you like to be charged by the CPU-minute to use a computer?
And all computers *won't* be like the iPad. This is a scenario that is invented whole cloth out of an irrational fear you and many other people here hold. You will always, for the rest of your life, be able to buy a Linux PC, Linux tablet, Linux phone, Linux whatever. Or possibly replace "Linux" with whatever open system replaces it if that happens during your lifetime.
Do you know why that statement is true? That statement is true because people do care about openness and would not be happy if all computers were like the iPad.
It was designer Steve Jobs that focused on the systematic problems of computer usage that changed the world.
What on God's green earth are you talking about? Steve Jobs was not the one who saw a problem with the corporate vision of computing-as-a-utility. Wozniak was the one who aligned with people like Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club, and Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs did not envisioned the GUI interface, the mouse, video games, WYSIWYG, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, or anything else that has made Apple a successful company.
Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
The majority of computer users have had it easy so far: they have personal computers, which aside from licenses (that few bother to read) and generally under their users' control. There are a few attempts here and there to stop people from doing what they want to do, but in general PCs give people freedom that they do not receive with cell phones, video game consoles, or cable boxes. Most people do not realize that anything else is even possible.
As a case-in-point, most people still do not consider the Xbox to be a computer -- a "computer" for most people is a PC, and anything else is some other category of electronics. If all computers were like the iPad, people would be angry that all the freedom they used to enjoy was taken away from them. People care about openness, even if they do not understand what "openness" means.
Only nerds on tech sites worry about "closeness."
Probably because PCs (yes, this includes Apple's line of computers, sorry fanbois) are so widespread and people still hold significant control over their own computation. If all computers were like the iPad, you can bet that more people would care about openness and all the things that gave rise to the PC revolution in the first place.
I believe Steve made the world better.
I believe you are thinking of that other Steve who used to work at Apple. Steve Jobs abandoned the spirit of openness and respect for computer users from which Apple itself was born a long time ago. The iPad, the attacks on hackintoshes, the attacks on reporters, the enormous and complex licenses they expect people to agree to...these are not things that make the world of computing better.
3...2...1...
well they trigger on right on red,
Which, as it turns out, is an illegal thing to do in New York City.
That generator runs out of gas because no one was expecting to need it in the middle of the summer
So what you're saying is that human error caused the problem?