8 ms·

> "purpose is to allow or encourage specific illegal actions" And who's to determine what the purpose was? The creator of a new technology has no way to force

by jolmg 8y ago

> "purpose is to allow or encourage specific illegal actions" And who's to determine what the purpose was? The creator of a new technology has no way to force a particular use for their creation. One can invent the cooking knife to help with all sorts of cutting tasks in cooking, and now they'll be held responsible if people decide to use those knives for murder? That's silly.

duxup 8y ago
Yeah that seems to be the key phrase and very very vague. Terrorists for a while used email accounts where they'd write drafts, share username and password and read those drafts. Obviously email isn't "for" terrorism but they used it .... but exactly where that line is is confusing. If I provide a privacy focused service, it stands to reason criminals would like that ... I don't like it, but that's just me saying that, but is that "purpose"?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> And who's to determine what the purpose was? While that's perhaps an interesting question in the general case, for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. And actually, purpose requirements in law are not uncommon and, in systems with meaningful proof requirements that benefit they accused, since they provide additional facts which must be established by evidence before punishment can be imposed.
- jolmg 8y ago
  > we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. Says who? According to the torproject.org homepage[1], the purpose is: > [to help] you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. That includes stuff like preventing your ISP from knowing private personal details like how one was fired, or is secretly gay, or likes to write or draw porn, etc. Also, if you own a big business and you just bought a supplier to eliminate the costs of a middle-man, you might also want to keep that confidential from your competitors for whatever business strategy you have. [1] https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hxegon 8y ago
    Yes, That's part of how people use it now but TOR was created for the explicit purpose that parent said: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Hi... Edit: On further reading the distinction is the TECH behind tor was created for that purpose, TOR itself was created for what it says on the tin.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Says who? The US Naval Research Lab that developed onion routing, patented it, implemented it in the form of Tor, and released it under a free license, which is how the outside-of-government (though founded by some of the same people who had developed the tech and implementation at the USNRL) Tor project was able to build on it.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas ? It's also used by journalists in countries where browsing for certain kind of information can get you in trouble. Intent is what matters here.
- gumby 8y ago
  > for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas While it's possible that Tor's stated mission was a smokescreen, I think it's much more probable that it as created just as its creators said, as part of information assurance (i.e. allow dissidents and journalists to get information out of repressive regimes).
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > as part of information assurance (i.e. allow dissidents and journalists to get information out of repressive regimes). Even so, that's just as much facilitating illegal (under local law) activities as protecting US overseas intelligence activity is, and actually overlaps substantially with protecting US overseas intelligence activity. (US intelligence assets often being dissidents, if not always overtly so.)
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    Their sponsors page... https://www.onion-router.net/Sponsors.html https://www.onion-router.net/Sponsors.html ...states the early generations were created by Navy R&D. The purpose was protecting U.S. government assets with widespread use providing a smokescreen for them, letting them get lost in the crowd. It also took funding from Navy CHACS, which does high-assurance security. The CIA also wanted to protect foreign dissidents in their efforts to change regimes. So, it was getting funding from State Department or a CIA front last time I checked that works on stuff like that. Majority of its funding. It would probably go into legacy mode with layoffs if U.S. military and intelligence stopped using it. They'd have no need to pay the developers' salaries. So, anyone telling you it was designed for something other than supporting U.S. military and intelligence operations is either ignorant of its history or lying to you. That said, it did evolve to help all kinds of people who have nothing to do with such operations. I always give out the "Who Uses Tor?" page for people wondering about legitimate uses for online anonymity. It's an awesome page. https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en EDIT to add CHACS Accomplishments since they brag on what they achieved with Tor: https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/accomplishments https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/accomplishments
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > While that's perhaps an interesting question in the general case, for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. Made all the more problematic by the question of whose purpose should be used. It's a piece of open source software with multiple contributors, one of which may or may not be the node operator. So whose purpose do we use? The US Navy? The EFF? The node operator? They may each have a different purpose. > And actually, purpose requirements in law are not uncommon and, in systems with meaningful proof requirements that benefit they accused, since they provide additional facts which must be established by evidence before punishment can be imposed. Purpose requirements are typically sentence intensifiers for things that are already illegal. Illegal entry is trespass but illegal entry with intent to commit a separate crime is burglary. The problem here is that the other requirements are completely normal behavior and it's the purpose requirement which is doing all the work. If you take it away you don't have a sensible prohibition on something wrong which the purpose requirement only makes harder to prove, you have a nonsense law that prohibits ordinary upstanding behavior. In other words, without the purpose requirement there would not sensibly be any law against this to begin with, and that is what would really benefit the accused.
rock_hard 8y ago
Same could be said about Facebook...yet a lot of people here seem to believe they should be held accountable
- jolmg 8y ago
  Accountable for users giving it a malicious use? What, like if people sell drugs through it? I haven't seen that. There are probably people that want better moderation from Facebook, but that also risks being seen as censorship. What I have seen people try to make Facebook more accountable for is the under-the-table handling of data of their users, but that's not users making a malicious use of Facebook.
- crtasm 8y ago
  Facebook hosts and runs their platform, if they gave me their code they wouldn't be accountable for what my users did with it.
blattimwind 8y ago
> And who's to determine what the purpose was? The same way prosecutors argue about motives and intent. Not exactly breaking new legal ground here. > The creator of a new technology has no way to force a particular use for their creation. This law addresses internet-based services specifically. > That's silly. There is a discussion about this law to be had, but it doesn't include your transparent strawmen.
stcredzero 8y ago
And who's to determine what the purpose was? "The street finds its own uses for things." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome One can invent the cooking knife to help with all sorts of cutting tasks in cooking, and now they'll be held responsible if people decide to use those knives for murder? That's silly. That's the problem with outlawing tools and tech instead of directly going after evil people. One ends up inconveniencing, penalizing, or even making criminals out of law abiding people, while the criminals just keep on circumventing. Hey, all Internet kiddie porn is distributed using networks and computers. Time to outlaw those! Think that's silly? I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it. If we're not careful, we might end up in a world only consisting of locked down DRM-laden devices. Oh hey, we're not that far away from that either!
- cdf2theworld 8y ago
  At least in the US, the police departments are reliant upon traffic tickets for funding. Just saying, get rid of human drivers, cops aren't gonna get paid!
  - iRobbery 8y ago
    I am going to laugh the day AI drivers need to get a license and or can get points from their license taken for traffic violations :D and the human has to pay for it
- magduf 8y ago
  >I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it. It will be a great day when human drivers are banned. Humans can't handle driving, and they cause 40,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Computers will be able to do this far better. But your analogy isn't very good. Assuming we have driverless cars in the future that really are extremely reliable and safe, then I don't see what argument you can possibly make to allow human drivers, other than "I like driving". The interest of public safety clearly overrules your interest in being in control of your own car like in the "old days", just like the interest in public safety prevents you from flying your private airplane in controlled airspace without proper radio equipment, transponder, ATC clearance, etc. However, all kinds of valid arguments can be made against a DRM-laden internet with devices you don't control. There's tons of things people simply wouldn't be able to do (such as write their own software) in such a world. The actual harm caused by the present state of things really isn't very much, if anything (can it be quantified?), the proposed solution doesn't really seem like it'll fix the supposed problems (they had drugs and stuff before the internet after all), and the proposed solution would impose giant costs on society. By contrast, driverless cars (at least the hypothetical ones assumed above) would fix a big problem, and would have very few downsides I can see.
kpcyrd 8y ago
Not a lawyer, but this reads like an intent-based law, which aren't too uncommon in Europe. There are some other laws that are phrased in a similar way, like the so called "hacker paragraph". To stick to your analogy, unless you market your knives as "murder knives" you are good. I'm writing this as a German developer who's involved with the cjdns project, which matches "accessibility is restricted due to specific, technical precautionary measures" but obviously not "purpose is to allow or encourage specific illegal actions".
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  That puts a lot of faith in government not to abuse their right to change opinion. It's trying to make "common sense" law, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with current "common sense" regulating the Internet. On the flipside, common sense would state that maybe 8chan shouldn't exist.
zyx321 8y ago
The prosecution will have to comb through your email history and prove that your intention was to enable criminal actions. If you build a network to help people escape tracking by their ISP and it just so happens that others abuse it for illegal purposes, then that's not really your fault. It's not exactly a knife, but German weapons law does have an intent-based loophole: If you want to carry pepper spray to defend yourself against rapists, you need a lesser weapon's license. If you want to carry pepper spray to defend yourself against animals, you don't need any license. If you get attacked by a rapist, and it just so happens you have anti-animal pepper spray, then of course you can use it for self-defense.
skywhopper 8y ago
It’s more like if you participate in package distribution system that involves you willingly passing along anonymous packages, some or many of which you _know_ are used for criminal activity. It’s not about outlawing packages. But about participating in this network that facilitates organized crime.

by jolmg 8y ago

duxup 8y ago

Yeah that seems to be the key phrase and very very vague. Terrorists for a while used email accounts where they'd write drafts, share username and password and read those drafts. Obviously email isn't "for" terrorism but they used it .... but exactly where that line is is confusing. If I provide a privacy focused service, it stands to reason criminals would like that ... I don't like it, but that's just me saying that, but is that "purpose"?

dragonwriter 8y ago

> And who's to determine what the purpose was? While that's perhaps an interesting question in the general case, for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. And actually, purpose requirements in law are not uncommon and, in systems with meaningful proof requirements that benefit they accused, since they provide additional facts which must be established by evidence before punishment can be imposed.

jolmg 8y ago
> we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. Says who? According to the torproject.org homepage[1], the purpose is: > [to help] you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. That includes stuff like preventing your ISP from knowing private personal details like how one was fired, or is secretly gay, or likes to write or draw porn, etc. Also, if you own a big business and you just bought a supplier to eliminate the costs of a middle-man, you might also want to keep that confidential from your competitors for whatever business strategy you have. [1] https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hxegon 8y ago
  Yes, That's part of how people use it now but TOR was created for the explicit purpose that parent said: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Hi... Edit: On further reading the distinction is the TECH behind tor was created for that purpose, TOR itself was created for what it says on the tin.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Says who? The US Naval Research Lab that developed onion routing, patented it, implemented it in the form of Tor, and released it under a free license, which is how the outside-of-government (though founded by some of the same people who had developed the tech and implementation at the USNRL) Tor project was able to build on it.
ekianjo 8y ago
> for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas ? It's also used by journalists in countries where browsing for certain kind of information can get you in trouble. Intent is what matters here.
gumby 8y ago
> for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas While it's possible that Tor's stated mission was a smokescreen, I think it's much more probable that it as created just as its creators said, as part of information assurance (i.e. allow dissidents and journalists to get information out of repressive regimes).
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > as part of information assurance (i.e. allow dissidents and journalists to get information out of repressive regimes). Even so, that's just as much facilitating illegal (under local law) activities as protecting US overseas intelligence activity is, and actually overlaps substantially with protecting US overseas intelligence activity. (US intelligence assets often being dissidents, if not always overtly so.)
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  Their sponsors page... https://www.onion-router.net/Sponsors.html https://www.onion-router.net/Sponsors.html ...states the early generations were created by Navy R&D. The purpose was protecting U.S. government assets with widespread use providing a smokescreen for them, letting them get lost in the crowd. It also took funding from Navy CHACS, which does high-assurance security. The CIA also wanted to protect foreign dissidents in their efforts to change regimes. So, it was getting funding from State Department or a CIA front last time I checked that works on stuff like that. Majority of its funding. It would probably go into legacy mode with layoffs if U.S. military and intelligence stopped using it. They'd have no need to pay the developers' salaries. So, anyone telling you it was designed for something other than supporting U.S. military and intelligence operations is either ignorant of its history or lying to you. That said, it did evolve to help all kinds of people who have nothing to do with such operations. I always give out the "Who Uses Tor?" page for people wondering about legitimate uses for online anonymity. It's an awesome page. https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en EDIT to add CHACS Accomplishments since they brag on what they achieved with Tor: https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/accomplishments https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/accomplishments
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> While that's perhaps an interesting question in the general case, for Tor, we know the purpose was to protect US covert intelligence communications overseas, which is very much about enabling illegal (by local law) activity. Made all the more problematic by the question of whose purpose should be used. It's a piece of open source software with multiple contributors, one of which may or may not be the node operator. So whose purpose do we use? The US Navy? The EFF? The node operator? They may each have a different purpose. > And actually, purpose requirements in law are not uncommon and, in systems with meaningful proof requirements that benefit they accused, since they provide additional facts which must be established by evidence before punishment can be imposed. Purpose requirements are typically sentence intensifiers for things that are already illegal. Illegal entry is trespass but illegal entry with intent to commit a separate crime is burglary. The problem here is that the other requirements are completely normal behavior and it's the purpose requirement which is doing all the work. If you take it away you don't have a sensible prohibition on something wrong which the purpose requirement only makes harder to prove, you have a nonsense law that prohibits ordinary upstanding behavior. In other words, without the purpose requirement there would not sensibly be any law against this to begin with, and that is what would really benefit the accused.

rock_hard 8y ago

Same could be said about Facebook...yet a lot of people here seem to believe they should be held accountable

jolmg 8y ago
Accountable for users giving it a malicious use? What, like if people sell drugs through it? I haven't seen that. There are probably people that want better moderation from Facebook, but that also risks being seen as censorship. What I have seen people try to make Facebook more accountable for is the under-the-table handling of data of their users, but that's not users making a malicious use of Facebook.
crtasm 8y ago
Facebook hosts and runs their platform, if they gave me their code they wouldn't be accountable for what my users did with it.

blattimwind 8y ago

> And who's to determine what the purpose was? The same way prosecutors argue about motives and intent. Not exactly breaking new legal ground here. > The creator of a new technology has no way to force a particular use for their creation. This law addresses internet-based services specifically. > That's silly. There is a discussion about this law to be had, but it doesn't include your transparent strawmen.

stcredzero 8y ago

And who's to determine what the purpose was? "The street finds its own uses for things." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome One can invent the cooking knife to help with all sorts of cutting tasks in cooking, and now they'll be held responsible if people decide to use those knives for murder? That's silly. That's the problem with outlawing tools and tech instead of directly going after evil people. One ends up inconveniencing, penalizing, or even making criminals out of law abiding people, while the criminals just keep on circumventing. Hey, all Internet kiddie porn is distributed using networks and computers. Time to outlaw those! Think that's silly? I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it. If we're not careful, we might end up in a world only consisting of locked down DRM-laden devices. Oh hey, we're not that far away from that either!

cdf2theworld 8y ago
At least in the US, the police departments are reliant upon traffic tickets for funding. Just saying, get rid of human drivers, cops aren't gonna get paid!
- iRobbery 8y ago
  I am going to laugh the day AI drivers need to get a license and or can get points from their license taken for traffic violations :D and the human has to pay for it
magduf 8y ago
>I don't think we're that far away from outlawing human driven cars. There are probably tons of people in government and law enforcement who would be all for it. It will be a great day when human drivers are banned. Humans can't handle driving, and they cause 40,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Computers will be able to do this far better. But your analogy isn't very good. Assuming we have driverless cars in the future that really are extremely reliable and safe, then I don't see what argument you can possibly make to allow human drivers, other than "I like driving". The interest of public safety clearly overrules your interest in being in control of your own car like in the "old days", just like the interest in public safety prevents you from flying your private airplane in controlled airspace without proper radio equipment, transponder, ATC clearance, etc. However, all kinds of valid arguments can be made against a DRM-laden internet with devices you don't control. There's tons of things people simply wouldn't be able to do (such as write their own software) in such a world. The actual harm caused by the present state of things really isn't very much, if anything (can it be quantified?), the proposed solution doesn't really seem like it'll fix the supposed problems (they had drugs and stuff before the internet after all), and the proposed solution would impose giant costs on society. By contrast, driverless cars (at least the hypothetical ones assumed above) would fix a big problem, and would have very few downsides I can see.

kpcyrd 8y ago

Not a lawyer, but this reads like an intent-based law, which aren't too uncommon in Europe. There are some other laws that are phrased in a similar way, like the so called "hacker paragraph". To stick to your analogy, unless you market your knives as "murder knives" you are good. I'm writing this as a German developer who's involved with the cjdns project, which matches "accessibility is restricted due to specific, technical precautionary measures" but obviously not "purpose is to allow or encourage specific illegal actions".

unethical_ban 8y ago
That puts a lot of faith in government not to abuse their right to change opinion. It's trying to make "common sense" law, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with current "common sense" regulating the Internet. On the flipside, common sense would state that maybe 8chan shouldn't exist.

zyx321 8y ago

The prosecution will have to comb through your email history and prove that your intention was to enable criminal actions. If you build a network to help people escape tracking by their ISP and it just so happens that others abuse it for illegal purposes, then that's not really your fault. It's not exactly a knife, but German weapons law does have an intent-based loophole: If you want to carry pepper spray to defend yourself against rapists, you need a lesser weapon's license. If you want to carry pepper spray to defend yourself against animals, you don't need any license. If you get attacked by a rapist, and it just so happens you have anti-animal pepper spray, then of course you can use it for self-defense.

skywhopper 8y ago

It’s more like if you participate in package distribution system that involves you willingly passing along anonymous packages, some or many of which you _know_ are used for criminal activity. It’s not about outlawing packages. But about participating in this network that facilitates organized crime.