15 ms·

Another police raid in Germany

530 points by costco 2y ago

gaiagraphia 2y ago
Governments have become absolutely addicted to have real-time access to everything we do, think, and see. Mad respect to anybody who goes against the grain, and puts their own livelihood and freedom at risk, to help support privacy and freedom.
LinuxBender 2y ago
Archive [1] [1] - https://archive.is/LDTL8 https://archive.is/LDTL8
walrus01 2y ago
Historical: "Why you need balls of steel to operate a tor exit node" http://web.archive.org/web/20100414224255/http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-of-steel-to-operate-a-tor-exit-node/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100414224255/http://calumog.wor... The above is within the context of a western legal system, and certainly since it was written domestic law enforcement has become even more militarized and aggressive. I would be absolutely unsurprised if the same thing happened today and it resulted in a battering ram on the door at 0400 in the morning, flashbang grenades and the house being rampaged through by a SWAT team.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Has that ever happened to a Tor node operator? If it hasn't, what's the closest incident to a Tor node operator you're aware of where it has?
  - dewey 2y ago
    In my country there was this famous case ~a few~ many years ago: https://www.zdnet.com/article/austrian-man-raided-for-operating-tor-exit-node/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/austrian-man-raided-for-operat...
    - blub 2y ago
      Looks like he was not only arrested, but actually sentenced: https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/04/austrian_tor_exit_relay_op_found_guitly_for_ferrying_child_p0rn/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/04/austrian_tor_exit_rel... 3 years probation and 30.000€ fine.
  - golergka 2y ago
    https://lwn.net/Articles/720231/ https://lwn.net/Articles/720231/
- chucksmash 2y ago
  > As a parent of very young children I have an extensive network of friends and contacts in my neighbourhood who also have children. As we know the subject of paedophilia is not one that can be debated with any rationality at all in the UK. It is surrounded by hysteria. I was terrified that people would find out that my computer had been taken because of that – ‘no smoke without fire’.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- numpad0 2y ago
  Many European countries have standing police armed forces, closer to army national guards than blue shirted civilian police. They're for suppressing resistance forces and revolutionary uprisings, and they tend to fill roles of FBI too. I think that contributes more to normalization of MP5 ninjas fast roping down through your chimney for Internet crimes in Europe than law enforcement over-militarization had done.
Manuel_D 2y ago
I'm not sure how a Tor exit node could operate legally. Tor is widely used for illegal activities. Like drug sales and CSE media. If a government goes on Tor, downloads such material they'll easily see the exit node as the last hop in the chain. It's a clear-cut case that the exit node operator facilitated illegal activity. My assumption is that Germany has some sort of common-carrier privileges for Tor node operators. In America, telecoms can't be sued for facilitating illegal activity. But they do have to assist law enforcement with finding criminals when requested. Would be happy to hear from someone who is more knowledgeable in this area.
- Hizonner 2y ago
  > I'm not sure how a Tor exit node could operate legally. Tor is widely used for illegal activities. How do ISPs operate legally? Every single thing that's ever been done over a Tor relay has crossed multiple ISPs.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    > How do ISPs operate legally? I described exactly that in my second paragraph.
    - Hizonner 2y ago
      Tor relay operators are, as a rule, entirely willing to give law enforcement all the information they have about connections that have gone through their relays. They simply don't have any. And there's no legal requirement for them to have any. ... or at least there never was in the past. The new wave of stupid and extremely broad "duty of care" laws that try to apply to the design of any and every communication service may change that. But it hasn't been litigated anywhere.
      - bawolff 2y ago
        The original post mentioned facilitation, which from what i understand is when you assist comitting a crime but have no secific knowledge of the crime. I imagine for tor, the reason is that there are also good uses for tor. However i dont think "i intentionally know nothing" works as a defence in general. Ianal
edm0nd 2y ago
Part of the reason I sadly stopped running any exit nodes was law enforcement harassment. I ran a few exits for about about ~5 years. In those 5 years, my hosting provider (DigitalOcean) received 3 subpoenas for my account information. The first two were random. The 1st one was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email. The last and final subpoena was the most serious one. Some nation-state hackers from Qatar had ended up using my exit IP to break into some email accounts belonging to people they were interested in and spied upon them and stole some info. Thankfully both the Tor Project and the EFF were able to help me pro-bono. The EFF lawyer that was assigned to me helped me fight this subpoena but ultimately we had to turn over my account information to the DOJ + I had to give an affidavit stating that I was simply just an operator and nothing on the server in question would be useful to their investigation (by design). The stress of having to deal with law enforcement, lawyers, and having to entertain the possibility of having my home raided over something so silly ultimately led to me finally shutting down my exits. Even though I had all of my exits using a reduced exit policy and I would blacklist known malicious IPs and c2/malware infra from being able to use it, I was still a target. I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down. I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way.
- beaglesss 2y ago
  Wouldn't the true exit node be the ISP as you are one clear node behind them? How many ISP execs get raided by SWAT teams?
  - edm0nd 2y ago
    Yes the IP was just a DO vps I setup to be a Tor exit. That's why they requested my personal account information, billing info, IPs that I logged into DO with, all of that. If not interrupted by me getting the help of the amazing EFF lawyers, the next step after getting my personal information, could have been to raid my home and seize all my electronics. I work from home and would have been greatly disrupted and not been able to work without my computers and etc. Then I'd have to wait months/years to be found innocent and then get all of my electronics back + spend thousands on lawyers. During all of this, the EFF lawyers straight up told me to prepare my home as if it were to be raided and encrypt all my devices. Thankfully it did not come to that.
walrus01 2y ago
From the point of view of a less-than-technical law enforcement person writing a affidavit in support to get a search warrant, abusive traffic from a tor exit node is indistinguishable from a person who is physically at a specific street address/premises with a laptop or computer engaged in the activity. They're going to assume until proven otherwise (by first confiscating all your electronics and sending them to a digital forensics lab to analyze them for 6-12 months) that some person who is physically present at that exact location is engaged in CSAM/CP or malicious/illegal activity.
- bawolff 2y ago
  I mean, there is a public list of all tor nodes in the world so it is pretty distinguishable in that sense. Presumably still worth checking out in case a criminal is running a tor node as cover, but at the same time it seems unlikely someone is both technical enough to run a tor node but also doesn't bother covering their tracks.
hnbad 2y ago
I have mixed feelings about this given that the organisation's only explicit stance is being in defense of free speech, the freedom of the press and opposition to censorship. This tells me nothing about who's behind this, who's involved and what their motives or views are, which, sadly, is often more important than what an organisation claims to be about. The name is also effectively ungoogleable, leaving the thin info on their own website as the only source of information. The author of that post is a former member of the German Pirate Party who left for unclear reasons and ran as an independent on his own penny with no clear message beyond being a protest vote for people who don't want to protest vote for the far right. On the other hand Germany does use flimsy excuses to crack down on services like Tor and that's bad.
motohagiography 2y ago
perhaps an unpopular view as Tor has been a great legal canary and a useful privacy service, but it has also been a substitute for organizing. if you use Tor you already know what's going on. onion routing didn't save anyone from anything in 20 years. the evils Tor enabled often seem to trace back to the very states and establishments who manage and tolerate them. drug cartels run several of the governments Tor ostensibly protects users from, and human trafficking is within a degree of most western establishments in every direction, from "NGOs" to intelligence operations to the sex trade. if you want privacy, tech is an inferior solution. make nations that protect it.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  > make nations that protect it What nations have you made?
  - motohagiography 2y ago
    Specifically? Mine. I did public sector work to ensure that dozens of government projects serving millions of people were made to respect the privacy and freedom of the people they served. there's quite a list and tbh, I can probably afford the humility.
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      There is chasm between “a nation that protects privacy” and “a government that I’ve done good work in”. The former is a nice-sounding rhetorical ideal, but if you do not care to name one that exists I’m not sure what is accomplished by conflating the two other than a sort of non sequitur self-congratulation in the comments of a thread about the tor project.
- jancsika 2y ago
  > but it has also been a substitute for organizing Hard to imagine even a single would-be organizer who got side-quested into zealously advocating for Tor. On the other hand-- easy to imagine many digital utopianists who on principle don't organize in the sense you mean, and some of them zealously advocating for Tor.
numpad0 2y ago
Yeah, German armed police wrt Internet is kind of known to be a bit like, that. They make excuses, but at the end of the day they're not the most respectful of free speech among G7 or whatever. I wouldn't be sure if Tor exit nodes are something that can lawfully(ignoring backwards ones) ran, though.
ghransa 2y ago
It's a tough tradeoff for society, and a lot of harm is concentrated, but in a way that's good thing - there is a way to block tor exit nodes if you need to and the defaults ports do prevent many types of abuse and since the exit nodes are public they can just be blocked for spam, clickfraud, etc. But with any duel use technology, the opposite argument would be investigations also running through TOR, or even a totalitarian state (in this case it seems non technical judicial procedure through proper channels, but that's the concern). The trouble is the routing is outside of the state control and the typical mechanism for takedowns, ultimately for the worse of the worst ultimately has a host somewhere else as tor just does the routing. Since by design the exit node wouldn't necessarily get you any further up the chain to the middle node in the connection, it would be more fruitful to chose a different investigative strategy.
iamleppert 2y ago
[flagged]
o999 2y ago
Interestingly enough, there are multiple exit nodes in Russia, as far as I know, law enforcements aren't taking them down
- xkjyeah 2y ago
  Isn't that scarier, knowing that you're using a state-sanctioned exit node?
  - gea0 2y ago
    Regarding exit nodes, you have to assume the worst anyways, so it should not change much.
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    In parallel with gea0's comment, using a Russian state-sanctioned exit node would make tracing efforts difficult-to-impossible for western government / law enforcement.
    - u8080 2y ago
      Could you explain what "state-sanctioned" means here?
      - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        Whatever xkjyeah meant when he said it. Likely run by Russian intelligence services or their catspaws and therefore heavily monitored and logged. US intelligence likely run their own tor nodes as well.
  - _l219 2y ago
    If I was Russian, sure. I think it’s best to always use exit nodes/proxies in geopolitically opposed countries to prevent collaboration between states. E.g. use western VPNs while in China, use Russian/Chinese tunnels in the west.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
hwbehrens 2y ago
> There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual tor users. This is not why. > As a consequence, I am personally no longer willing to provide my personal address&office-space as registered address for our non-profit/NGO as long as we risk more raids by running exit nodes. This is why. It's basically a textbook example of a chilling effect.
- gea0 2y ago
  No, that's not (necessarily) it. It only takes one person in LE to request to investigate this IP, and a single judge that isn't entirely convinced that it will be worthless to try to sign it off. If parts of the state wanted to harass operators systematically or organize to discourage TOR, they could do much worse.
  - creer 2y ago
    The one person in LE is assisted by specialists (you know, if they really care to be.)
    - tessierashpool9 2y ago
      and the judge and the state attorney involved are controlled by the state's justice department which is run by politicians. yes, in germany the judiciary system is not politically independent ... https://www.transparency.de/aktuelles/detail/article/eugh-urteilt-deutsche-staatsanwaltschaft-nicht-unabhaengig https://www.transparency.de/aktuelles/detail/article/eugh-ur...
  - tessierashpool9 2y ago
    > If parts of the state wanted to harass operators systematically or organize to discourage TOR, they could do much worse. it is beginning to get much worse ...
  - freilanzer 2y ago
    Most judges don't really read what they sign if it comes from LE, I am convinced.
marcodiego 2y ago
I think I have a solution: countries (governments) could publish lists of forbidden addresses; you could be allowed to safely run you Tor exit node as long as those addresses are blocked. Of course, not ideal, but could make a lot of people more willing to run exit nodes. It wouldn't fix the "someone used my exit node to send a bomb treat" case though.
- abc88889 2y ago
  [dead]
- Legend2440 2y ago
  This is counter to the entire idea of Tor, which exists to allow people to bypass government censorship.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Does it have to be a binary? Why not make it possible for people who want to support dissidents in Iran to host them without also supporting violent criminals in their home country? The tech is probably impossible, but I'm not seeing a moral case against it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - null0pointer 2y ago
    That use case still works. You only need one exit node in one jurisdiction where the site you want to visit isn’t blocked. Surely an exit node operator in country A can’t be prosecuted for allowing access to a site on country B’s blacklist.
    - dewey 2y ago
      > Surely an exit node operator in country A can’t be prosecuted for allowing access to a site on country B’s blacklist. There's many cases where ISPs are ordered to block piracy and streaming sites that are in another country.
steelframe 2y ago
I knew someone who ran a Tor exit node from his research lab workstation at Brigham Young University (BYU), a conservative religious school with an extreme institutional phobia of porn. He ended up in a "special interview" with his graduate advisor. I don't know if he fully groked at the time just how close he came to getting expelled.
- Hizonner 2y ago
  ... which might have estranged him from the church, which would have been a good thing. Win all around...
- frakkingcylons 2y ago
  Yeah BYU's rules are pretty strict. I don't think I would run an exit node using property from the same university that requires a waiver just to have a beard: https://honorcode.byu.edu/beard-waivers https://honorcode.byu.edu/beard-waivers
trhway 2y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to register a company/nonprofit and run exits under that umbrella instead of as an individual. Also to preemptively send all the reg. info - office address, phone, exits’ IPs, etc - to local and federal LE.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Some exit nodes have tried that and they still randomly catch raids or warrants from law enforcement who don't bother to check or don't care to.
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    But if that gets the business premises raided, rather than the homes of the operators, then that's at least a partial win. But that requires the (likely non-trivial) expense of a business premises for likely the sole purpose of running exit nodes.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      If the law doesn't understand what TOR is they're also likely to grab a warrant for the sole owners house too for a computer crimes case under the theory they're also using their home computer in some way for the crime.
      - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        Spend a bit extra for an opaque offshore ownership structure... It's only the stupid and poor that can be held to account.
- dewey 2y ago
  That's what many operators are doing already.
game_the0ry 2y ago
Europeans, what are your governments doing? I am sorry for what your governments are about to do you, bc you will likely go through a very difficult time in the near future. Now, its Tor and Telegram - soon, every opinion you have shared will likely be scrutinized and used against you. Good luck, European people. I am hoping the best for you.
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Regarding quite a few concerns, it is the old continent. Also demographically and a lot of our policies stem from fears. It won't be a continent that will be regarded as a bastion of civil liberties in the future with their current course. Ironically, through that they also make everything less safe.
gea0 2y ago
So, LE observes: - This IP had malicious activity or is otherwise relevant to a (maybe complicated) case - It says "tor" on a landing page, or in WHOIS, or the IP is on the public list of nodes ... does "it will be 100% worthless to investigate" really follow from only this? Some things to consider: - All kinds of other servers, services or proxies could also be running on or behind this IP - The node could be misconfigured in a variety of ways to keep forensic traces, even being a VM that is being snapshotted regularly - Some lunatic could be running an exit on his personal machine, but just coincidentally to the observed criminal activity - A high percentage of nodes is malicious, keeps logs, mines data, poisons traffic and tries opportunistic TLS stripping (those poor, naive souls clicking the warning away...) It does NOT follow that there are no useful forensic traces to be found, not even that the traffic actually originates from the TOR network. Not to encourage raids on node operators, but it is worthwhile to keep in mind that there could be actual reasoning behind these actions. If you are smart about this, you can even get the relevant and obtainable info with little LE resources and without unduly harassing the operator.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aborsy 2y ago
Is it known what percentage of Tor users use it for illegal purposes? Even like, the majority or minority.
- derkades 2y ago
  The better question to me, though harder to answer, is whether I would consider their activity immoral. I would be happy to proxy traffic regarding investigative journalism, queer sexuality, consensual pornography, even though it is illegal in many places.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Or even drugs, why would I want to punish people for smoking pot after a long day of work? Why would I want to take control over what they can or cannot do to their body? You have no idea how many people are out there with chronic pain without access to proper painkillers. Additionally, drugs are a means to an end. It may help with physical pain or emotional pain, anxiety, depression. It may help with socialization, being productive, ADHD and so forth.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Just the use of Tor, in Australia* at least, raises a law enforcement red flag (edit: not enough to justify a raid on its own, but a data point in that direction). So I was specifically told by a detective. *Australia has laws that requires ISPs to keep metadata for at least two years.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Might be a point of interest but not a very strong one. We all used Tor in high school to play flash games on the school network. It's not like they bust down your door because you connected to Tor.
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    (I've added a note to my comment above) Yes, my intention was to say that it'll get their attention, but as a single data point won't justify a raid. The detective said it to me as part of the conversation in which I was told I could collect my seized equipment, and it was said in a way that implied they thought I was still "guilty" despite the fact they found nothing incriminating in the multiple terabytes of data they seized. The other (laughable) 'red flag data points' the detective mentioned were: - The usage of virtual machines - Having downloaded items from MEGA Incredibly low bars for suspicion if you ask me, but then I know a bare minimum about technology...
  - pushupentry1219 2y ago
    Yeah. However, (and this applies to the parent comment as well), running a Tor exit node is entirely different to just "using Tor"
- incompatible 2y ago
  If I remember correctly, it was assured when the data retention requirement was set up that URLs wouldn't be collected. How would the cops even know somebody was using Tor?
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
pelasaco 2y ago
"On Aug 16th 2024 German police considered it once again appropriate to raid the home&office at the registered address of our organization." Police doesn't decide anything, they just follow orders
- MinMau221 2y ago
  [dead]
seu 2y ago
> There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual tor users. No. Their objective is to intimidate individuals, exhaust them, which leads to... > As a consequence, I am personally no longer willing to provide my personal address&office-space as registered address for our non-profit/NGO as long as we risk more raids by running exit nodes. That is a risk I am just no longer willing to take anymore. Which is totally understandable.
paravirtualized 2y ago
For a supposed hacker community, knowledge of Tor sure is low. Perhaps the privacy and anonymity people don't feel too keen on commenting. Here is a good talk by Roger Dingledine, the original author of tor dispelling common myths and giving some statistics on its real world usage: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Di7qAVidy1Y https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Di7qAVidy1Y And for good measure, It's Tor not TOR: https://support.torproject.org/#about_why-is-it-called-tor https://support.torproject.org/#about_why-is-it-called-tor
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Despite strong privacy laws, Germany isn't a dependable country that could protect it. Raids on homes for trivialities are common place, there is basically no legal protection against that. This shows a state that is a bit overwhelmed with its primary affairs and the country itself is not a dependable partner for protection of basic rights.
- freilanzer 2y ago
  Call a politician a "cock" on Twitter and your home gets raided and every device gets confiscated for months if you're lucky - forever, if you're unlucky. The only difference between Germany and illegitimate police states is the frequency and the degree with which these things happen. Otherwise, as a normal person you have little protection from police here.
jmakov 2y ago
So the only "legal" node operators left will be state agencies.
iamnotsure 2y ago
Eins, zwei, Polizei Drei, vier, Grenadier Fünf, sechs, alte Keks Sieben, acht, Gute Nacht
janandonly 2y ago
This is why you should run a TOR node, but not an exit node.

530 points by costco 2y ago

Governments have become absolutely addicted to have real-time access to everything we do, think, and see. Mad respect to anybody who goes against the grain, and puts their own livelihood and freedom at risk, to help support privacy and freedom.

LinuxBender 2y ago

Archive [1] [1] - https://archive.is/LDTL8 https://archive.is/LDTL8

walrus01 2y ago

Historical: "Why you need balls of steel to operate a tor exit node" http://web.archive.org/web/20100414224255/http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-of-steel-to-operate-a-tor-exit-node/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100414224255/http://calumog.wor... The above is within the context of a western legal system, and certainly since it was written domestic law enforcement has become even more militarized and aggressive. I would be absolutely unsurprised if the same thing happened today and it resulted in a battering ram on the door at 0400 in the morning, flashbang grenades and the house being rampaged through by a SWAT team.

tptacek 2y ago
Has that ever happened to a Tor node operator? If it hasn't, what's the closest incident to a Tor node operator you're aware of where it has?
- dewey 2y ago
  In my country there was this famous case ~a few~ many years ago: https://www.zdnet.com/article/austrian-man-raided-for-operating-tor-exit-node/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/austrian-man-raided-for-operat...
  - blub 2y ago
    Looks like he was not only arrested, but actually sentenced: https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/04/austrian_tor_exit_relay_op_found_guitly_for_ferrying_child_p0rn/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/04/austrian_tor_exit_rel... 3 years probation and 30.000€ fine.
- golergka 2y ago
  https://lwn.net/Articles/720231/ https://lwn.net/Articles/720231/
chucksmash 2y ago
> As a parent of very young children I have an extensive network of friends and contacts in my neighbourhood who also have children. As we know the subject of paedophilia is not one that can be debated with any rationality at all in the UK. It is surrounded by hysteria. I was terrified that people would find out that my computer had been taken because of that – ‘no smoke without fire’.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
numpad0 2y ago
Many European countries have standing police armed forces, closer to army national guards than blue shirted civilian police. They're for suppressing resistance forces and revolutionary uprisings, and they tend to fill roles of FBI too. I think that contributes more to normalization of MP5 ninjas fast roping down through your chimney for Internet crimes in Europe than law enforcement over-militarization had done.

Manuel_D 2y ago

I'm not sure how a Tor exit node could operate legally. Tor is widely used for illegal activities. Like drug sales and CSE media. If a government goes on Tor, downloads such material they'll easily see the exit node as the last hop in the chain. It's a clear-cut case that the exit node operator facilitated illegal activity. My assumption is that Germany has some sort of common-carrier privileges for Tor node operators. In America, telecoms can't be sued for facilitating illegal activity. But they do have to assist law enforcement with finding criminals when requested. Would be happy to hear from someone who is more knowledgeable in this area.

Hizonner 2y ago
> I'm not sure how a Tor exit node could operate legally. Tor is widely used for illegal activities. How do ISPs operate legally? Every single thing that's ever been done over a Tor relay has crossed multiple ISPs.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  > How do ISPs operate legally? I described exactly that in my second paragraph.
  - Hizonner 2y ago
    Tor relay operators are, as a rule, entirely willing to give law enforcement all the information they have about connections that have gone through their relays. They simply don't have any. And there's no legal requirement for them to have any. ... or at least there never was in the past. The new wave of stupid and extremely broad "duty of care" laws that try to apply to the design of any and every communication service may change that. But it hasn't been litigated anywhere.
    - bawolff 2y ago
      The original post mentioned facilitation, which from what i understand is when you assist comitting a crime but have no secific knowledge of the crime. I imagine for tor, the reason is that there are also good uses for tor. However i dont think "i intentionally know nothing" works as a defence in general. Ianal

edm0nd 2y ago

Part of the reason I sadly stopped running any exit nodes was law enforcement harassment. I ran a few exits for about about ~5 years. In those 5 years, my hosting provider (DigitalOcean) received 3 subpoenas for my account information. The first two were random. The 1st one was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email. The last and final subpoena was the most serious one. Some nation-state hackers from Qatar had ended up using my exit IP to break into some email accounts belonging to people they were interested in and spied upon them and stole some info. Thankfully both the Tor Project and the EFF were able to help me pro-bono. The EFF lawyer that was assigned to me helped me fight this subpoena but ultimately we had to turn over my account information to the DOJ + I had to give an affidavit stating that I was simply just an operator and nothing on the server in question would be useful to their investigation (by design). The stress of having to deal with law enforcement, lawyers, and having to entertain the possibility of having my home raided over something so silly ultimately led to me finally shutting down my exits. Even though I had all of my exits using a reduced exit policy and I would blacklist known malicious IPs and c2/malware infra from being able to use it, I was still a target. I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down. I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way.

beaglesss 2y ago
Wouldn't the true exit node be the ISP as you are one clear node behind them? How many ISP execs get raided by SWAT teams?
- edm0nd 2y ago
  Yes the IP was just a DO vps I setup to be a Tor exit. That's why they requested my personal account information, billing info, IPs that I logged into DO with, all of that. If not interrupted by me getting the help of the amazing EFF lawyers, the next step after getting my personal information, could have been to raid my home and seize all my electronics. I work from home and would have been greatly disrupted and not been able to work without my computers and etc. Then I'd have to wait months/years to be found innocent and then get all of my electronics back + spend thousands on lawyers. During all of this, the EFF lawyers straight up told me to prepare my home as if it were to be raided and encrypt all my devices. Thankfully it did not come to that.

walrus01 2y ago

From the point of view of a less-than-technical law enforcement person writing a affidavit in support to get a search warrant, abusive traffic from a tor exit node is indistinguishable from a person who is physically at a specific street address/premises with a laptop or computer engaged in the activity. They're going to assume until proven otherwise (by first confiscating all your electronics and sending them to a digital forensics lab to analyze them for 6-12 months) that some person who is physically present at that exact location is engaged in CSAM/CP or malicious/illegal activity.

bawolff 2y ago
I mean, there is a public list of all tor nodes in the world so it is pretty distinguishable in that sense. Presumably still worth checking out in case a criminal is running a tor node as cover, but at the same time it seems unlikely someone is both technical enough to run a tor node but also doesn't bother covering their tracks.

hnbad 2y ago

I have mixed feelings about this given that the organisation's only explicit stance is being in defense of free speech, the freedom of the press and opposition to censorship. This tells me nothing about who's behind this, who's involved and what their motives or views are, which, sadly, is often more important than what an organisation claims to be about. The name is also effectively ungoogleable, leaving the thin info on their own website as the only source of information. The author of that post is a former member of the German Pirate Party who left for unclear reasons and ran as an independent on his own penny with no clear message beyond being a protest vote for people who don't want to protest vote for the far right. On the other hand Germany does use flimsy excuses to crack down on services like Tor and that's bad.

motohagiography 2y ago

perhaps an unpopular view as Tor has been a great legal canary and a useful privacy service, but it has also been a substitute for organizing. if you use Tor you already know what's going on. onion routing didn't save anyone from anything in 20 years. the evils Tor enabled often seem to trace back to the very states and establishments who manage and tolerate them. drug cartels run several of the governments Tor ostensibly protects users from, and human trafficking is within a degree of most western establishments in every direction, from "NGOs" to intelligence operations to the sex trade. if you want privacy, tech is an inferior solution. make nations that protect it.

jrflowers 2y ago
> make nations that protect it What nations have you made?
- motohagiography 2y ago
  Specifically? Mine. I did public sector work to ensure that dozens of government projects serving millions of people were made to respect the privacy and freedom of the people they served. there's quite a list and tbh, I can probably afford the humility.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    There is chasm between “a nation that protects privacy” and “a government that I’ve done good work in”. The former is a nice-sounding rhetorical ideal, but if you do not care to name one that exists I’m not sure what is accomplished by conflating the two other than a sort of non sequitur self-congratulation in the comments of a thread about the tor project.
jancsika 2y ago
> but it has also been a substitute for organizing Hard to imagine even a single would-be organizer who got side-quested into zealously advocating for Tor. On the other hand-- easy to imagine many digital utopianists who on principle don't organize in the sense you mean, and some of them zealously advocating for Tor.

numpad0 2y ago

Yeah, German armed police wrt Internet is kind of known to be a bit like, that. They make excuses, but at the end of the day they're not the most respectful of free speech among G7 or whatever. I wouldn't be sure if Tor exit nodes are something that can lawfully(ignoring backwards ones) ran, though.

ghransa 2y ago

It's a tough tradeoff for society, and a lot of harm is concentrated, but in a way that's good thing - there is a way to block tor exit nodes if you need to and the defaults ports do prevent many types of abuse and since the exit nodes are public they can just be blocked for spam, clickfraud, etc. But with any duel use technology, the opposite argument would be investigations also running through TOR, or even a totalitarian state (in this case it seems non technical judicial procedure through proper channels, but that's the concern). The trouble is the routing is outside of the state control and the typical mechanism for takedowns, ultimately for the worse of the worst ultimately has a host somewhere else as tor just does the routing. Since by design the exit node wouldn't necessarily get you any further up the chain to the middle node in the connection, it would be more fruitful to chose a different investigative strategy.

iamleppert 2y ago

[flagged]

o999 2y ago

Interestingly enough, there are multiple exit nodes in Russia, as far as I know, law enforcements aren't taking them down

xkjyeah 2y ago
Isn't that scarier, knowing that you're using a state-sanctioned exit node?
- gea0 2y ago
  Regarding exit nodes, you have to assume the worst anyways, so it should not change much.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  In parallel with gea0's comment, using a Russian state-sanctioned exit node would make tracing efforts difficult-to-impossible for western government / law enforcement.
  - u8080 2y ago
    Could you explain what "state-sanctioned" means here?
    - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
      Whatever xkjyeah meant when he said it. Likely run by Russian intelligence services or their catspaws and therefore heavily monitored and logged. US intelligence likely run their own tor nodes as well.
- _l219 2y ago
  If I was Russian, sure. I think it’s best to always use exit nodes/proxies in geopolitically opposed countries to prevent collaboration between states. E.g. use western VPNs while in China, use Russian/Chinese tunnels in the west.
alexey-salmin 2y ago

hwbehrens 2y ago

> There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual tor users. This is not why. > As a consequence, I am personally no longer willing to provide my personal address&office-space as registered address for our non-profit/NGO as long as we risk more raids by running exit nodes. This is why. It's basically a textbook example of a chilling effect.

gea0 2y ago
No, that's not (necessarily) it. It only takes one person in LE to request to investigate this IP, and a single judge that isn't entirely convinced that it will be worthless to try to sign it off. If parts of the state wanted to harass operators systematically or organize to discourage TOR, they could do much worse.
- creer 2y ago
  The one person in LE is assisted by specialists (you know, if they really care to be.)
  - tessierashpool9 2y ago
    and the judge and the state attorney involved are controlled by the state's justice department which is run by politicians. yes, in germany the judiciary system is not politically independent ... https://www.transparency.de/aktuelles/detail/article/eugh-urteilt-deutsche-staatsanwaltschaft-nicht-unabhaengig https://www.transparency.de/aktuelles/detail/article/eugh-ur...
- tessierashpool9 2y ago
  > If parts of the state wanted to harass operators systematically or organize to discourage TOR, they could do much worse. it is beginning to get much worse ...
- freilanzer 2y ago
  Most judges don't really read what they sign if it comes from LE, I am convinced.

marcodiego 2y ago

I think I have a solution: countries (governments) could publish lists of forbidden addresses; you could be allowed to safely run you Tor exit node as long as those addresses are blocked. Of course, not ideal, but could make a lot of people more willing to run exit nodes. It wouldn't fix the "someone used my exit node to send a bomb treat" case though.

abc88889 2y ago
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Legend2440 2y ago
This is counter to the entire idea of Tor, which exists to allow people to bypass government censorship.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Does it have to be a binary? Why not make it possible for people who want to support dissidents in Iran to host them without also supporting violent criminals in their home country? The tech is probably impossible, but I'm not seeing a moral case against it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- null0pointer 2y ago
  That use case still works. You only need one exit node in one jurisdiction where the site you want to visit isn’t blocked. Surely an exit node operator in country A can’t be prosecuted for allowing access to a site on country B’s blacklist.
  - dewey 2y ago
    > Surely an exit node operator in country A can’t be prosecuted for allowing access to a site on country B’s blacklist. There's many cases where ISPs are ordered to block piracy and streaming sites that are in another country.

steelframe 2y ago

I knew someone who ran a Tor exit node from his research lab workstation at Brigham Young University (BYU), a conservative religious school with an extreme institutional phobia of porn. He ended up in a "special interview" with his graduate advisor. I don't know if he fully groked at the time just how close he came to getting expelled.

Hizonner 2y ago
... which might have estranged him from the church, which would have been a good thing. Win all around...
frakkingcylons 2y ago
Yeah BYU's rules are pretty strict. I don't think I would run an exit node using property from the same university that requires a waiver just to have a beard: https://honorcode.byu.edu/beard-waivers https://honorcode.byu.edu/beard-waivers

trhway 2y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to register a company/nonprofit and run exits under that umbrella instead of as an individual. Also to preemptively send all the reg. info - office address, phone, exits’ IPs, etc - to local and federal LE.

rtkwe 2y ago
Some exit nodes have tried that and they still randomly catch raids or warrants from law enforcement who don't bother to check or don't care to.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  But if that gets the business premises raided, rather than the homes of the operators, then that's at least a partial win. But that requires the (likely non-trivial) expense of a business premises for likely the sole purpose of running exit nodes.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    If the law doesn't understand what TOR is they're also likely to grab a warrant for the sole owners house too for a computer crimes case under the theory they're also using their home computer in some way for the crime.
    - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
      Spend a bit extra for an opaque offshore ownership structure... It's only the stupid and poor that can be held to account.
dewey 2y ago
That's what many operators are doing already.

game_the0ry 2y ago

Europeans, what are your governments doing? I am sorry for what your governments are about to do you, bc you will likely go through a very difficult time in the near future. Now, its Tor and Telegram - soon, every opinion you have shared will likely be scrutinized and used against you. Good luck, European people. I am hoping the best for you.

raxxorraxor 2y ago
Regarding quite a few concerns, it is the old continent. Also demographically and a lot of our policies stem from fears. It won't be a continent that will be regarded as a bastion of civil liberties in the future with their current course. Ironically, through that they also make everything less safe.

gea0 2y ago

So, LE observes: - This IP had malicious activity or is otherwise relevant to a (maybe complicated) case - It says "tor" on a landing page, or in WHOIS, or the IP is on the public list of nodes ... does "it will be 100% worthless to investigate" really follow from only this? Some things to consider: - All kinds of other servers, services or proxies could also be running on or behind this IP - The node could be misconfigured in a variety of ways to keep forensic traces, even being a VM that is being snapshotted regularly - Some lunatic could be running an exit on his personal machine, but just coincidentally to the observed criminal activity - A high percentage of nodes is malicious, keeps logs, mines data, poisons traffic and tries opportunistic TLS stripping (those poor, naive souls clicking the warning away...) It does NOT follow that there are no useful forensic traces to be found, not even that the traffic actually originates from the TOR network. Not to encourage raids on node operators, but it is worthwhile to keep in mind that there could be actual reasoning behind these actions. If you are smart about this, you can even get the relevant and obtainable info with little LE resources and without unduly harassing the operator.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

aborsy 2y ago

Is it known what percentage of Tor users use it for illegal purposes? Even like, the majority or minority.

derkades 2y ago
The better question to me, though harder to answer, is whether I would consider their activity immoral. I would be happy to proxy traffic regarding investigative journalism, queer sexuality, consensual pornography, even though it is illegal in many places.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Or even drugs, why would I want to punish people for smoking pot after a long day of work? Why would I want to take control over what they can or cannot do to their body? You have no idea how many people are out there with chronic pain without access to proper painkillers. Additionally, drugs are a means to an end. It may help with physical pain or emotional pain, anxiety, depression. It may help with socialization, being productive, ADHD and so forth.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Just the use of Tor, in Australia* at least, raises a law enforcement red flag (edit: not enough to justify a raid on its own, but a data point in that direction). So I was specifically told by a detective. *Australia has laws that requires ISPs to keep metadata for at least two years.

Gigachad 2y ago
Might be a point of interest but not a very strong one. We all used Tor in high school to play flash games on the school network. It's not like they bust down your door because you connected to Tor.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  (I've added a note to my comment above) Yes, my intention was to say that it'll get their attention, but as a single data point won't justify a raid. The detective said it to me as part of the conversation in which I was told I could collect my seized equipment, and it was said in a way that implied they thought I was still "guilty" despite the fact they found nothing incriminating in the multiple terabytes of data they seized. The other (laughable) 'red flag data points' the detective mentioned were: - The usage of virtual machines - Having downloaded items from MEGA Incredibly low bars for suspicion if you ask me, but then I know a bare minimum about technology...
- pushupentry1219 2y ago
  Yeah. However, (and this applies to the parent comment as well), running a Tor exit node is entirely different to just "using Tor"
incompatible 2y ago
If I remember correctly, it was assured when the data retention requirement was set up that URLs wouldn't be collected. How would the cops even know somebody was using Tor?
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago

pelasaco 2y ago

"On Aug 16th 2024 German police considered it once again appropriate to raid the home&office at the registered address of our organization." Police doesn't decide anything, they just follow orders

MinMau221 2y ago
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seu 2y ago

> There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual tor users. No. Their objective is to intimidate individuals, exhaust them, which leads to... > As a consequence, I am personally no longer willing to provide my personal address&office-space as registered address for our non-profit/NGO as long as we risk more raids by running exit nodes. That is a risk I am just no longer willing to take anymore. Which is totally understandable.

paravirtualized 2y ago

For a supposed hacker community, knowledge of Tor sure is low. Perhaps the privacy and anonymity people don't feel too keen on commenting. Here is a good talk by Roger Dingledine, the original author of tor dispelling common myths and giving some statistics on its real world usage: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Di7qAVidy1Y https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Di7qAVidy1Y And for good measure, It's Tor not TOR: https://support.torproject.org/#about_why-is-it-called-tor https://support.torproject.org/#about_why-is-it-called-tor

raxxorraxor 2y ago

Despite strong privacy laws, Germany isn't a dependable country that could protect it. Raids on homes for trivialities are common place, there is basically no legal protection against that. This shows a state that is a bit overwhelmed with its primary affairs and the country itself is not a dependable partner for protection of basic rights.

freilanzer 2y ago
Call a politician a "cock" on Twitter and your home gets raided and every device gets confiscated for months if you're lucky - forever, if you're unlucky. The only difference between Germany and illegitimate police states is the frequency and the degree with which these things happen. Otherwise, as a normal person you have little protection from police here.

jmakov 2y ago

So the only "legal" node operators left will be state agencies.

iamnotsure 2y ago

Eins, zwei, Polizei Drei, vier, Grenadier Fünf, sechs, alte Keks Sieben, acht, Gute Nacht

janandonly 2y ago

This is why you should run a TOR node, but not an exit node.