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> The core question here is w whether law enforcement actually believes, incorrectly, that the exit node operators are being intentionally unhelpful They could

> The core question here is w whether law enforcement actually believes, incorrectly, that the exit node operators are being intentionally unhelpful They could keep logs, but they choose not to. They are intentionally unhelpful. The reason they aren't keeping logs is not for the privacy of others. If I run an exit node, I know I am not reading the logs to garner personal information of others. And unless someone hacks my server and goes through the logs, which is extremely unlikely, noone else will read the logs either. The only one reading the logs would be law enforcement. By not keeping logs, you are intentionally hindering law enforcement.

alasdair_ 2y ago
>By not keeping logs, you are intentionally hindering law enforcement. This is why I keep a diary indicating every single person I've ever interacted with, along with the date, time and place. It's a pain to do so and it takes up a lot of storage space and it makes people wary about interacting with me but I'd certainly never want to hinder law enforcement.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  Unless I'm misunderstanding your comment, you are arguing in bad faith. It is not a "pain" to set up logging. Most non-tor proxies implement logging. It would be a completely reasonable task for the tor project to implement logging by default. No one would be any more "wary" to interact with your tor node. Trusting your node not to log would be foolish anyway. So whether you make known that you are logging, or whether you claim not to log (but might secretly do anyway) doesn't make much of a difference. The storage space a log takes up is negligible (unless you keep logs for unreasonably long times) on anything but the smallest systems. And since running a tor node takes quite a bit of processing power, you won't be running your node on a system that can't handle a few megabytes of logs.
- gretch 2y ago
  >It's a pain to do so and it takes up a lot of storage space The perspective is that in order for these actions to be ethical, you must log the traffic, or you should not bother setting up the node. It's irresponsible to setup the node (which takes some amount of effort) but not do the precautionary part which makes it ethical. You can believe otherwise if you'd like, but this is an ethical framework applied to many other parts of our society and it's the thing that sets you apart from the ISPs, and generally it's the thing accepted by the public at large.
  - throwai 2y ago
    I'd like to make the argument that "we" believe otherwise. It is legal to keep some logs for a limited amount of time if you run an IT service in Germany, mostly for the purpose of keeping the service running properly. If you have that data, you can give it to LE when they request it. The thing accepted by the public at large is often codified within a country's laws. German laws generally do not require you to store logs if you are an ISP. Storing them for too long can even be unlawful. There is no so called Vorratsdatenspeicherung anymore, and it is a recurring topic of political debate. So at least in Germany, the public view on storing data is more complex, and people don't believe not storing data or reducing the amount of data stored is clearly immoral when running IT services. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datensparsamkeit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datenspars... On another note, if LE requests you to log specific access patterns in advance, you might have to do it. If your ISP services are really big (lots of users), you might even have to provide some sort of interface for LE. IMO and under certain interpretations of the involved laws, the German state could ask every single node operator in Germany to log everything, but the political backlash would be quite high.
- numpad0 2y ago
  This is why you enable location history for Google Maps. It had genuinely saved few honest people from false accusations.
  - dmichulke 2y ago
    I'm stuck. Please add /s or the links or both.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      Telescreen works both ways. That could come in handy if you truly have nothing to hide, or I suppose if what you are hiding must be within His tolerances. Chalmers sent a copy of his timeline to Premier Park Ltd, the company that charged him with the crimes, and the defendant was able to prove his innocence. The charges against him were dropped.[1] the lawyer met with the detective in order to show him screenshots of McCoy’s Google location history, including data recorded by RunKeeper. The maps showed months of bike rides past the burglarized home, NBC News reports.[2] 1: https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-maps-keeps-user-from-jail-and-from-paying-a-hefty-fine_id141275 https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-maps-keeps-user-from-... 2: https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2020/03/10/google-data-puts-innocent-man-at-the-scene-of-a-crime/ https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2020/03/10/google-data-puts-in... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
afh1 2y ago
Law enforcement is also about going after whistleblowers, journalists, or, in most countries, just ordinary citizens the current people in power don't like, even if no crime was committed.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  You seem to have misinterpreted my comment. I was not making any moral judgement on people operating tor nodes. I was simply stating that you are, in fact, hindering law enforcement if you set up a non-logging proxy for the purposes of hindering law enforcement. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide. Clearly many people think it's a good thing; good enough to go through the efforts of setting up a proxy.
  - MerManMaid 2y ago
    Germany does not mandate that TOR end-node providers are expected to log their users. Saying that not logging someone who went through your end-node is intentionally hindering the police would be like accusing a shopkeeper of intentionally hindering the police because they didn't make of record of every person who entered their storefront.
    - aniviacat 2y ago
      Maybe. I think it differs because tor is specifically created to protect against surveillance; both private surveillance and state surveillance (a.k.a. law enforcement). If a shop was actively helping people avoid surveillance, I would expect them to actively assist law enforcement, too. I find it perfectly reasonable to consider people who actively help a project which advertises on its website that it is being used to protect against state surveillance / law enforcement to be hindering law enforcement.
sealeck 2y ago
> They could keep logs, but they choose not to. They are intentionally unhelpful. Some tech companies have extremely sophisticated observability which dumps huge volumes data about the internal state of a program. Some companies have very limited observability beyond maybe logging "we just served a request". Your argument suggests that companies who don't have the extensive logs of the former are being intentionally unhelpful? There are lots of reasons to not keep logs – lack of storage space, additional economic cost of doing so, slower response times due to overhead of observability, etc.
vfclists 2y ago
Are shopkeepers required to take down the name and keep a mugshot of everyone who visits their shop in order to help law enforcement? Are the proprietors of any building one might visit required to do so, including those with home security cameras? You are implying that by not keeping records of all events you are involved with you are intentionally hindering law enforcement, implying that we are morally and legally bound to gather and retain information which helps law enforcement. Does that make clearing browser history a deliberate attempt to hinder law enforcement? Internet cafe's wipe the computers after every session. Is that intentionally hindering law enforcement?
- aniviacat 2y ago
  I think it's about whether the expectation to log is within reason. Though that is of course subjective. The difference between your examples and logging proxy access is that logging proxy access is the standard behavior (for proxies which aren't tor). Tor proxies deliberately decide to behave in a non-standard manner. And with what tor is about, it is clear that this is not for technical reasons but for hindering law enforcement. I will claim that if the tor project did not openly intend to make government surveillance more difficult, it would have implemented logging long ago. But that's just a claim, not a fact. Maybe I'm wrong.
  - vfclists 2y ago
    >it is clear that this is not for technical reasons but for hindering law enforcement. Aren't there valid reasons for people not to conceal or anonymize their communications, such as whistleblowers, journalists, or people needing to hide their communications from oppressive governments? On the issue of clearing browser history are you aware that the FBI threatened a boy for clearing his browser history under laws intended for destruction of corporate documents and communications?
    - aniviacat 2y ago
      > Aren't there valid reasons for people not to conceal or anonymize their communications, such as whistleblowers, journalists, or people needing to hide their communications from oppressive governments? Keeping logs doesn't help other goverments. Other governments cannot access your logs. Your government can access your logs. You are protecting them from your government. You may claim that your government is oppressive. But that doesn't change that you are hindering the enforcement of their (oppressive) laws. Regarding the moral question: I agree that there are cases where hindering your own government's law enforcement may make sense. Regarding tor, I mostly take issue with the concept of onion services. If you want to publish USA government secrets, you can publish them on Russian servers. If you want to publish Russian government secrets, you can publish them on American servers, etc. The sole purpose of onion services is to publish content which is illegal in every country on earth. I can't think of many good things that are ollegal in every country on earth.

alasdair_ 2y ago

>By not keeping logs, you are intentionally hindering law enforcement. This is why I keep a diary indicating every single person I've ever interacted with, along with the date, time and place. It's a pain to do so and it takes up a lot of storage space and it makes people wary about interacting with me but I'd certainly never want to hinder law enforcement.

aniviacat 2y ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding your comment, you are arguing in bad faith. It is not a "pain" to set up logging. Most non-tor proxies implement logging. It would be a completely reasonable task for the tor project to implement logging by default. No one would be any more "wary" to interact with your tor node. Trusting your node not to log would be foolish anyway. So whether you make known that you are logging, or whether you claim not to log (but might secretly do anyway) doesn't make much of a difference. The storage space a log takes up is negligible (unless you keep logs for unreasonably long times) on anything but the smallest systems. And since running a tor node takes quite a bit of processing power, you won't be running your node on a system that can't handle a few megabytes of logs.
gretch 2y ago
>It's a pain to do so and it takes up a lot of storage space The perspective is that in order for these actions to be ethical, you must log the traffic, or you should not bother setting up the node. It's irresponsible to setup the node (which takes some amount of effort) but not do the precautionary part which makes it ethical. You can believe otherwise if you'd like, but this is an ethical framework applied to many other parts of our society and it's the thing that sets you apart from the ISPs, and generally it's the thing accepted by the public at large.
- throwai 2y ago
  I'd like to make the argument that "we" believe otherwise. It is legal to keep some logs for a limited amount of time if you run an IT service in Germany, mostly for the purpose of keeping the service running properly. If you have that data, you can give it to LE when they request it. The thing accepted by the public at large is often codified within a country's laws. German laws generally do not require you to store logs if you are an ISP. Storing them for too long can even be unlawful. There is no so called Vorratsdatenspeicherung anymore, and it is a recurring topic of political debate. So at least in Germany, the public view on storing data is more complex, and people don't believe not storing data or reducing the amount of data stored is clearly immoral when running IT services. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datensparsamkeit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datenspars... On another note, if LE requests you to log specific access patterns in advance, you might have to do it. If your ISP services are really big (lots of users), you might even have to provide some sort of interface for LE. IMO and under certain interpretations of the involved laws, the German state could ask every single node operator in Germany to log everything, but the political backlash would be quite high.
numpad0 2y ago
This is why you enable location history for Google Maps. It had genuinely saved few honest people from false accusations.
- dmichulke 2y ago
  I'm stuck. Please add /s or the links or both.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Telescreen works both ways. That could come in handy if you truly have nothing to hide, or I suppose if what you are hiding must be within His tolerances. Chalmers sent a copy of his timeline to Premier Park Ltd, the company that charged him with the crimes, and the defendant was able to prove his innocence. The charges against him were dropped.[1] the lawyer met with the detective in order to show him screenshots of McCoy’s Google location history, including data recorded by RunKeeper. The maps showed months of bike rides past the burglarized home, NBC News reports.[2] 1: https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-maps-keeps-user-from-jail-and-from-paying-a-hefty-fine_id141275 https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-maps-keeps-user-from-... 2: https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2020/03/10/google-data-puts-innocent-man-at-the-scene-of-a-crime/ https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2020/03/10/google-data-puts-in... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

afh1 2y ago

Law enforcement is also about going after whistleblowers, journalists, or, in most countries, just ordinary citizens the current people in power don't like, even if no crime was committed.

aniviacat 2y ago
You seem to have misinterpreted my comment. I was not making any moral judgement on people operating tor nodes. I was simply stating that you are, in fact, hindering law enforcement if you set up a non-logging proxy for the purposes of hindering law enforcement. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide. Clearly many people think it's a good thing; good enough to go through the efforts of setting up a proxy.
- MerManMaid 2y ago
  Germany does not mandate that TOR end-node providers are expected to log their users. Saying that not logging someone who went through your end-node is intentionally hindering the police would be like accusing a shopkeeper of intentionally hindering the police because they didn't make of record of every person who entered their storefront.
  - aniviacat 2y ago
    Maybe. I think it differs because tor is specifically created to protect against surveillance; both private surveillance and state surveillance (a.k.a. law enforcement). If a shop was actively helping people avoid surveillance, I would expect them to actively assist law enforcement, too. I find it perfectly reasonable to consider people who actively help a project which advertises on its website that it is being used to protect against state surveillance / law enforcement to be hindering law enforcement.

sealeck 2y ago

> They could keep logs, but they choose not to. They are intentionally unhelpful. Some tech companies have extremely sophisticated observability which dumps huge volumes data about the internal state of a program. Some companies have very limited observability beyond maybe logging "we just served a request". Your argument suggests that companies who don't have the extensive logs of the former are being intentionally unhelpful? There are lots of reasons to not keep logs – lack of storage space, additional economic cost of doing so, slower response times due to overhead of observability, etc.

vfclists 2y ago

Are shopkeepers required to take down the name and keep a mugshot of everyone who visits their shop in order to help law enforcement? Are the proprietors of any building one might visit required to do so, including those with home security cameras? You are implying that by not keeping records of all events you are involved with you are intentionally hindering law enforcement, implying that we are morally and legally bound to gather and retain information which helps law enforcement. Does that make clearing browser history a deliberate attempt to hinder law enforcement? Internet cafe's wipe the computers after every session. Is that intentionally hindering law enforcement?

aniviacat 2y ago
I think it's about whether the expectation to log is within reason. Though that is of course subjective. The difference between your examples and logging proxy access is that logging proxy access is the standard behavior (for proxies which aren't tor). Tor proxies deliberately decide to behave in a non-standard manner. And with what tor is about, it is clear that this is not for technical reasons but for hindering law enforcement. I will claim that if the tor project did not openly intend to make government surveillance more difficult, it would have implemented logging long ago. But that's just a claim, not a fact. Maybe I'm wrong.
- vfclists 2y ago
  >it is clear that this is not for technical reasons but for hindering law enforcement. Aren't there valid reasons for people not to conceal or anonymize their communications, such as whistleblowers, journalists, or people needing to hide their communications from oppressive governments? On the issue of clearing browser history are you aware that the FBI threatened a boy for clearing his browser history under laws intended for destruction of corporate documents and communications?
  - aniviacat 2y ago
    > Aren't there valid reasons for people not to conceal or anonymize their communications, such as whistleblowers, journalists, or people needing to hide their communications from oppressive governments? Keeping logs doesn't help other goverments. Other governments cannot access your logs. Your government can access your logs. You are protecting them from your government. You may claim that your government is oppressive. But that doesn't change that you are hindering the enforcement of their (oppressive) laws. Regarding the moral question: I agree that there are cases where hindering your own government's law enforcement may make sense. Regarding tor, I mostly take issue with the concept of onion services. If you want to publish USA government secrets, you can publish them on Russian servers. If you want to publish Russian government secrets, you can publish them on American servers, etc. The sole purpose of onion services is to publish content which is illegal in every country on earth. I can't think of many good things that are ollegal in every country on earth.