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> As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastr

> As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help. Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately.

nkrisc 2y ago
You have to ask yourself if the good is worth the harm.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  But the math on that looks like this. The "really bad" people have no conscience. No qualms about compromising the device of some innocent victim and then using that as their "exit node" if Tor wasn't available. So if Tor doesn't exist, that's what they do, and that's worse. Because not only do the bad guys still get to be anonymous, now the owner of the compromised system takes the blame. Which is more likely to be someone less able than you to articulate what happened, and who has to claim they were hacked with perhaps scant evidence rather than being able to point to their IP address on the public list of Tor exit nodes. They also might not be in a country with due process. So what you're doing there isn't helping the bad guys, it's saving some of their innocent victims from being unjustly punished. Meanwhile the "good guys" who use Tor do have a conscience, so they wouldn't do that to an innocent third party, and then without Tor they have nothing. So you'd be helping them too.
  - qsdf38100 2y ago
    We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors. Come on, Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false. You’re mostly enabling all sorts of criminal activities, from benign to major. Hosting a tor exit nod doesn’t make you a hero, quite the opposite actually.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors. Locks aren't for the really bad people, who are in fact going to break down the door. They prevent crimes of convenience. But Tor is the lock, and the crimes of convenience would be e.g. mass surveillance of the population, in the event that ordinary people don't have it. So it's not clear what you're arguing here. That everyone should use Tor? > Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false. Start here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507790 Add to this, the illegal stuff isn't accessed via exit nodes, which link into the ordinary internet. Those things use hidden services, which are internal to the network and don't use exit nodes. But let's even explore the premise. Suppose a lot of the traffic is people trading in illegal materials. Well, that's not really a big problem; people do that stuff via several other existing channels and the societal cost of each instance of someone buying pot over the internet isn't very high. Whereas the societal benefit of one single whistleblower is massive. These things can change the lives of millions of people. So even if it's 99% contraband, the remaining 1% is ten million times as valuable.
    - Ferret7446 2y ago
      I would use that argument if I were an oppressive government that was troubled by journalists using Tor to expose me. It's only 1% right? Think of the children. Quoth Fidel Castro: ¿Armas para qué? (What do you need guns for?) Guess what he did after he took the people's guns
      - qsdf38100 2y ago
cm2012 2y ago
There's enough truly bad actors out there, not everything is shades of gray. Cartels, North Korea, ISIS, etc.
- lolinder 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I'm as much of a supporter of encryption as anyone, but I also accept that true effective encryption enables some pretty horrible things. One of those "better look your meat in the eyes, before you murder and eat it" idealism-meets-realism moments. On the whole, though, I think even with perfect encryption the remaining physical traces of illegality are sufficient for law enforcement purposes (granted: if more difficult).
    - lolinder 2y ago
      I don't think the analogies to encryption are fair because a Tor exit node is far more active in shielding criminals than the inventor of a new cryptography scheme is. The inventor merely puts out an idea that can be used for good or bad. The exit node operator is actively paying on an ongoing basis to shuttle CSAM and bomb threats. The exit node operator is also shuttling other content, so it's not wholly evil and on the balance someone might decide it's still worth it, but it's still a much less obvious ethical call than simply designing a piece of tech.
      - BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago
        Someone has to pay for distribution, maintenance, and integrations of the encryption on an ongoing basis. If it was legal to write encryption but illegal to distribute it, what would be the difference from a ban? Both tor and cryptography require an ongoing effort to provide their service.
        2y ago
II2II 2y ago
> depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on Here's the thing: I am not on either side of that conflict, or likely any other conflict you could use as an example. There are atrocities committed by both sides. There are victims on both sides. You could argue over who committed the worse atrocities or over who is the biggest victim until your face turns blue, it isn't going to end the cycle of violence as long as there are people facilitating that violence. And no, I am not naive. I know there are people out there who care nothing about causes beyond their own self interest and who care nothing about their victims. I realize that these people are impossible to combat without the innocent coming in harms way. Yet the moment we fail to be ashamed of the harm we cause in the name of the cause, the moment we fail to acknowledge who is being harmed in the name of the cause, is the moment we become no better than them.
- szundi 2y ago
  Oh just because you are not affected yet, you might be in the future, most probably if no one is there to help against people with obscene power and they start to easily win
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  Here's a better example then. Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"? Lots of horrible dictators have used rhetoric like yours to rationalize/facilitate their actions. The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm. You have to pick a stance and live with the harm that comes out of it (yes, whichever stance you pick, will cause harm).
  - II2II 2y ago
    > Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"? Realistically, I am unlikely to help since I am unlikely to understand the circumstances and I am especially unlikely to understand who I am aiding. Revolutionaries often look noble (or try to look noble) until they are in power and show their true colours. Operating an exit node is something that I would be unwilling to do since it goes beyond possibly facilitating those who would want to do harm, it is pretty much a guarantee of facilitating those who would do harm. > The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm. While I agree that there is no absolute objective moral compass, we each have a moral compass. We have to live by them. Will other people exploit those morals to their advantage. Undoubtedly. That doesn't mean we ignore those morals. Personally, I draw the line at facilitating violence.
lolinder 2y ago
> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more If we're talking about the decision to actually run an exit node, I disagree with this breakdown of the ethics. I can value freedom more than state protection in the abstract while at the same time not feeling that helping support freedom in Russia and China and Iran is worth the cost of simultaneously helping to shield perpetrators of violence closer to home. In most people's ethical frameworks choosing not to run a Tor node does not make me culpable for the actions of a state suppressing its people, but choosing to run one does make me at least somewhat complicit in shielding the perp of a bomb threat.
- saikia81 2y ago
  how is this different from running a postal service? would you be against that?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    The USPS has an embedded law enforcement agency [0] whose full time job is to track down people who are using the postal service to commit crimes. Tor is very specifically designed to make an equivalent impossible. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspect...
zepearl 2y ago
> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more... This is again a forced binary "and/or"-decision, without anything inbetween. It doesn't have to be like that - both can coexist, if both terms are not extreme. (disclosure: my post is not related in any way to Israel nor Palestine and I'm personally not linked in/directly to anything related to Israel nor Palestine and this post is not related to the current conflict)
User23 2y ago
> Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. The problem is when you choose to involve yourself in nation-state conflicts they’re just not going to care about your protestations of neutrality and freedom. They’re just going to see you aiding their enemy.
tzs 2y ago
> Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. Stepping back though neither side in that conflict needs Tor. They both have numerous supporters in other countries where that support is legal. They can send and receive information through trusted outside supporters including some outside governments. They just need secure communication channels to a few representatives among those supporters rather than something is general as Tor.
totetsu 2y ago
>In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately. I want to argue for freedom, on the grounds that most people know whats best for themselves better than others, so on balance there should be more people using that freedom for good, but then most people are busy, and not as motivated or knowledgable of how to use that freedom as the malicious actors are.. so is that even freedom in the end?
Peteragain 2y ago
During The Troubles bombs were sent via the Royal Mail. Nobody blamed the post office. Indeed any infrastructure is a tool of terrorism as we rely on it (I am not going to make a list for obvious reasons). I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk. The question is whether or not the same applies to free speech - you're right there is no win-win solution, but it still might be worth it.
- blitzar 2y ago
  However if you start "Peters no questions asked hand delivery service, shipping direct from Ireland to London so reliably you can set a timer by it" - and you deliver 3 bombs to politicians you might find yourself being asked a few questions.
  - petertodd 2y ago
    At the time that's exactly what the Royal Mail was. Requiring identification to send packages is a much more recent development. Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead.
    - watwut 2y ago
      > Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead. You ... do not read much about history, I guess from this.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk. The thing is, we absolutely don't tolerate this with infrastructure. We have entire systems in place to make sure that we can find people who use our infrastructure to kill people. The USPS has its own entire law enforcement branch whose sole job is to track down people who misuse the mail. I'm sure there are processes in the UK for the same. With our infrastructure there's some non-zero amount of abuse that we acknowledge we won't be able to prevent in order to make everything work without infinite enforcement cost, but we don't just close our eyes to the abuse and not even try to do anything about it at all. The difference between the post office and Tor is that Tor is very specifically designed to make tracking a sender of a bomb threat impossible. State-run postal services at least try to have an audit trail for what they send.
nox101 2y ago
I don't think that dicotomy is quite right. bad actors can take away my freedoms (for example if they steal my bank account I'm no longer financially free as I'd have no money) I don't know the correct balance. maybe it's just an impossible problem. I just don't think the two sides are freedom vs state protection.

nkrisc 2y ago

You have to ask yourself if the good is worth the harm.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
But the math on that looks like this. The "really bad" people have no conscience. No qualms about compromising the device of some innocent victim and then using that as their "exit node" if Tor wasn't available. So if Tor doesn't exist, that's what they do, and that's worse. Because not only do the bad guys still get to be anonymous, now the owner of the compromised system takes the blame. Which is more likely to be someone less able than you to articulate what happened, and who has to claim they were hacked with perhaps scant evidence rather than being able to point to their IP address on the public list of Tor exit nodes. They also might not be in a country with due process. So what you're doing there isn't helping the bad guys, it's saving some of their innocent victims from being unjustly punished. Meanwhile the "good guys" who use Tor do have a conscience, so they wouldn't do that to an innocent third party, and then without Tor they have nothing. So you'd be helping them too.
- qsdf38100 2y ago
  We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors. Come on, Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false. You’re mostly enabling all sorts of criminal activities, from benign to major. Hosting a tor exit nod doesn’t make you a hero, quite the opposite actually.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > We shouldn’t have keys then. Really bad actors are going to force your door anyway. Let’s at least save the doors. Locks aren't for the really bad people, who are in fact going to break down the door. They prevent crimes of convenience. But Tor is the lock, and the crimes of convenience would be e.g. mass surveillance of the population, in the event that ordinary people don't have it. So it's not clear what you're arguing here. That everyone should use Tor? > Tor main use is child pornography and drugs. If you think you’re helping oppressed journalists, it’s 99% false. Start here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507790 Add to this, the illegal stuff isn't accessed via exit nodes, which link into the ordinary internet. Those things use hidden services, which are internal to the network and don't use exit nodes. But let's even explore the premise. Suppose a lot of the traffic is people trading in illegal materials. Well, that's not really a big problem; people do that stuff via several other existing channels and the societal cost of each instance of someone buying pot over the internet isn't very high. Whereas the societal benefit of one single whistleblower is massive. These things can change the lives of millions of people. So even if it's 99% contraband, the remaining 1% is ten million times as valuable.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    I would use that argument if I were an oppressive government that was troubled by journalists using Tor to expose me. It's only 1% right? Think of the children. Quoth Fidel Castro: ¿Armas para qué? (What do you need guns for?) Guess what he did after he took the people's guns
    - qsdf38100 2y ago

cm2012 2y ago

There's enough truly bad actors out there, not everything is shades of gray. Cartels, North Korea, ISIS, etc.

lolinder 2y ago
[flagged]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I'm as much of a supporter of encryption as anyone, but I also accept that true effective encryption enables some pretty horrible things. One of those "better look your meat in the eyes, before you murder and eat it" idealism-meets-realism moments. On the whole, though, I think even with perfect encryption the remaining physical traces of illegality are sufficient for law enforcement purposes (granted: if more difficult).
  - lolinder 2y ago
    I don't think the analogies to encryption are fair because a Tor exit node is far more active in shielding criminals than the inventor of a new cryptography scheme is. The inventor merely puts out an idea that can be used for good or bad. The exit node operator is actively paying on an ongoing basis to shuttle CSAM and bomb threats. The exit node operator is also shuttling other content, so it's not wholly evil and on the balance someone might decide it's still worth it, but it's still a much less obvious ethical call than simply designing a piece of tech.
    - BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago
      Someone has to pay for distribution, maintenance, and integrations of the encryption on an ongoing basis. If it was legal to write encryption but illegal to distribute it, what would be the difference from a ban? Both tor and cryptography require an ongoing effort to provide their service.
      - 2y ago

II2II 2y ago

> depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on Here's the thing: I am not on either side of that conflict, or likely any other conflict you could use as an example. There are atrocities committed by both sides. There are victims on both sides. You could argue over who committed the worse atrocities or over who is the biggest victim until your face turns blue, it isn't going to end the cycle of violence as long as there are people facilitating that violence. And no, I am not naive. I know there are people out there who care nothing about causes beyond their own self interest and who care nothing about their victims. I realize that these people are impossible to combat without the innocent coming in harms way. Yet the moment we fail to be ashamed of the harm we cause in the name of the cause, the moment we fail to acknowledge who is being harmed in the name of the cause, is the moment we become no better than them.

szundi 2y ago
Oh just because you are not affected yet, you might be in the future, most probably if no one is there to help against people with obscene power and they start to easily win
Ferret7446 2y ago
Here's a better example then. Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"? Lots of horrible dictators have used rhetoric like yours to rationalize/facilitate their actions. The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm. You have to pick a stance and live with the harm that comes out of it (yes, whichever stance you pick, will cause harm).
- II2II 2y ago
  > Publishing the truth or publishing opinions about political leaders is illegal in some jurisdictions. Would you be unwilling to provide help to these "bad actors"? Realistically, I am unlikely to help since I am unlikely to understand the circumstances and I am especially unlikely to understand who I am aiding. Revolutionaries often look noble (or try to look noble) until they are in power and show their true colours. Operating an exit node is something that I would be unwilling to do since it goes beyond possibly facilitating those who would want to do harm, it is pretty much a guarantee of facilitating those who would do harm. > The fact of the matter is, there really is no absolute objective moral compass; and yes, that includes "we should just stop facilitating violence" because you absolutely can be enabling others to take advantage of that to cause more harm. While I agree that there is no absolute objective moral compass, we each have a moral compass. We have to live by them. Will other people exploit those morals to their advantage. Undoubtedly. That doesn't mean we ignore those morals. Personally, I draw the line at facilitating violence.

lolinder 2y ago

> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more If we're talking about the decision to actually run an exit node, I disagree with this breakdown of the ethics. I can value freedom more than state protection in the abstract while at the same time not feeling that helping support freedom in Russia and China and Iran is worth the cost of simultaneously helping to shield perpetrators of violence closer to home. In most people's ethical frameworks choosing not to run a Tor node does not make me culpable for the actions of a state suppressing its people, but choosing to run one does make me at least somewhat complicit in shielding the perp of a bomb threat.

saikia81 2y ago
how is this different from running a postal service? would you be against that?
- lolinder 2y ago
  The USPS has an embedded law enforcement agency [0] whose full time job is to track down people who are using the postal service to commit crimes. Tor is very specifically designed to make an equivalent impossible. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspect...

zepearl 2y ago

> In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more... This is again a forced binary "and/or"-decision, without anything inbetween. It doesn't have to be like that - both can coexist, if both terms are not extreme. (disclosure: my post is not related in any way to Israel nor Palestine and I'm personally not linked in/directly to anything related to Israel nor Palestine and this post is not related to the current conflict)

User23 2y ago

> Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. The problem is when you choose to involve yourself in nation-state conflicts they’re just not going to care about your protestations of neutrality and freedom. They’re just going to see you aiding their enemy.

tzs 2y ago

> Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. Stepping back though neither side in that conflict needs Tor. They both have numerous supporters in other countries where that support is legal. They can send and receive information through trusted outside supporters including some outside governments. They just need secure communication channels to a few representatives among those supporters rather than something is general as Tor.

totetsu 2y ago

>In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately. I want to argue for freedom, on the grounds that most people know whats best for themselves better than others, so on balance there should be more people using that freedom for good, but then most people are busy, and not as motivated or knowledgable of how to use that freedom as the malicious actors are.. so is that even freedom in the end?

Peteragain 2y ago

During The Troubles bombs were sent via the Royal Mail. Nobody blamed the post office. Indeed any infrastructure is a tool of terrorism as we rely on it (I am not going to make a list for obvious reasons). I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk. The question is whether or not the same applies to free speech - you're right there is no win-win solution, but it still might be worth it.

blitzar 2y ago
However if you start "Peters no questions asked hand delivery service, shipping direct from Ireland to London so reliably you can set a timer by it" - and you deliver 3 bombs to politicians you might find yourself being asked a few questions.
- petertodd 2y ago
  At the time that's exactly what the Royal Mail was. Requiring identification to send packages is a much more recent development. Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead.
  - watwut 2y ago
    > Society just accepted that bad actors could do this and solved the root problem instead. You ... do not read much about history, I guess from this.
lolinder 2y ago
> I think the reason we tolerate this problem with infrastructure is that the benefits outweigh the risk. The thing is, we absolutely don't tolerate this with infrastructure. We have entire systems in place to make sure that we can find people who use our infrastructure to kill people. The USPS has its own entire law enforcement branch whose sole job is to track down people who misuse the mail. I'm sure there are processes in the UK for the same. With our infrastructure there's some non-zero amount of abuse that we acknowledge we won't be able to prevent in order to make everything work without infinite enforcement cost, but we don't just close our eyes to the abuse and not even try to do anything about it at all. The difference between the post office and Tor is that Tor is very specifically designed to make tracking a sender of a bomb threat impossible. State-run postal services at least try to have an audit trail for what they send.

nox101 2y ago

I don't think that dicotomy is quite right. bad actors can take away my freedoms (for example if they steal my bank account I'm no longer financially free as I'd have no money) I don't know the correct balance. maybe it's just an impossible problem. I just don't think the two sides are freedom vs state protection.