4 ms·

> required to prove that you knew the nature of the material Actually, depending on the laws of the country, the prosecutor might only need to prove that they

by csense 14y ago

> required to prove that you knew the nature of the material Actually, depending on the laws of the country, the prosecutor might only need to prove that they "knew or should have known" the nature of the material. Or it might instead be sufficient to prove that the operator "had a reckless disregard" for the nature of the material. Or perhaps the operator "failed to comply with the regulations for running an Internet service provider, including maintaining logs of customer connections." Which itself might not carry a very harsh penalty, but might also make him liable for criminal acts that others carry out using his illegal ISP. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. These ideas are merely guesses. The things in quotation marks are not quoting anything in particular. I have no idea about which, if any, jurisdictions would accept the legal points my hyopthetical prosecutor makes.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Actually, depending on the laws of the country, the prosecutor might only need to prove that they "knew or should have known" the nature of the material. Or it might instead be sufficient to prove that the operator "had a reckless disregard" for the nature of the material. Obviously we can theorize whatever laws we want and there may even be countries that have them that way, but I'm not sure how that distinguishes the Tor exit node from the ISP. Telecommunications services don't generally inspect the content of the packets they route. I wouldn't want to have to argue that that is "reckless disregard" or whatever, though you can certainly imagine overzealous bureaucrats doing so when it suits them. >Or perhaps the operator "failed to comply with the regulations for running an Internet service provider, including maintaining logs of customer connections." Which itself might not carry a very harsh penalty, but might also make him liable for criminal acts that others carry out using his illegal ISP. Or maybe there is a specific law in a particular country that outlaws anonymizing services. Or maybe a license is required to operate an information processing device. Your mileage may vary, etc. Consult an attorney. But it's worth pointing out that keeping logs doesn't get the government anywhere: The only thing a Tor node has available to log is which nodes it's connected to, and those nodes have a high probability of not having any logs or, even if they do, of being in another country where you can't get access to them. That's kind of the whole idea. So if all you're achieving is to get exit nodes to keep useless logs to make them safe from prosecution under some kind of safe harbor, you just end up back at square one. The question is, do you want to ban anonymizing services or not? And if not, stop harassing the operators.
- stinkytaco 14y ago
  >but I'm not sure how that distinguishes the Tor exit node from the ISP I think it's closer to raiding someone who had their wifi unprotected and someone jumped on and did something illegal. An ISP is a legal entity that has a certain relationship with its customers. This includes identity and at least some form of monitoring (logging and cooperation with authorities). Tor is opening your connection up to anyone in a totally anonymous and encrypted way. This is not to say that the guy is guilty or even that it's right to raid him, it's just saying that I don't think it's fair to argue he has similar legal protections. In the case of an ISP they don't have to raid them, they just show up with a subpoena and the ISP coughs up the info. >The question is, do you want to ban anonymizing services or not? I think that is precisely what they want to do.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >I think it's closer to raiding someone who had their wifi unprotected and someone jumped on and did something illegal. That's what I'm saying. In what world is that a reasonable thing for the police to do? A raid is a thing they should do last, after they already know who they're dealing with and are just sewing up an already strong case against them, not the first thing to do with a suspicious IP address. >In the case of an ISP they don't have to raid them, they just show up with a subpoena and the ISP coughs up the info. They could do the same thing to the operator of the exit node and it would get them the same result as the raid (which is to say really nothing useful) without the harassment, at least in the case that the operator wasn't the perpetrator. Which is the same case for the ISP. Nothing stops criminal ISP employees from responding to a subpoena by destroying the evidence and then fingering some ISP customer known to have open WiFi. >I think that is precisely what they want to do. Then they ought to stop pussyfooting around and actually come right out and propose legislation to that effect. And if it subsequently gets (or already has been) defeated in the legislature or struck down by the courts then they ought to stop pretending it wasn't.
    - stinkytaco 14y ago
      What you're proposing gives anyone with open wifi a license to do whatever they want and then claim it was someone else, that doesn't make sense either. The likely chain of events is as follows: 1. Criminal activity is observed from an IP address. 2. The ISP is contacted, proper permission is received and a wiretap is set up 3. Further traffic patterns are observed 4. A raid is conducted on the owner of the IP address. At this point there is no need to raid the ISP because the traffic can be traced back farther than the ISP to a more specific place. In the case of the IP, the traffic essentially ends at the owner of the IP. It can't be tracked back any further so a raid is conducted to move the investigation to the next level. If the ISP didn't log or wouldn't turn over information, the ISP would be raided, I imagine. Obviously running a TOR exit node, open wifi or ISP can't be a blank check to get away with crime. Once the investigation was stopped, the next logical level was to get more information from the last place it was seen (the IP owners equipment). >Then they ought to stop pussyfooting around and actually come right out and propose legislation to that effect. This assumes that "they" is a single unified entity with a single, unified goal. Very likely there are people who want to discourage this sort of activity without the trouble of actually legislating it. That's obviously wrong, but it happens all the time, often totally benignly, in this case much more maliciously.

by csense 14y ago

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>Actually, depending on the laws of the country, the prosecutor might only need to prove that they "knew or should have known" the nature of the material. Or it might instead be sufficient to prove that the operator "had a reckless disregard" for the nature of the material. Obviously we can theorize whatever laws we want and there may even be countries that have them that way, but I'm not sure how that distinguishes the Tor exit node from the ISP. Telecommunications services don't generally inspect the content of the packets they route. I wouldn't want to have to argue that that is "reckless disregard" or whatever, though you can certainly imagine overzealous bureaucrats doing so when it suits them. >Or perhaps the operator "failed to comply with the regulations for running an Internet service provider, including maintaining logs of customer connections." Which itself might not carry a very harsh penalty, but might also make him liable for criminal acts that others carry out using his illegal ISP. Or maybe there is a specific law in a particular country that outlaws anonymizing services. Or maybe a license is required to operate an information processing device. Your mileage may vary, etc. Consult an attorney. But it's worth pointing out that keeping logs doesn't get the government anywhere: The only thing a Tor node has available to log is which nodes it's connected to, and those nodes have a high probability of not having any logs or, even if they do, of being in another country where you can't get access to them. That's kind of the whole idea. So if all you're achieving is to get exit nodes to keep useless logs to make them safe from prosecution under some kind of safe harbor, you just end up back at square one. The question is, do you want to ban anonymizing services or not? And if not, stop harassing the operators.

stinkytaco 14y ago
>but I'm not sure how that distinguishes the Tor exit node from the ISP I think it's closer to raiding someone who had their wifi unprotected and someone jumped on and did something illegal. An ISP is a legal entity that has a certain relationship with its customers. This includes identity and at least some form of monitoring (logging and cooperation with authorities). Tor is opening your connection up to anyone in a totally anonymous and encrypted way. This is not to say that the guy is guilty or even that it's right to raid him, it's just saying that I don't think it's fair to argue he has similar legal protections. In the case of an ISP they don't have to raid them, they just show up with a subpoena and the ISP coughs up the info. >The question is, do you want to ban anonymizing services or not? I think that is precisely what they want to do.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >I think it's closer to raiding someone who had their wifi unprotected and someone jumped on and did something illegal. That's what I'm saying. In what world is that a reasonable thing for the police to do? A raid is a thing they should do last, after they already know who they're dealing with and are just sewing up an already strong case against them, not the first thing to do with a suspicious IP address. >In the case of an ISP they don't have to raid them, they just show up with a subpoena and the ISP coughs up the info. They could do the same thing to the operator of the exit node and it would get them the same result as the raid (which is to say really nothing useful) without the harassment, at least in the case that the operator wasn't the perpetrator. Which is the same case for the ISP. Nothing stops criminal ISP employees from responding to a subpoena by destroying the evidence and then fingering some ISP customer known to have open WiFi. >I think that is precisely what they want to do. Then they ought to stop pussyfooting around and actually come right out and propose legislation to that effect. And if it subsequently gets (or already has been) defeated in the legislature or struck down by the courts then they ought to stop pretending it wasn't.
  - stinkytaco 14y ago
    What you're proposing gives anyone with open wifi a license to do whatever they want and then claim it was someone else, that doesn't make sense either. The likely chain of events is as follows: 1. Criminal activity is observed from an IP address. 2. The ISP is contacted, proper permission is received and a wiretap is set up 3. Further traffic patterns are observed 4. A raid is conducted on the owner of the IP address. At this point there is no need to raid the ISP because the traffic can be traced back farther than the ISP to a more specific place. In the case of the IP, the traffic essentially ends at the owner of the IP. It can't be tracked back any further so a raid is conducted to move the investigation to the next level. If the ISP didn't log or wouldn't turn over information, the ISP would be raided, I imagine. Obviously running a TOR exit node, open wifi or ISP can't be a blank check to get away with crime. Once the investigation was stopped, the next logical level was to get more information from the last place it was seen (the IP owners equipment). >Then they ought to stop pussyfooting around and actually come right out and propose legislation to that effect. This assumes that "they" is a single unified entity with a single, unified goal. Very likely there are people who want to discourage this sort of activity without the trouble of actually legislating it. That's obviously wrong, but it happens all the time, often totally benignly, in this case much more maliciously.