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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 lik

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.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>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. It seems like you're still not distinguishing it from the exit node: In order to set up a wiretap, the ISP is going to know about it (it's their equipment). If the ISP employees are the criminals then getting a wiretap for the customer's IP address that they've been spoofing is going to tip them off. If you're not worried about that for the ISP then stop worrying about it for the exit node -- in which case you could do the same thing, require the exit node operator to install wiretapping software on the exit node and trace the traffic "back farther than the [exit node] to a more specific place" (i.e. the next Tor node in the chain). It still doesn't get you anything, but neither does a subpoena to the ISP that just leads you to an otherwise-clean exit node. >Obviously running a TOR exit node, open wifi or ISP can't be a blank check to get away with crime. People keep saying this -- it's wrong twice. First, just because you can't do a smash and grab police raid doesn't mean you can't do an investigation. Digital forensics are crap anyway -- way too easy to forge. (Criminal installs remote control software on some poor sap's PC to do dirty work, secure removes it when finished and everything ends up pointing to the sap.) Try doing some actual police work, interview suspects, look at the illicit materials to see if there are clues from the background, on and on. And after you've done your homework, if the evidence still points to the exit node operator (instead of just the exit node's IP address), then you do a raid. But perhaps more importantly, how is it the operators of the anonymizing thing who we are worried about getting away with something? If you know enough about Tor to set up an exit node and you're a criminal, you can just use somebody else's exit node instead of setting up your own. Or hop on some public wifi, or break into some sucker's PC to use it as a proxy, etc. If the police have successful methods to catch those criminals, then use them against the criminal who hides under an exit node instead of raiding it. And if not, well, that's life. A police state is very helpful to the police. The cost of not having a police state is that some criminals get away with it. It's the cost of doing business in a free society. >That's obviously wrong, but it happens all the time, often totally benignly, in this case much more maliciously. Which is why they ought to be stopped. Government malfeasance is all but universally a more serious problem than private malfeasance, because a good government can often save you from bad private actors, but almost nobody can save you from a bad government.
- stinkytaco 14y ago
  You're creating all sorts of situations and "what-ifs" and "buts" that don't fit the facts. We don't really have any idea what kind of investigation was conducted, or what other steps they have taken before this point. I don't imagine police in most democratic societies -- especially ones with robust free presses -- conduct raids lightly. Furthermore, it's not really the police's job to interject possibilities into this situation. Phrases like "digital forensics are crap -- way to easy to forge" and "If the ISP employees are the criminals then getting a wiretap for the customer's IP address that they've been spoofing is going to tip them off" and "if you know enough about Tor to set up an exit node" don't really enter into their though process. The investigation reached a dead end, they got more evidence. I would like to point out that I don't know the specifics of this case either. I will say, however, that in the US, raids and seizures like this are subject to judicial review. Probable cause is shown and permission is granted or denied. It's not as if the police can just walk in there and take what they want. I also don't feel that police work needs to be held up in the face of new technologies. As the public's access to technology increases, so must law enforcements access to tools to investigate crimes. This is not to say there should not be checks and balances, but that getting a warrant already is a check.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>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. It seems like you're still not distinguishing it from the exit node: In order to set up a wiretap, the ISP is going to know about it (it's their equipment). If the ISP employees are the criminals then getting a wiretap for the customer's IP address that they've been spoofing is going to tip them off. If you're not worried about that for the ISP then stop worrying about it for the exit node -- in which case you could do the same thing, require the exit node operator to install wiretapping software on the exit node and trace the traffic "back farther than the [exit node] to a more specific place" (i.e. the next Tor node in the chain). It still doesn't get you anything, but neither does a subpoena to the ISP that just leads you to an otherwise-clean exit node. >Obviously running a TOR exit node, open wifi or ISP can't be a blank check to get away with crime. People keep saying this -- it's wrong twice. First, just because you can't do a smash and grab police raid doesn't mean you can't do an investigation. Digital forensics are crap anyway -- way too easy to forge. (Criminal installs remote control software on some poor sap's PC to do dirty work, secure removes it when finished and everything ends up pointing to the sap.) Try doing some actual police work, interview suspects, look at the illicit materials to see if there are clues from the background, on and on. And after you've done your homework, if the evidence still points to the exit node operator (instead of just the exit node's IP address), then you do a raid. But perhaps more importantly, how is it the operators of the anonymizing thing who we are worried about getting away with something? If you know enough about Tor to set up an exit node and you're a criminal, you can just use somebody else's exit node instead of setting up your own. Or hop on some public wifi, or break into some sucker's PC to use it as a proxy, etc. If the police have successful methods to catch those criminals, then use them against the criminal who hides under an exit node instead of raiding it. And if not, well, that's life. A police state is very helpful to the police. The cost of not having a police state is that some criminals get away with it. It's the cost of doing business in a free society. >That's obviously wrong, but it happens all the time, often totally benignly, in this case much more maliciously. Which is why they ought to be stopped. Government malfeasance is all but universally a more serious problem than private malfeasance, because a good government can often save you from bad private actors, but almost nobody can save you from a bad government.

stinkytaco 14y ago
You're creating all sorts of situations and "what-ifs" and "buts" that don't fit the facts. We don't really have any idea what kind of investigation was conducted, or what other steps they have taken before this point. I don't imagine police in most democratic societies -- especially ones with robust free presses -- conduct raids lightly. Furthermore, it's not really the police's job to interject possibilities into this situation. Phrases like "digital forensics are crap -- way to easy to forge" and "If the ISP employees are the criminals then getting a wiretap for the customer's IP address that they've been spoofing is going to tip them off" and "if you know enough about Tor to set up an exit node" don't really enter into their though process. The investigation reached a dead end, they got more evidence. I would like to point out that I don't know the specifics of this case either. I will say, however, that in the US, raids and seizures like this are subject to judicial review. Probable cause is shown and permission is granted or denied. It's not as if the police can just walk in there and take what they want. I also don't feel that police work needs to be held up in the face of new technologies. As the public's access to technology increases, so must law enforcements access to tools to investigate crimes. This is not to say there should not be checks and balances, but that getting a warrant already is a check.