<story><title>Tor exit node operator raided in Austria</title><url>http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/6283/raided-for-running-a-tor-exit-accepting-donations-for-legal-expenses</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomku</author><text>It seems like a lot of people are objecting to the raid/seizure itself in addition to the possibility of conviction, so I have a question.  Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he&apos;s an exit node operator?&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, it&apos;s their job* to determine whether the traffic in question was relayed, or whether it was the exit node operator himself generating that traffic.  In an ideal world, they could just call him up and ask nicely - but if he was actually guilty, he&apos;d say &quot;No, no way it was me!&quot; and immediately start destroying any evidence.  On the other hand, raiding someone&apos;s home or server rack and confiscating all of their computers isn&apos;t a great solution if most exit node operators are not guilty themselves.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not aware of a good solution that avoids inconveniencing exit node operators without giving them some kind of blanket immunity to investigation  that goes beyond just relayed traffic.&lt;p&gt;* - I&apos;m aware that this might be impossible, but you can&apos;t know whether it will be ahead of time.  It&apos;s possible that they could raid him and find no proof, even if he&apos;s guilty.  It&apos;s also possible that they could raid him and find exactly what they were looking for.  Like many investigation tactics, there&apos;s no guaranteed payoff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>In the strict public policy sense you could argue the raid/seizure either way; The pro-raid argument would go &quot;This activity harms society by allowing criminal activity which is part of the economics of exploiting children, thus it is right for the state to step in and make these raids to identify and contain those threats.&quot; Then you could make the anti-raid argument, &quot;The economic disruption of taking a legitimate business off-line and possibly causing irreparable harm to innocent citizens does not warrant such a drastic measure without solid evidence of complicity in the commission of a crime.&quot;&lt;p&gt;In the United States there is an analogous situation which is that of the &apos;high speed pursuit.&apos; In the pursuit situation the officers have strong reason to believe the driver of a vehicle was involved in a crime and seek to arrest them. The driver of the vehicle doesn&apos;t want to be arrested and so they drive away quickly. If the officers give chase, they greatly increase the chance that harm will come to innocent bystanders. If they don&apos;t give chase they risk losing their suspect. Generally those debates come down to things like &quot;what crime might they have committed?&quot; and if it was failure to stop for a right turn, that is seen as not being as &apos;reasonable to chase&apos; as hit and run vehicular manslaughter.&lt;p&gt;I tend to fall into the &quot;Do the police work to figure out who the crooks are and if you need the co-operation of an end-node provider then get a warrant to compel that co-operation.&quot; But I also have spoken to officers who feel that such restrictions are &apos;red tape&apos; and keep them from doing the job they were paid to do.&lt;p&gt;In this particular case we don&apos;t have the police version of the story. Perhaps they think this guy is complicit? Did they raid/seize any other end nodes? Did they have a warrant and what did it say? Had this person been involved in other questionable activities? &quot;Presumption of innocence&quot; is not a principle that extends outside of US borders so its always difficult to contextualize police action in other countries to Americans who take their constitution for granted.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tor exit node operator raided in Austria</title><url>http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/6283/raided-for-running-a-tor-exit-accepting-donations-for-legal-expenses</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomku</author><text>It seems like a lot of people are objecting to the raid/seizure itself in addition to the possibility of conviction, so I have a question.  Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he&apos;s an exit node operator?&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, it&apos;s their job* to determine whether the traffic in question was relayed, or whether it was the exit node operator himself generating that traffic.  In an ideal world, they could just call him up and ask nicely - but if he was actually guilty, he&apos;d say &quot;No, no way it was me!&quot; and immediately start destroying any evidence.  On the other hand, raiding someone&apos;s home or server rack and confiscating all of their computers isn&apos;t a great solution if most exit node operators are not guilty themselves.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not aware of a good solution that avoids inconveniencing exit node operators without giving them some kind of blanket immunity to investigation  that goes beyond just relayed traffic.&lt;p&gt;* - I&apos;m aware that this might be impossible, but you can&apos;t know whether it will be ahead of time.  It&apos;s possible that they could raid him and find no proof, even if he&apos;s guilty.  It&apos;s also possible that they could raid him and find exactly what they were looking for.  Like many investigation tactics, there&apos;s no guaranteed payoff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;#62;Is it reasonable for the police to investigate an exit node operator for traffic coming from his node, even if they know he&apos;s an exit node operator?&lt;p&gt;Realistically, no. It&apos;s a fishing expedition -- it&apos;s like raiding the phone company&apos;s offices when someone has used a prepaid burner phone because they have the ability to spoof the IP address or phone number of any of their unidentifiable customers. There is no more reason to suspect that the exit node operator is at fault than any other ISP. Especially given the amount of harassment these raids cause for the victims -- can you reasonably state that the police should be able to enter a telco hotel and shut down and confiscate all of the equipment because not all of the traffic passing through it can be traced to an identifiable source? If not then what makes this different?&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;I&apos;m not aware of a good solution that avoids inconveniencing exit node operators without giving them some kind of blanket immunity to investigation that goes beyond just relayed traffic.&lt;p&gt;The solution is to rely on less disruptive investigative means until sufficient evidence is available to determine whether the exit node operator is the likely source of the traffic. For example, get a warrant and wiretap their phone and email and see if they&apos;re trafficking in illicit materials through those channels. Have an undercover cop chat them up and set up a sting if they&apos;re doing something illegal. Standard police work.</text></comment>