posted by
janrinok
on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:30PM
from the they-can't-catch-the-criminals-so-they-catch-someone-else-instead dept.
from the they-can't-catch-the-criminals-so-they-catch-someone-else-instead dept.
Less the 3 years after the Austrian police raided the house and confiscated the computers of a man operating a Tor exit node, the Austrian justice decided that the operator of a Tor exit node is also co-responsible for any illegal traffic exiting the node.
In an ironic twist (of fate or of faith?), the verdict comes very close to the date EFF decided to run a series of articles trying to convince people that everybody should run Tor.
What doesn't fit my mind: why aren't the phone service providers made responsible for any premeditated criminal act arranged/discussed over their network? Why are the only Tor exit nodes co-responsible for the illegal traffic? After all, the operators of TOR bridges and all the ISP-es etc carried that traffic.
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Operating a TOR Exit Node May be Criminally Punishable in Austria
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(Score: 4, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:45PM
Only, from my understanding of the summary, to the same extent that letting someone stay in your house "may be criminally punishable" - if said person happens to be a fugitive.
...not for simply running a Tor exit node per se.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:13PM
That's another thing I can't wrap my mind around: how a(n already paid for) traffic can be rationally be declared illegal? After all, its a sequence of bits, nothing harmful as such.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by karmawhore on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:31PM
I think that's a little dishonest. If I'm reading you right, it's like saying "I didn't stab him! I just moved my arm rapidly toward him and happened to be holding a knife." Obviously the individual bits aren't harmful. It's the data (in this case, CP I think, but the article is not too specific) those bits add up to.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2) by githaron on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:01PM
It would be more like: "I didn't stab him! I left a knife on the counter, walked away, and some time later someone else and picked it up and stabbed him."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by karmawhore on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:46PM
I was responding specifically to c0lo's point about traffic not being harmful because it's just a sequence of bits.
Your illustration is interesting, though, because it invites the question of whether you could have anticipated the knife being used to stab someone and if that would mean you have some responsibility for its use. Replace "knife" with "gun" and the case is pretty strong (to my mind) that you are partially responsible. Context also matters -- is it your kitchen counter in your house that you live in alone? Or is it a dive bar in a bad part of town?
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:05PM
No, it is more like holding the manufacturer of the knife co-responsible for the stabbing.
A tor exit node is a tool in the same way a knife is a tool. Both can be used in the commission of crimes and both have entirely legitimate, even beneficial uses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:35PM
And I think that's dishonest a lot: instead of going after the producers of CP, heaps of effort wasted in prosecuting a TOR exit node operator. TOR which EFF recomends all of us to use - and I'm inclined to agree with them.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Friday July 04 2014, @01:36AM
Again, I only disagreed with the idea that traffic can't be illegal because it's just ones and zeroes. I guess that wasn't clear, because this is the third comment from somebody thinking I'm talking about TOR here. I do talk about TOR in my reply to githaron above. That could have been a pretty interesting exploration (imho), but nobody replied to it.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Foobar Bazbot on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:18PM
Unless you can propose a way to run a Tor exit node and block all illegal traffic from it, it seems like the same thing.
To legally run an exit node according to this ruling, it's not enough to block almost all illegal traffic; if any one of the bad guys worldwide who are trying to get around your filter wins once, you face responsibility for that traffic. Since internet filters with the resources of an entire nation can't perform to this standard, it seems a little odd to expect one person to do it.
Supposing for the sake of argument that you have developed a 100% perfect (or at least no false negatives) filter for stuff that's illegal no matter who transmits/receives it (e.g. kiddie porn), and that you block or MITM all encrypted traffic (e.g. https) to prevent bad stuff from sneaking by your filter encrypted... what do you do about a message that would be legal, if sent by the person it claims to be from, but could be criminal fraud if sent by someone else? The whole point of Tor is to keep you from being able to tell who sent it, so how do you know? And then there's steganography, where someone seems to be sending a video of their cat's cute antics, but there's illegal traffic concealed in it. Can you identify every steganography system; not only the ones now in existence, but also any new one somebody might invent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:53PM
That is why my exit node has strict RFC 3514 filtering turned on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mth on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:22PM
If you're running a TOR exit node, you don't know what traffic will be going over it. So while they are strictly speaking two different things, they are not separable. It would be like punishing hotel management if a fugitive stays in the hotel.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:24PM
I'm usually one to call editors on misleading summaries, but I feel like this one's legit.
Yes, in principle, the court is saying running the Tor exit node is only illegal IF someone using the Tor network and that exit node is doing something illegal. However, consider two facts. First, Tor by design doesn't allow exit nodes to pick and choose the contents of their traffic or which traffic to pick up. Second, there are quite a lot of black net sites (Silk Road being only one of the most prominent) doing questionably legal activity on the net, as well as people using the internet for run of the mill phishing, fraud, hacking, etc., who sometimes use Tor to obfuscate their identity. If you're running a Tor exit node, you have no control over whether someone using your node is doing something illegal. And given that there is some illegal activity taking place on the Tor network, you're pretty much guaranteed to be carrying some of it.
Let's call this what it is - a questionably legal attack on the concept of anonymity. The authorities don't like that they can't find the person responsible for activity. So rather than try to find the actual wrongdoer, let's hold the person who let helped them be anonymous accountable for those crimes, even if they had nothing to do with them. It's a scare tactic.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:49PM
Informative? Really mods? Care to explain to me EXACTLY how a person running an Exit Node can CONTROL what traffic comes out and insure it is legal in their country? BTW According to a friend that works in the state crime lab it is also illegal in the USA because of the vague as hell distribution laws. the way he explained it was like thus: "If I ask you to take this locked metal box to another city and drop it off and you are pulled over and its found to have drugs you WILL get distribution, even though you do not have the key. The same applies to Tor and Freenet, all that matters as far as the law is concerned is that you were the transport."
So if you run an exit node or Freenet in the USA? Better not have a family, a job you give a fuck about (as you WILL be "part of an alleged child porn ring" on the news, especially if you have a nice normal sounding job as that lets them hype "the monster is in YOUR neighborhood!" angle) and have at LEAST a cool quarter mil to pay for lawyer fees on top of your living expenses for the couple years it takes to clear your name. think I'm full of shit? Look up the guy in FLA that is trying to sue his former employer who gave him a laptop with a backdoor that somebody used to download CP. He lost his job, lost his wife, lost his home, and ended up with nearly $300k in legal expenses just to clear his name. Oh and if he wouldn't have had the money to spend? he was looking at life in prison!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:56PM
Gotta punish someone, right? If you can't trace the traffic any further, might as well grab the guy running the exit node. "Child abuse material" must not go unpunished.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:29PM
Driving a car through a red light is a crime.
Owning a car that runs a red light is NOT a crime.
We can use cameras to establish SOMEONE ran a red light. Based on the license plate, we can identify which car ran the red light, and therefore determine who owns the car. But we can't (until facial recognition gets a whole lot better) know who was at the wheel.
No matter - let's fine the owner of the car on the assumption that they were the driver, even though we can't establish prima facia that they were even present.
There's what's sensible, what's legal, and what's happening.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:02PM
I think you analogy is slightly flawed, at least according to the law of my country, a EU country. Here the responsible is indeed the driver but only if the owner of the car can assert that the driver was not the owner. If he cannot, he will be punished like in this case. So your analogy works just not the way you think:-)
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:57PM
When will all of the Australian ISPs be charged with carrying illegal traffic? They made it clear that doing so was illegal.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:00PM
Whoops, Austrian, not Australian. Sorry, misread the title.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:50PM
The ISP is probably considered a common carrier.
Fining them would be rather like fining the owner of a roadway for every speeding ticket.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:16PM
Could it be argued that the operator of a Tor exit node is also a common carrier? All he's doing is carrying someone else's data, much like ISPs carry data (when they're in a good mood) and roads carry cars.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday July 04 2014, @07:17AM
IANAL, but probably not.
This non-authoritative reference [wikipedia.org] seems to imply that:
TOR specifically anonymizes the parties involved, so as a TOR exit node operator, you don't know whose traffic you're passing. (How could you have a contract with someone you don't know?)
TOR exit node operators are likely not specifically authorized by the government to operate TOR exit nodes.
TOR specifically randomizes the routes that traffic takes through the network.
In contrast, an ISP usually has a contract with their customers, is generally regulated by the government (telcos, etc), and will likely have very predictable routing.
For me, at least, individual TOR exit node operators don't pass the basic sniff test for common carrier status.
If a single entity set up their own discrete TOR network, and operated it on a contract basis exclusively for their customers, that might qualify as a common carrier system, although that arrangement would fairly defeat the whole point of TOR.
(Score: 1) by DMS on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:00PM
When law enforcement comes to the ISP, the ISP is prepared to cooperate in tracking down where the suspect is. When they come to someone running a TOR exit node, they're told that the trail stops dead there, the suspect's origin has been anonymized, and that they're running the node expressly so that this will happen.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:32PM
Well, the ISP *are* carrying the _TOR_ traffic. Therefore, by being the direct enabler for the traffic to flow, they are guilty of transport of the alleged illegal traffic. Therefore, the ISPs are just as guilty as any other.
If you punish the exit node, which is only a part in the chain of transport, then you must punish all individuals involved in that chain of traffic. Applying the law only when it suits the prosecutor is not allowed as all are equal under the law.
The verdict should be appealed. And if necessary, it has to go all the way to the European court of justice.
(Score: 2) by broken on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:09PM
While I agree that it should not be allowed, prosecutorial discretion is frequently used to pursue some violations while ignoring others. Equal treatment under the law is not the norm and often requires drawn out legal battles to attain. The "little guy" is at a distinct disadvantage in situations like this. I hope he prevails, but it's unfortunate that a fight is necessary. To achieve true justice, prosecutorial abuses like this need to be punished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @04:00AM
It's how law enforcement works without tipsters.
They detect a crime and try to 'swim upstream' to catch the big fish ultimately responsible.
If they don't do that, they won't and will be content prosecuting the small fry while the big fish
get more desparate suckers to do their dirty work for them. If the big fish are 'dead serious',
they will order trusted 'hatchet men' in their employ to kill the suckers after they do their
job so they can't finger Mr. Big and take back the rest of the job fee paid to them--the suckers
are dead and WON'T be needing the cash anymore.
A prime example is in GOODFELLAS (1990) where the re-created Luftansa airline heist unraveled
and the low-level people involved in the heist were killed--starting with truck driver
Stacks Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson) who got found out by the police when he screwed up ditching
the the truck used in the heist and thus started the bloodbath.
He was whacked by Tomy DeVito (Joe Pesci) in a most chilling and impersonal fashion:
DeVito then shoots Edwards in the back of the head in classic execution style in a bloody, disturbing, memorable manner I can STILL see in my head! Edwards was doomed to die for his negligence. Had he shown up at the meeting place at nine like he was supposed to, he would have been whacked there and his body likely more conveniently disposed of.
Near the end of the movie, DeVito was whacked in the same manner when he thought he was showing up somewhere to become
a 'made man'. This was in retaliation for whacking another 'made man' without proper authority at the beginning of the film.
DeVito's final words? "OH, NO!"
The audience is then shown a CGI head-shot, one of the first such uses of 'really good' [post TRON (1982) / THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1984)] computer graphics imagery used as a cinematic special effect. DeVito's death throes before he collapses can be attributed to dramatic license by Joe Pesci and/or direction from director Martin Scorcese.
If you've seen JFK in ZAPRUDER FILM OF THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION (1963) or Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) in THE DEPARTED (2006) you become instant deadweight when shot in the head. Surviving a headshot is essentially zero but I know of two surviors that just about everybody on the planet with access to mass media know of: James Brady and Gabrielle Giffords. I have seen this many years ago on TV somewhere as surveillance footage. A teenage girl was alleged to be shoplifting in a small store and confronted by the woman who owned it, the situation escalated and in the end, the girl was shot from behind by the woman and INSTANTLY collapsed to the floor and died later!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZwpJSlPpk [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuIY2I-kyKM [youtube.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Latasha_Harlins [wikipedia.org]
In closing, remember that old adage:
If it is too good to be true, it probably IS!
If you try to take advantage of things like that, it just might cost you your life!
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:42PM
So the era of illegal software has come at last, and it starts in the land of Hitler's birth...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:12PM
If you think it has come only now, you've not been paying attention. [theregister.co.uk]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:22PM
There's more. The page "Month of PHP Bugs [archive.org]" also got taken down.
Regarding the thread subject, most customer contracts specify "You are legally responsible for all traffic emanating from your connection". How that happens is of less concern. To run a TOR router or entry point is likely fine. Exit point carries extra risk.
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:34PM
You're right, I haven't been. Thanks for the link. That's scary shit.
(Score: 1) by _NSAKEY on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:11PM
This kind of silliness makes me want to get a VPS in Austria (http://lowendbox.com/tag/austria/) and set it up as an exit node just to make them upset.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @04:09AM
And if contraband data is detected coming out of that offshore box and the money/data trail leads back to you, you are STILL toast!
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Friday July 04 2014, @02:59AM
If a bank robber summoned an Uber or Lyft driver as a getaway driver, would the driver face charges? I'm actually really curious to know the answer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by tomek on Friday July 04 2014, @09:33AM
Why go for a small fry when they could charge car manufacturer?