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"gewg_" writes:

from the land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-easily-coerced dept.

El Reg reports [theregister.co.uk]

The Kilton Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, had been hosting an exit relay [eff.org] on the Tor network since July as part of a pilot program to safeguard citizens' privacy online.

After meeting with [local cops, tipped off by the US Department of Homeland Security], however, the librarians have taken the box offline over fears it was being used for criminal activity.

[...]Kilton's exit node was the pilot for an effort by the Library Freedom Project [libraryfreedomproject.org] to equip local libraries in the US with Tor nodes that could be accessed by users in areas where internet traffic is censored and closely monitored.

ProPublica [propublica.org] claims that the police did not threaten any action against the library, but merely informed them of the possibility that their Tor node could be used for criminal activity.

The library's board of trustees will vote later this month on whether to bring the node back online.

[...]The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was starting a campaign [eff.org] to flood library trustees with letters of support for the node in an effort to get the Tor box back up and running in the Kilton Library.

Original Submission