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Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

thestranger.com

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Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#71

Post by alanwatts »

jobu wrote: post #11

Money quote in the last paragraph: "When we get into things like this," [Judge William Downing] said, "anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy." That sounds to me like the judge likely wouldn't have known what a TOR node was if the police had told him these guys were running one. Technology isn't slowing down, so how can we make sure the law keeps up?

>Technology isn't slowing down, so how can we make sure the law keeps up?

That depends on what you me by "the law". Paper based systems simply can't keep pace with the speed of information flow in electro-magnetic systems.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#72

Post by orthecreedence »

Arzh wrote: post #54
bcook wrote: post #23

PSA: "Tor", not "TOR". https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhyCalledTor "Note: even though it originally came from an acronym, Tor is not spelled “TOR”. Only the first letter is capitalized. In fact, we can usually spot people who haven't read any of our website (and have instead learned everything they know about Tor from news articles) by the fact that they spell it wrong."

People still do that crap with Go (Golang) for no damn reason, it'll never stop because even if they have read that they don't care.

And LISP =]

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#73

Post by mulmen »

geggam wrote: post #52
ethbro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it / they / we? From what I've seen, the tech community (on the whole, averaged) isn't great at synthesizing and communicating information to non-technical people.

the same non technical people whose eyes glaze over and change the subject first chance they get ?

The judge didn't get a chance to ask in this case.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#74

Post by cmurf »

jobu wrote: post #11

Money quote in the last paragraph: "When we get into things like this," [Judge William Downing] said, "anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy." That sounds to me like the judge likely wouldn't have known what a TOR node was if the police had told him these guys were running one. Technology isn't slowing down, so how can we make sure the law keeps up?

For good or bad, the American legal system (and the English one on which it's largely based) is about who makes the better argument. It's a debate contest among expert jurists. The judge is supposed to be knowledgeable about the law, and particularly good at recognizing logical fallacies.

A good judge who is not an subject matter expert should be good at asking the salient questions and stopping a rambling jurist in their tracks. The whole idea isn't to become an expert, it's to find the right questions, and provide the opportunity to expediently arrive at conclusions and solution to them. And it often is just one question.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#75

Post by gohrt »

300bps wrote: post #33
vidarh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is willing to admit that it goes over his head, which presumably also means that he'd be willing to read up on it or seek advice if necessary. The biggest problem isn't judges who doesn't know everything - they have to deal with cases covering every possible discipline and can't possibly know everything about everything put before them. The problem is when they believe they do, or don't care, or don't want to admi…

Exactly. It's the job of the police to present exculpatory evidence in their possession and it is the job of the judge to understand it.

... which is absurd and why the US Constitution provides for a better system, which sadly does not extend to protection for invasions short of prosecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistance_of_Counsel_Clause

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#76

Post by jakobegger »

mulmen wrote: post #67
jakobegger wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that traffic originating from an IP address is very weak evidence, regardless of whether someone runs a Tor node or not. With all the malware and insecure, unsupported software running everywhere, it might be more likely than not that random illegal traffic is coming from IPs whose owners are oblivious. I would hope that law enforcement has more evidence than just an IP in a server log when they raid your pla…

Can you give an example of such evidence and how it would be gathered? I don't disagree with you but I can see both sides of this.

For example, if the same illegal websites were accessed from someone's home wifi and their mobile phone?

Or maybe the target used the same pseudonym for illegal activities that they used years ago on a public forum?

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#77

Post by phasmantistes »

At what point does lack of information disclosure in the warrant application render the warrant itself invalid? Is there any precedent for invalidating warrants -- and therefore any information gleaned from the search, and perhaps allowing suits against the offending searchers -- due to circumstances surrounding the application for the warrant?

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#78

Post by dublinben »

guelo wrote: post #41
dublinben wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best practices for running an exit node cover most of these concerns.[0] The most important one the individuals here didn't follow is 'don't run your relay from home.' A properly registered tor exit relay running in a datacenter somewhere will attract a courteous inquiry, rather than a 6am raid. [0] https://blog.torproject.org/running-exit-node

Yea but that means you have to spend extra money to run a Tor node, again limiting the amount of nodes that people are willing to run. The solution is for more people to run Tor, not fewer. Same with open Wifi nodes, the more the safer.

If you want to contribute with your home broadband connection, a bridge relay is more appropriate. You can run an exit relay for as little as $5/mo with a VPS.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#79

Post by walrus01 »

The warrant is ridiculous even without the tor part. Read pages #6 and #7.

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/1460...

ISPs maintain hash values of known child porn files? Show me a single ISP in the Seattle area that runs any of its residential customer http traffic through a caching proxy that examines and hashes each file, I'll eat my shoe.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#80

Post by mulmen »

jakobegger wrote: post #76
mulmen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of such evidence and how it would be gathered? I don't disagree with you but I can see both sides of this.

For example, if the same illegal websites were accessed from someone's home wifi and their mobile phone? Or maybe the target used the same pseudonym for illegal activities that they used years ago on a public forum?

Thanks, that does make sense.

How does this compare to a cash-only business? Say I run a banana stand that only accepts cash. What level of proof does law enforcement need in order to look into more personal aspects of my life and business if they believe I am using it launder money?

IANAL but this feels similar to me.

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