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

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

#121

Post by manarth »

yeukhon wrote: post #117
downandout wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides ISPs with a hash database of known illegal images [1]. ISPs are then required by statute to notify the government when images with matching hashes cross their network [2]. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258C [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

While good, sort of scary because a lot of small players would host ads to get revenue and some of the ads would be filed with sexual content, even though these websites aren't even porn sites. Just some random humor site or some fortunate teller site, so if this were really true, wouldn't we be be looked at!?

It's specifically referring to child porn, rather than generic adult content.

That said, the UK equivalent, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) effectively blacklisted Wikipedia, because of the Scorpions' album cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...

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

#122

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rayiner wrote: post #62
Synaesthesia wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really shouldn't be illegal, it should be protected, like free speech, as noted in the article, "It's like raiding the mailman's house for delivering an illegal letter with no return address" In fact I think that's why they withheld the fact that he runs a TOR node from the judge.

Given that most of the content on Tor is illegal,[1] I'm not sure the mail is really the appropriate analogy. [1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/survey_of_the...

Most email is spam. Most cash contains traces of drugs. Most BitTorrent content infringes copyright.

Is that supposed to justify a raid of anyone who runs a mail server or pays in cash or torrents a Debian ISO?

For that matter, given the whole Three Felonies a Day thing, most postal mail is in fact sent by criminals too.

There is a reason we have a law against theft and not a law against crowbars.

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

#123

Post by yeukhon »

manarth wrote: post #121
yeukhon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While good, sort of scary because a lot of small players would host ads to get revenue and some of the ads would be filed with sexual content, even though these websites aren't even porn sites. Just some random humor site or some fortunate teller site, so if this were really true, wouldn't we be be looked at!?

It's specifically referring to child porn, rather than generic adult content. That said, the UK equivalent, the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) effectively blacklisted Wikipedia, because of the Scorpions' album cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...

See my response below about child porn. Thanks.

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

#124

Post by erikpukinskis »

yeukhon wrote: post #120
downandout wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ads filled with sexual content"!="child porn"

yes, I know, but 1/1000 may be. what if it's loaded over http behind the scene without any display? still transmitted over your network. What if the site just got hacked?

Then those facts become part of the investigation. Having your computer searched doesn't mean you at guilty or even that you will be charged. It just means your machine is implicated in a crime.

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

#125

Post by stonemetal »

ajmurmann wrote: post #47

Let me pay devil's advocate for a moment: let's say I want to do bad things on the Internet and obviously I don't want to get my house raided. So now I set up a Tor node in my house. Doing that I created reasonable doubt and my house can't get raided.

An ip address is not good enough to locate someone. If they have evidence beyond an ip address sure raid the house, but if they have no identity evidence beyond an ip address then they need to understand they have no identifying evidence.

Per this article yesterday, MaxMind(a geolocation ip service) lists a farm in Kansas (selected because it is roughly the midpoint of the US) as it's unknown location as a result it is given as the address for something like 600 million ip addresses. The farm's owner has been harassed by several law enforcement agencies and countless vigilantes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11466849

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #50
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?

The judge wouldn't have known what a Tor node is—but that's not a bad thing. What he's saying here is that the facts as originally presented to him translated into a well-known "cached" judgement; but the facts as they actually were would require original thought and research on his part (and/or those of analysts working for the judge) to come to a decision. "Guy has child porn on his computer" has a clear-cut answer…

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #50
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?

The judge wouldn't have known what a Tor node is—but that's not a bad thing. What he's saying here is that the facts as originally presented to him translated into a well-known "cached" judgement; but the facts as they actually were would require original thought and research on his part (and/or those of analysts working for the judge) to come to a decision. "Guy has child porn on his computer" has a clear-cut answer…

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by joemi »

ajmurmann wrote: post #47

Let me pay devil's advocate for a moment: let's say I want to do bad things on the Internet and obviously I don't want to get my house raided. So now I set up a Tor node in my house. Doing that I created reasonable doubt and my house can't get raided.

That's a fair point. The raid seemed to have been fairly quick, efficient and polite (compared to other raids I've read about). So, combine that and the fact that nothing was seized, and it sounds to me like the police were just checking to make sure the situation you outlined was not the case. It sounds like they were just doing due diligence. I'm not really sure why folks are so surprised and/or offended by this.

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

#129

Post by intherdfield »

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?

Just pointing out that the judge who authorized the warrant didn't say that. From the article:

Judge Bowman, who authorized the warrant, said he could not talk about the case and referred me to his colleague Judge William Downing, who spoke about some of the underlying issues. "When we get into things like this," he said, "anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy.

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