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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

#191

Post by tracker1 »

mulmen wrote: post #178
belorn wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also knowingly rented to a drug dealer. How did you establish intent there? I know as a fact that by depositing money in the bank, some of that money will be lent out by the bank. I also know that some people who lend money from banks will be criminals. I thus know that by depositing money in the bank, criminal behavior will be enabled. I do not know however if my money specifically will be use for criminal be…

You don't own the bank, they owned the computer. You aren't responsible for what happens to money the bank loans out since that money isn't yours. From the article: "Bultmann and Robinson had publicly advertised that they operated a Tor exit relay node—a node in the global Tor network, whose purpose is to give users the ability to browse the web anonymously. They said they operated the node as a service to dissidents…

Then the government is responsible for most crime, because roads are used to transport stolen goods an facilitate a huge number of crimes... we need to stop the roads.

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

#192

Post by sgc »

vinay427 wrote: post #167
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're being facetious but seriously... what a way to easily ruin someone's life. This system needs reform.

> what a way to easily ruin someone's life. Isn't that what they're going for? I certainly haven't seen any signs of intent to correct or rehabilitate the convicted for many crimes. The Department of Corrections should just be called the Department of Punishment, in my opinion, though that's perhaps not as catchy.

I found it very interesting that in Italy the corresponding dept is called the "Department of Clemency and Justice".

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

#193

Post by 746F7475 »

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."

That note seems so childish.

"We rebranded and if you don't know about it you are just uneducated mongrel on the mercy of media"

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

#194

Post by EdHominem »

click170 wrote: post #166
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

I always assumed antivirus venders were given a copy of the list as well. It's a way to scan millions of computers without the owners of those computers knowing they are even being checked. It's perfect. It also begs the question can you get around detection by re-encoding the files so the hashes don't match?

They are. From experience, testing the updates for work.

Didn't try mutating the test vector.

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

#196

Post by downandout »

Margh wrote: post #188
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose I'm AT&T and one of my customers is running a Tor exit node. Do I now have "immunity from investigation, for illegal activities originating from any IP address associated with them"? I can certainly use a router spoof my customer's IP address for any connections I want to use for illegal activity. Then the IP address will trace back to that customer, which is a Tor exit node, and the police can't investigate…

> You're still going to jail when you buy something with a stolen credit card and have it shipped to your house Imagine me as the friendly neighbourhood trickster living on the same floor as you. I buy an illegal firearm with a credit card bought over a DNM using Tor and have it mailed to your house. Enjoy your preordained jailtime. (you are not your address, IP or postal)

That is what we have the jury system for - to decide what happens in cases like these. But this person would likely be charged with a crime.

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

#197

Post by khc »

devishard wrote: post #184
gcb0 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which makes collision with the incrimination intent described above much easier.

Ugh, this is not how you do crypto. Crypto algorithms have to be understood with regards to what guarantees they provide and in what context. Your approach here is basically ZOMG COLLISIONS ARE BAD when in fact collision-resistance was never a property of this hash function and a collision doesn't provide an attacker with any power they didn't already have. If an attacker has the power to create a non-CP file that ha…

So that they don't need to obtain a copy of the image in the first place? Also a much lesser crime if they get caught.

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

#198

Post by kbenson »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #190
kbenson wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think those are very good examples. > Most email is spam. ... runs a mail server If your mail server is an open relay and sends a lot of spam, you might expect it to get blocked at a minimum, and possibly to see some legal problems. > Most cash contains traces of drugs. ... pays in cash If you run an ATM and the money you put out has a higher proportion of drugs on it than the average currency, you might expe…

> If your mail server is an open relay and sends a lot of spam, you might expect it to get blocked at a minimum, and possibly to see some legal problems. But it isn't an open relay. It's just a normal mail server. It's cash with the typical trace amount of drugs on it. That's the whole point -- just because a lot of X is bad and you did X that doesn't mean that you did something bad. It's even possible, as is the cas…

> But it isn't an open relay. It's just a normal mail server. It's cash with the typical trace amount of drugs on it. That's the whole point

See, I think the "typical" usage would be your own usage. I don't think the typical person happens to have a certain small percentage of traffic that happens to by child pornography pass through their connection, even if the internet as a whole does. Once you run a Tor exit node and you are proxying something closer to the statistical average of types of internet traffic (even though there's probably more illegal traffic on average on Tor than on the Internet, whether it's 1% more or significantly more), and you are doing it from home and mixing your own traffic with it, I think it's not out of the question for the Police to investigate. That doesn't mean every time, but I'm not going to immediately condemn them for looking into a crime.

I also think how the police handle it has to do with the entity they are interacting with. If it's a multi-person business in good standing, I would expect a subpoena. If it's an individual, it might be a raid, because I think the chance and capability of an individual to destroy evidence is higher.

I equate this to tracking the source of a gun that was used in a crime. If the last known source is a business, a subpoena may or may not suffice. If it's a guy selling out of his house (legally), a raid may be warranted.

Now, all that said, the police should be doing their part and providing the relevant info to the judge. The judge should be making this call, not you or I, and only when he has all the relevant info, which includes whether the suspect is running a Tor exit node (and as others have stated, it's up to the judges to either consult an expert or learn the facts themselves to deal with this information). Given our current laws and my understanding of them (probably poor), this is how I think it should currently function legally. Whether I think that's how they should function given changes, I'm not sure I would opt for the current system.

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

#199

Post by Houshalter »

Arzh wrote: post #70
tomjakubowski wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read what? Isn't it just a way to disambiguate the language from the game or the verb?

Context will do that for you in 99% of the cases, the other 1% is people who are confused for about 15 seconds.

Literally the comment just above you had to specify they meant "Golang" in parentheses. It's a very poor choice of name. I remember when the AlphaGo thing came out on HN and there were some people who clicked because they thought it was about the language.

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

#200

Post by Houshalter »

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...

That's the sad consequence of supporting basic rights. The first customers of basic rights are bad people.

Imagine a hypothetical world where the government could search anyone's house at any time without a warrant. And some service came up that, through a strange legal technicality involving registering as a religious institution, could prevent your home from being searched. The first users of such a service, would of course be actual criminals. Most people wouldn't bother because they have nothing to hide.

Imagine you want to create a website that allows users to create forums with minimal moderation. Of course your first users will be interested in hate speech, because who else needs a forum that doesn't have moderation?

Or if you create a service that lets people distribute files peer to peer. Of course your first users will be copyright infringers, because they've been blocked from everywhere else. Or an anonymous currency will first be used for drugs and online gambling, etc.

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