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Lulzsec fiasco - from HideMyAss VPN provider
blog.hidemyass.com
If I purchase stolen goods from a thief, I might be breaking the law even if the thief has signed a contract swearing the goods aren't stolen.
IANAL, but just because your terms say the service may not be used for illegal things it doesn't mean you can't also be culpable. If I purchase stolen goods from a thief, I might be breaking the law even if the thief has signed a contract swearing the goods aren't stolen.
"As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order"
And then this:
"In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale."
If censorship is government driven, it means that the law prohibits you to see some things. If you still do it, you get arrested because you are breaking the law. This is an illegal activity and they should cooperate with law enforcement, as stated in the first point.
So, how do they decide what is illegal but permitted and what is not? If they allow some illegal behavior and not some other, they are actually judging the morality of an act, and not if it respect laws.
I find curious that they first state this: "As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order" And then this: "In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale." If censorsh…
IANAL, but just because your terms say the service may not be used for illegal things it doesn't mean you can't also be culpable. If I purchase stolen goods from a thief, I might be breaking the law even if the thief has signed a contract swearing the goods aren't stolen.
That being said, I would not be surprised if the FBI freely used a 'National Security Letter' [1] to force these guys to turn over data about specific connections. And since, as a service, these guys may be subject to the requirement of giving the FBI a way to wiretap their connections [2] it may be that once they knew the service was being used it was a 'simple' matter of compelling them to provide an unencrypted copy of sessions of interest.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter
[2] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-153...
I find curious that they first state this: "As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order" And then this: "In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale." If censorsh…
I find curious that they first state this: "As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order" And then this: "In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale." If censorsh…
The simple answer is that if a vendor provides a technology that can be used to facilitate crime, that vendor emphasizes that they made the technology for some nominally lawful purpose. The record companies asserted that cassette tapes were designed to infringe copyright, the manufacturers stressed that they recorded what-ever and there were lots of non-infringing uses for them. Plausible deniability as a stategy per…
DeusEx's question boils down to, ``why does the company claim to serve law-breakers (here: citizens breaking censorship), but as soon as law enforcement knocked on their doors, they gave all the info away''. Which is a fair question to ask.
Somehow, the company claims to serve only ethical law breakers, and they want do the judging on ethics.
I find curious that they first state this: "As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order" And then this: "In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale." If censorsh…
I find curious that they first state this: "As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order" And then this: "In 2005 we setup HMA primarily as a way to bypass censorship of the world-wide-web whether this be on a government or a corporate/localized scale." If censorsh…