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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

#171

Post by ajmurmann »

stonemetal wrote: post #125
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…

I agree that's a larger issue. However, IP addresses being enough evidence for a search seems somewhat out of scope of the article.

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

#172

Post by wookasz »

cmurf wrote: post #74
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…

Glad to see someone here understands the basics of our legal system. All this arguing about what happens when a judge is deciding a case they don't understand makes me cringe.

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

#173

Post by ajmurmann »

Cpoll wrote: post #90
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.

No, you can/should just do the bad things through Tor, then you're not even a target of suspicion. If they have some other link to you, the fact that the traffic is coming out of your house isn't doing you any favors.

So anyone to stupid to use Tor can go free and people operating the Tor nodes to enable the perps can go free as well?

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by rayiner »

Rhapso wrote: post #30
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?

This will be the question that defines the era. The singularity has come in the sense that technological progress has been accelerating and the rate of legal adaptation to it is constant. The rate of technological change outpaced legal change 20-30 years ago and now the difference is really starting to hurt. This problem will only get worse. Can we build new laws that handle the ever growing expanse between the capac…

The purpose of the legal system is to enforce cultural expectations. There is no reason to let technology run ahead of cultural expectations.

Maybe one day running Tor will be routine and not a cause for suspicion. Until then, there is nothing wrong with investigating the origin of illegal activity, with appropriate measures, and requiring Tor to be raised and proven as an affirmative defense.

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

#176

Post by rayiner »

riskable wrote: post #86

Here's what I don't understand: You go to a judge for a warrant and the only piece of evidence you have an IP address . How is an IP address even remotely considered "evidence" enough to search someone's home? An IP address is not an identity. It is not a location. It is not even permanent in most cases! I cannot fathom that police are granted warrants to search and seize people's homes and property based solely on,…

They clearly had more than just an IP address--they had an IP address and the identity of the user who was assigned the IP address at the time. If police found a post-it with a house address in a context where it was clear that it was connected to the perpetrator, that would easily be sufficient for a warrant. The bar is not supposed to be a high one.

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

#177

Post by gcb0 »

davmre wrote: post #165
fareesh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone were to crop an arbitrary side of the image by 1-2 pixels would that defeat a system like this? Extending that thinking a bit further, would it be trivial to just build out an Apache extension like Google Pagespeed that sort of did this randomly?

"This hash is computed such that it is resistant to alterations in the image, including resizing and minor color alterations." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA )

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

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

#178

Post by mulmen »

belorn wrote: post #158
mulmen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in this case Bultmann and Robinson are Hertz, not the customer. They also knowingly rented to a drug dealer. Another analogy may be running a Hertz in Saudi Arabia and renting to women without male guardians present. The computer is not rented, they were in control of a device that may have been used to distribute child pornography. They themselves claim to know and understand this but feel that the risk of en…

> 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 in repressive countries, knowing full well that criminals might use it as well, much like any other communication tool."

So yes, they didn't know which drug dealer they were renting to or which packets were from drug dealers (or child pornographers) but they did know it was possible. And with Tor I think it would even be considered likely.

There seems to be a difference between say running a Tor exit node and running a commercial VoIP service. With VoIP the operator is required by law to record and make available certain information to LEO. Tor by design prevents the operators from having that information. I'm not sure what the legal consequences are but it seems to me that in any other "communication tool" situation the operator is expected to at least make an attempt to prevent illegal use. With Tor that isn't possible so I don't think it's really "like any other communication tool"

Bultmann and Robinson knew they might be enabling criminal behavior with their own personal equipment in their home. I think it's easy to at least see the perspective of law enforcement in this case or how the legal system could find them at least partially responsible.

I'm not saying this is what should happen but I don't think we have a clearly defined right to run an open proxy as a get out of jail free card.

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

#179

Post by derefr »

wookasz wrote: post #170
derefr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Judges don't decide cases. The jury does. Judges are there to lead the proceedings and instruct jurors in matters of the law. No evidence or facts exist outside the courtroom. Only what is stated in court can be considered. It is against the law for a juror to research an issue outside the courtroom.

Most trials don't have juries. Think small-claims court, divorce court, etc. That's the default—the judge, judging. Jury-trials are a special case, there for when where no judge could be impartial enough, but they're still implemented in terms of a judge sitting there and then delegating some, but not all, of their responsibilities to the jurors.

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

#180

Post by TheDong »

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.

For me, the larger issue is searching! E.g., compare the search results for "Go sequel" and "golang sequel".

Golang is far more searchable than the ultra-vague "go". Even if humans can figure out the context, a search engine indexing it cannot.

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