Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node
Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node
Guns. Drugs. TOR. Child pornography. The long and twisted tale of LowEndTalk's famous member William goes deep.
Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node::undefined
They convicted him on "supporting the transfer of underage pornography", i.e. he ran an exit node that "allowed" the upload of CP to an Austrian image hoster. Apparently, he wasn't protected because he ran the exit as an individual, not a registered company. Most likely, the Austrian authority checked who uploaded the images, and found his IP address, which became the basis for convicting him. He didn't have any of the materials because all those stuffs were encrypted in transit.
He mentioned that law that was used to prosecute him was changed a few weeks later to protect individuals as well. He apparently now ran Tor exits under an offshore company.
In summary, from what he said, he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP.
In summary, from what he said, he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP.
I mean... that is the big issue with things like tor and the decentralized youtube alternative everyone wants.
You either need INCREDIBLY strict moderation, or you actually think it is sane to say things like "he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP"
Tools like tor are INCREDIBLY useful for avoiding government suppression (even if there are quite a few questions regarding how private things actually are and how easy it is to compromise...). But I personally can't support anything where "Oh well, I guess I accidentally supported the proliferation of CSAM".
Like, the joke back in the day was always that if you ran an unsecured FTP server, russian porn would magically appear. And I knew a few people in undergrad who did that because of "the lolz". And then they actually saw what was on their server and pretty much burned those drives and never went back. And while there are theoretical benefits to having public usable drop sites with minimal tracking... I am gonna more than side eye anyone who knowingly does that.
I mean… that is the big issue with things like tor and the decentralized youtube alternative everyone wants.
This is an issue on Lemmy as well, one that very few so far seem to have wisened up to. If you host a server and federate it, your server will pull, store and display the content your users are watching for all to see. So you could be on the hook for distributing illegal material if you don't preemptively defederate from instances potentially hosting content that is illegal for you to possess.
But I personally can't support anything where "Oh well, I guess I accidentally supported the proliferation of CSAM".
Does this mean you're opposed to, say, roads, because they can be used to transport child porn? How about postal services—they'll even pick it up and deliver it wherever you want!
Does he/people get paid for running the exit node?
There are 7,000+ Tor relays, and 2,000+ bridges being run by entities including individuals, orgs, corporations, and most likely governments. (https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html) So, the answer is yes, no, and something in between. He himself didn't say, but the article portrayed him as being an individual who believed in free speech, an activity which Tor does help support.
Permanently Deleted
AFAIK you should never run one on your personal IP
Edit, wasn’t a personal IP. I mistook it when I read his apartment got raided. Advice still stands tho.
There will still be a trail. Even if you're renting a server. Who's CC is on file? Unless you want to waste your time buying prepaid visas. And even at that, they could track it to the retailer and find out which CC was used to order that. And even if you went in person, there's likely video footage. Etc etc etc. It's incredibly hard to remain hidden nowadays.
He was convicted (and given probation) for supporting the transfer for Child Porn, not for accessing it or creating it.
I read in one of VPS rental service Discord that someone rented a VPS to run tor exit node and HDDs of the server were confiscated without prior notice.
This is insane! It's like prosecuting a postman for delivering child porn content to a customer.
Sorry I am not very techy, can someone eli5 what is an exit node? What is the point of running an exit node? Should the user have known his exit node (not sure if i am using the term right) could be used for cp?
if you join the tor network other tor users proxy their trafic through a chain of tor users and therefore maybe though you, sometimes youre the exit node that then actually sends the request to the server in question, sometimes you just pass it on to another tor user.
so the person in the OP did technically send the reques to the server that served CP, but he didnt really have anything to do with it nor could he have even accessed the data.
Just to clarify, running an exit node is not something that happens automatically when you browse via tor. It's something intentional that you configure
One would not expect an exit node to be used for cp. A relay node would be more likely used for cp as one would expect the request to be internal to the tor network. A tor exit node is only used to access sites on the regular internet, not the "dark net"
It's not news, it happened 10 years ago.
Kinda sad that Lemmy is so dependent on content from Reddit, even obvious "shitposts" are getting reposted automatically by bots here.
I don't think there is anything wrong with reposting, but read the damn article first.
I don’t care if he was guilty or if the government whatever, the post title makes me sick already.
This is why I won't do anything of the sort. With the increasingly authoritarian state that Amurica is turning into, I will tread very carefully. Including using VPN. I don't know much about Tor and perhaps I should learn more but my understanding is the traffic is largely plain text and not encrypted. Please correct me if I am wrong.
It’s encrypted, encrypted many times over, it’s completely anonymous… as long as you’re staying inside the network. An exit node connects to the regular internet and that’s what’s going to start showing up on logs. This was completely secure for the people actually dealing in cp.
I can’t believe this stuck, it’s the equivalent of arresting a business owner because someone distributed cp while connected to their Wi-Fi.
It's quite possible he had either a public defender or a poor attorney. I am friends with an attorney who works with the poor, indigent, and people otherwise unable to fight for themselves. I help him out for free when he has questions related to technology and IT. I really need to read up on Tor because there might come a time when I'll need to assist my friend in a similar matter. It's quite chilling that the state could potentially punish a business owner for providing a free service like WiFi. I have another friend who runs a the neighborhood sports bar and she offers WiFi to her customers. I think I need to implement some content filtration for her so as to prevent her from potentially getting blamed for a crime she did not commit.
Tor
is largely plain text
Lol maybe do the barest amount of researching before commenting on something you know nothing about?
The high majority of websites are HTTPS, which means that the contents of requests are end to end encrypted. Technically if it's just HTTP, it's plaintext, but basically no sites operate outside of HTTPS anymore.
All that stuff about everything you do being in the clear is outdated, and basically just VPN propaganda. The only parts of typical web browsing that aren't encrypted are DNS resolutions, but DoH and encrypted DNS are starting to be a thing. In which case, your ISP/gov will know you're accessing your bank's site, but not what you're doing on there because everything else is encrypted.
Tl;Dr: Everything being plaintext is really outdated and is basically VPN propaganda. The majority of network traffic for most users is end to end encrypted already.
It was Australia