William was raided for running a Tor exit node. Please help if

Joe Greco jgreco at ns.sol.net
Sat Dec 1 16:36:56 UTC 2012


> Those who do not remember history...
> 
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 5:23 PM,  <goemon at anime.net> wrote:
> > http://www.sjgames.com/SS/

Those who do not remember history... what, exactly?

We're doomed to repeat this over and over even if we remember it.

Even if we were to assume that there are no "bad actors" in law
enforcement, what happens when someone is simply faced with something
so complex that they don't really understand it?  The conventional
wisdom is to seize it and let experts work it out.

But there is the possibility of there being so much data, and such
complexity in modern systems.  What happens when you've got a Mac
and you're running VMware Fusion and you've got VM images sitting
on a NAS device?  Ten or twenty years ago, "nab all the media" was
pretty straightforward in the average case, but these days, it's
pretty easy even for Joe Sixpack to have some sophistication and
to be storing stuff on a NAS device.  If you have an iomega ix2-dl
with two 4TB hard drives in it, and the thing only reads out at
~60MB/sec, how do you effectively deal with that?  You can either
seize it or not.  You can't realistically analyze the whole thing
on site.  You can't realistically copy it in place (two days to read 
it all!).  So you seize it.  And what happens when it is reliant on 
other stuff on the local network?  And what happens when the police 
can't quite figure out the way everything worked together?

Heaven help us when we start talking about tech-sophisticated users
who employ things like encryption and run multiple levels of
abstractions.  And that brings us to Tor...

The flip side to the coin is that there is such little disincentive
to be aggressive in seizures.  There are any number of examples of
overreach, and since there is virtually no personal risk to the 
authorities responsible, even if the company is successful in
filing suit (see SJ Games).  

The authorities have one hell of a problem going forward.  I hope
that part is obvious.  

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.




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