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

Mon Dec 3 07:19:11 UTC 2012

* Joel jaeggli (joelja at bogus.com) wrote:
> On 11/29/12 23:18 , Joakim Aronius wrote:
> 
> > I am all for being anonymous on the net but I seriously believe that
> > we still need to enforce the law when it comes to serious felonies
> > like child pr0n, organized crime etc, we can't give them a free pass
> > just by using Tor. I dont think it should be illegal to operate a Tor
> > exit node but what just happened could be a consequence of doing it.
> 
> The seriousness of crimes that can be committed using anonymization
> services should not be diminished. That said the motive I had for
> running a tor exit when I did was that speech, and in particular
> political organization (dare we call it sedition) are in fact very
> serious crimes in many places. R.g. they can result in indefinite
> imprisonment, torture, judicial or extra-legal execution and so forth, I
> don't consider that unserious..
> 
> The internet is potentially quite a useful tool for getting your message
> out so long as using it isn't  holding a gun to your own head. While we
> site here with the convenient idea of some legal arbitrage which allows
> me to do something which isn't illegal  in my own domain to facilitate
> something that is quite illegal elsewhere, the fact of the matter is if
> you run a service like this you don't get to pick and choose.

I agree. I was about to set up a tor node a few years ago but never got around to it. I send cash to orgs working for human rights in countries with oppressive regimes. I am all for providing anonymized access to help free speech. Perhaps its better with anon access to specific applications like twitter, fb etc and not general internet access. I suspect that the 'free speech' part of the total tor traffic volume is pretty small(?).

Cheers,
/Joakim 