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

Tue Dec 4 21:41:01 UTC 2012

- Brian J.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Greco [mailto:jgreco at ns.sol.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 1:58 PM
> To: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu
> Cc: Brian Johnson; nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: William was raided for running a Tor exit node. Please help if
> 
> > > This is a misleading statement. ISP's (Common carriers) do not provide a
> knowingly
> 
> I'm trying to remember when ISP's became common carriers...

 Not all ISPs are. I was referring to those of us who are both Common Carriers and ISPs. The Common Carrier status will override.

> 
> > > illegal offering, ... TOR  exit/entrance nodes provide only the former.
> >
> > This is also a misleading statement.  Explain the difference between
> > a consumer ISP selling you a cable Internet plan knowing that NN% of
> > the traffic will be data with questionable copyright status, and
> > 1 of of 5 or so will be a botted box doing other illegal stuff,
> > and a TOR node providing transit knowing that NN% will be similarly
> > questionable etc etc etc.
> 
> Great point.
> 
> The question might also revolve around this issue, restored from the
> previous msg:
> 
> > > AND they do provide the PHYSICAL infrastructure for
> > > packets to be passed and interconnected to other PHYSICAL networks.
> 
> Well, an ISP does do that, but so does an end user's network.  So if
> I put a Tor node on an ethernet ("PHYSICAL infrastructure") and then
> connect that to an ISP ("other PHYSICAL networks"), that doesn't make
> for a real good way to differentiate between an ISP, a commercial ISP
> customer who gets routed IP networks via BGP, or an end user who has
> an ethernet behind a NAT gateway.
> 

I was speaking of TOR as a service. The service is not provided inherent of the infrastructure to pass packets. It's more similar to a tunneling protocol service.

The person hosting the endpoint on their infrastructure would be the service point and they are the ones acting as protector and as such should take on the responsibility as such. I can feel lawyers rubbing their hands together as I type.

- Brian