Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised | Hacker News Reader

Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

tails.boum.org

160 pointshartz57 comments

> They are not accused of a crime but considered to be witnesses in a case...

Wow, so the witnesses are treated like criminals now.

I disagree with your comparison to criminals. Gathering evidence for a case can be done at any place relevant to a case. It is sad to see that they confiscated materials owned by a witness, but within the bounds of "reason": they are a related party in said case.

Please note: I do still, from what I read here, find this excessive use of power. A normal warrant with a request for data could very well have been enough, but that's guessing what kind of evidence the police expected to find.

The police took way more than they were allowed to by the warrant they got, a warrant that was already completely illegal. This is absolutely an overreach, the police, the staatsanwalt and the judge involved are standing outside the law.

They obviously wanted data from Riseup, about some email address. Which I gather has no presence in Germany. So they went after Zwiebelfreunde.

That seems ridiculous. I mean, there's no way that Zwiebelfreunde would have any data about Riseup's email accounts. Even Riseup claims to retain nothing.

I suppose that Zwiebelfreunde might have handled contributions to Riseup from someone using the targeted email address. So there might be a money trail. But that's pretty iffy.

Seems more like it's the police finding the "criminal" first and only then looking for the crime.

Hi mattashii,

This is the police. We have reason to believe you've witnessed a crime somewhere at some time.

Please willingly give us all of your electronics right now. Yes we know you need them for work, for living, and that they cost thousands of USD.

No we cant tell you when we'll give them back.

Thanks Politie

It's not just "please gib", it's a full raid.

Witnesses can be raided under german law, there are some reasons for it, esp. when it's suspected the witness is hiding evidence.

However, the raid is still out of bounds in certain other aspects (though I suspect the "take everything" the police pulled is more related to the officers having no idea what a server is vs a desktop computer. It wouldn't be the first time police officers simply don't know so they take it all)

Search and seizure does seem like a bizarre way of being a 'witness'. I suppose this is a response to Zwiebelfreunde being expected to not reveal the information they seek.

Zwiebelfreunde said, the police did not ask for anything before.

Is there a link somewhere to a summary of what happened here? A lot of context is missing that is only coming from the comments in bits and pieces. For instance the only thing I was able to gather from the comments is that there was some potential police overreach where someone who collects donations was raided because the recipient is involved in some illegal/terroristic bomb related activity. Seems like a lot of nuance is missing here.

Zwiebelfreunde is an organization associated with the CCC that do Tor related stuff. They collect donations for RiseUp, an US based mail/web/… hoster. One site RiseUp hosts calls for action against a far right political party. Next to various info, it has instructions on how to build color bombs and other solely property damage stuff.

This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and various other hacker spaces and persons linked to them[1]. To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.

[0] https://www.thueringen24.de/img/incoming/crop214771927/17338...

[1] https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...

> To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.

Not saying they did have plans for a bombing, but if I were planning one, I would have a few toy bombs around to practice with. Definitely not going to try fitting a live bomb into a backpack to see if it fits...

And you'd have that "toy bomb" look like a downscaled version of a air-dropped bomb from ww2, seriously? If it is only roughly the size, just use a soda can or something like that?

You don't need perfect looks to see if it fits. I can think of a better model, but I don't want to post instructions on how to build toy bombs. Could be dangerous around here. :-)

I hope the judge who approved these actions or the people who carried them out without approval will face appropriate consequences.

Treating witnesses in such a manner is reprehensible and abusive.

laughing intensifies

I tried that when I got raided and had all my stuff taken. The only thing that happened was the officer that suggested the warrant as his first measure got barred from promotions for a year, maybe, they weren't so clear about specifics.

Consider donating. Zwiebelfreunde needs to pay their lawyers. Note that if you donate via IBAN, your account data will likely be in the hands of the police. At least when the next raid happens.

Zwiebelfreunde: https://www.torservers.net/donate.html

Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.

Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_N...

>whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.

In Germany it is not so easy. Even though the requirement for the state to get info about somebody's bank account is lowered, they still need some justification.

>I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence

For that reason alone the police wouldn't have to seize this 3d printed model of a nuclear bomb. Police stated, that „they might be planning a bomb attack“. This raid was also a display of power, to intimidate.

>why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

All people who donated are now on a list in some police department, maybe called „Connected to left extremism“. As donating is not a crime (both Zwiebelfreunde and RiseUp are registered organizations in their countries), this will not lead to prosecution alone.

But just because it wasn't illegal does not mean the police won't investigate if they feel like it.

And whenever they want to target you (even if the reason is unrelated), they can look up their lists and tell the judge: „Well, person X donated to this suspicous looking site, makes him suspicious, right?“ This might play a role in court or for new justifications (f.e. the police wants to raid your home, too).

[0] https://www.thueringen24.de/img/incoming/crop214771927/17338...

I'm not familiar with the history of police misconduct in post-unification Germany, but of course whenever a judge is sympathetic to the police first it's not good for the accused.

In the US prosecutorial immunity[0][1] is one of the most mind boggling aspects of the legal system there. I'm curious does Germany have a similar rule?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

As far as I know, only parliamentarians enjoy immunity in Germany, though the parliament can detract this right from its members. But just because police/judges/… can be prosecuted, does not mean they will; in reality, only a handful of police officers and judges get convicted (mostly only when they do illegal stuff outside their job). And if they get convicted, there is hardly any penalty. People keep their jobs, maybe pay some fine. That's no surprise, the police investigates itself, and of course nobody likes to speak against their comrades. Also, law enforcement, law maker and the court system tend to be friendly to each other.

I heard the Netherlands and Britain have a better system, where an independent party investigates accusations against police officers.

> Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

I would be pretty pissed off if the NYPD compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause.

> whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN

FinCEN doesn’t have a comprehensive database of transactions. Banks, collectively, do. But for smaller non-suspicious transactions, FinCEN must reach out to banks to collect the data. Requesting political donations for lots of individuals without a warrant would be odd.

> compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause.

I share your sentiment, I wouldn't appreciate that either of course.

I find it hard to feel optimistic about privacy in America, and in a similar way, probable cause. Three short vignettes:

1) Living in Brooklyn a couple years back I was surprised one day to see a white van with ALPR cameras slowly cruising residential streets, followed by a squad car. There was clearly some arrangement where this private company was teaming up with NYPD to boot offenders' vehicles. Ostensibly the private company had access to some NYPD database [0]. The slippery slope there makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. If a referendum happened on that one, I missed it.

2) Fast forward to Jan 2017 - shortly before Obama left office, the NSA was given significantly increased authority to share the dragnet surveillance it hoovers up [1] [2].

3) In May 2018, as you may have heard, major US carriers were caught selling real-time customer location data to private companies [3] who resold it.

Meanwhile what you might hope would be prosecutors' fear of, well, prosecution for attempting to subvert the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine for e.g. parallel construction [4] seems quite undermined by prosecutorial immunity [5].

I don't claim to be a legal expert but I do find it truly scary to think about.

What else is going on we don't know?

[0] https://paylock.com/who-we-serve/

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/locationsmart-securus-location-d...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

This is actually a genuine use case for cryptocurrency.

Payments with Monero use would have solved and prevented the donor data from being leaked.

I'm still a little distressed at how few web-anything providers accept Monero.

Privacy focused email services and cloud service providers should be using it

but what we really have is protonmail only accepting credit cards and nobody seems to see the irony in that.

occassionally in the past I have found email and cloud service providers accepting Bitcoin, and I shapeshifted Monero over TOR to pay for the invoice. Nobody knows who I am and they received the bitcoin they were looking for.

But that was YEARS ago, 2015? 2016? Seems the possibilities have gotten worse for now

As always with great (/s) solutions proposed on HN, it's neither simple, nor are there any great incentives for providers or is there consumer demand. The average protonmail user doesn't care and/or know why using a credit card could be a problem.

That I find hard to believe. Maybe the average Internet user is clueless about that. But the average ProtonMail user?

I was shocked when I saw that. It's a total disconnect. Why not Bitcoin? All decent VPN services accept Bitcoin. ScryptMail accepts Bitcoin. Even VFEmail does.

Even worse, if you create a ProtonMail account via Tor, you can't use even the free tier unless you provide card and number numbers. That's worse than even Facebook!

> The average protonmail user doesn't care and/or know why using a credit card could be a problem.

Right, which is hilarious.

> As always with great (/s) solutions proposed on HN

Using an opportunity to patronize without understanding my perspective at all. Interesting... (cont.)

> it's neither simple, nor are there any great incentives for providers or is there consumer demand.

Despite not knowing or caring that I would agree with this.

Anyway! The landscape of cloud service providers always has providers that don't care about outsized consumer demand. Therefore this seems to be more of an educational issue as well as an assertiveness issue distinct from one related to the practicality of running a cloud service.

I'm using protonmail via CC, don't see the problem tbh.

Security and privacy aren't binary options, it's a multi-dimensional spectrum where the optimal point depends on your threat model, budget and other factors. For me, it's not relevant if the police finds out if I use protonmail.

Not sure about monero specifically but it's not so easy to find a crypto payment provider for more 'critical' services. And hand rolling one is not exactly a option for anyone.

So, in an effort to fight off/investigate a “far right” political organization (it doesn’t matter whether they are or aren’t), the police are using some scary tactics that one might expect from an extreme political party in power. Great work there. Way to be the change you want to see in the world.

You mixed it up, the bavarian police isn't fighting off/investigating AfD. Zwiebelfreunde (Friends of Onion) forwarded donations (!) from Germany into the US based RiseUp. Latter hosts a website calling for protests against the far right AfD.

Right. If anything, bavaria is illegally overreaching here in an effort to protect the AfD. Given the political development of the governing party of bavaria (the CSU developed into a right wing party and is fighting for destabilizing the moderate government) this police action is probably a political friendship offering between the two.

The stance of the CSU has always been to be the right most party in Bavaria. The AfD is their enemy for fishing votes at the right end if the spectrum that the CSU regards as their own. Why do you think we had the crisis in the federal government on behalf of CSU politicians pushing a dangerously right wing agenda?

So they were most likely funneling money through international channels to support ANTIFA activists?

If they were doing the same for the other side - i.e. funneling right wing money to support NAZI activist it would be the same kind of stupid.

If you don't want to get your servers to be raided just don't side-hustle as an extremist shaddow financier.

Just so you know: In Germany, Antifa is an umbrella term for a lot of left wing projects which try to build social structures for (mostly) peaceful reform. People like me - being antifascist - have been active in the political landscape for more than forty years. Mobilizing against neonazis works and has been pretty damn necessary in Eastern Germany since the collapse of the GDR.

Unfortunately in the US, activists have been labeled as terrorists even though their organizing works as intended [1] - without fatalities.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/12/alt-right-lea...

We all remember what peaceful Antifa reform looks like from the Hamburg G20 pictures.

No. That's not even the claim by the prosecution.

Merkel has been decent in the past, but she shouldn't have won again. It was getting obvious in her last years before the last election that she's also become too corrupt/power has gone to her head.

Germans won't learn from their past. Watching "the lives of others" doesn't mean anything to them. "Security" forces always want to shadow/spy on anyong and anything "just in case". This is how Democracies fail. This is how humanity reverts to the age of "securitat".

German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. This sting operations are just to bully/frighten anyone who dares not to bow their heads.

This crosses into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want any of that here, and ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please don't post like this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world.

Citation needed. The amount of surveillance in Germany is much lower than e.g. the USA or UK.

Last I checked DE-CIX is still in a never ending legal battle with the BND and courts seem to consistently rule in the favor of the BND.

The story that comes to mind for me: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/german-police-ca...

Although that's more targeted, less dragnet.

they are definitely part of the Five Eyes and as culpable as any of the others

Five Eyes "is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

Why is this post sinking? Is someone at HN trying to censor this too like the Tesla stuff?

It has more upvotes in less time than any other post on the front page. The top post has 35 upvotes in 2 hours.

This post is falling off the front page with 81 upvotes in less than an hour.

This is completely sketch.

There have been huge threads about this story in the last few days.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zwiebelfreunde%20points%3E30&s...

When a story is ongoing, moderators downweight follow-ups unless and until they contain significant new information. Otherwise the discussions tend to be repetitive, reacting only to the original event which has already been discussed, and more likely to attract unsubstantive and flamewar-style comments, as well as complaints from other users about the same story reappearing too many times.

This approach is something we figured out after the Great Snowden Avalanche of 2013, and it has turned out to be a good balance that serves HN well.

Tails is a Debian Live CD that automatically proxies everything through Tor.

AfD is a group that is essentially the Nazi Party 2.0.

The German police raided the host of Torservers.net in an effort to hunt down people protesting against AfD, and it seems to have been conducted as some sort of scare tactic (which would be unfortunate if Germany is actually helping a modern Nazi party).

More information here: https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...

As far as I know, this blog is the reason for the raids:

https://augsburgfuerkrawalltouristen.noblogs.org/

> They are hunting down people protesting AfD

They are trying to stop the AfD party convention, the blog describes which Autobahns members are likely to take and threatening Hotels if they allow AfD-Members. This kind of stuff had happened at every prior party convention of the AfD. The city actually organized a peaceful protest.

> They are the new Nazi Party

Some of their leaders have trivialized Nazi Crimes in the past.

Imo stating "AfD is Nazi party 2.0" is very oversimplified. I agree there are some Nazi supporters there but most are people with anti illegal immigration views which doesn't mean they are Nazis.

>>which would be unfortunate if Germany is actually helping a modern Nazi party

Need to define "protest". Maybe they called for Neo-Nazis to be killed or hurt. In that case, the state has the monopoly of violence.

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