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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

I used to run such a service but I stopped after police came to my door to get logs because it was used to share very illegal pictures.

They were friendly and I was never in cause myself, but I don't want to enable this kind of thing, or to have to deal with moderating content, even passively.

I'm happy other people provide such services, but just be aware they will inevitably be used for activities you probably don't want to facilitate.

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It's the nature of things.

This is a given (or at least I thought it was the usual) for many years now. Your only hope is that your service is too obtuse for the creeps/deviants to really grapple onto. Although considering how they are getting younger and younger (the perpetrators) even that is little condolence.

I've found myself in similar situations as yours, however now I just use other people's crap. I'm not willing to answer the phone like I was then; so yeah. It's a problem

I wonder how far is the "trigger" on that.

Like, if the service provided just encrypted blobs + a piece of JS to decode them (with say URL containing the password), would you be in the clear or the police/law would just go "see I click the url that leads to your site and get the Bad Stuff, it's on you"

If it matters, hire a lawyer for a legal opinion beforehand. Because there is a substantial probability you will be paying for legal advice later after the police have dropped by.

I mean the police aren't going to say oopsies based on your argument no matter how logical it sounds. They are there to serve the warrant.

... and probably take all your computer gear.

And you won’t get it back.

Until two years later where Windows Update will take eight hours after you turn it on again the first time and finally send you into a boot loop.

Maybe this kind of thing works in the US but this is France and the law doesn't really stop at these technicalities, serving child porn as "encrypted blobs" certainly doesn't exonerate you of anything.

In fact, as a host (as opposed to an actual producer of illegal content) taking such steps to evade law would probably be rather counterproductive, compared to simply cooperating with law enforcement, since it would be difficult to claim acting in good faith.

It is difficult to say you host whatever files your customer gives you? The only people who want to store data on the internet must be using it for illicit activities?

There is nothing "difficult" and as I said, I wasn't accused of anything myself. But if you are a host, you must answer law enforcement when you are informed of illegal content.

And that's if you are content with simply hosting child porn until the police tells you you are.

You're still facilitating something bad even if it's opaque to you.

That is true of any number of businesses. Banks, credit cards, roads, gas stations, ISPs, keyboard manufacturers, the people that craft those bribery-sacks with dollar-signs on the front. The buck has to stop somewhere, and I think intent/suspicion should play some role in that.

Okay but if you're operating a bank and it's used 99% for fraud you should still get shut down right?

You might have to go through some hassle (and cost) to prove you are not deliberately aiding/abetting the transfer illegal content.

And in some jurisdictions you may be guilty of a lesser crime just be inadvertently aiding/abetting. The current UK government keeps trying to push through legislation that is a little scary in that respect.

I assume you intended this service mostly for your personal use and wonder if making it

a) unreliable (e.g. having opening hours a.k.a. intentional downtimes)

b) applying client side encryption a la https://privatebin.info

c) expire & purge the (encrypted) content quickly

would have mitigated your problem.

It's fairly easy to be held liable if any of these measures affect law enforcement negativively.

If it is mostly intended for personal use, you may as well use some form of access control. We are long past the day when people would abuse such a service to share distasteful material and in an era when people would abuse such a service to share (rightfully) illegal material. While I was uncomfortable with the former, I certainly do not want to facilitate the latter.

Put the service behind a personal Tailscale tail net. Can still access from all of your devices and nobody else can push or pull.

Could crib notes from olden days and have a public/ subdirectory where files you drop in there are available read only to the public internet via separate endpoint.

Can also have a blind drop box that does the other direction (but does not allow the public to read).

That way you are read / write from all your devices, can publish to anyone, and can let anyone share things to you, you just don't facilitate anyone sharing to anyone.

> a) unreliable

People distributing unmentionable content or using services for otherwise nefarious purposes are used to dealing with intermittent issues like that. It'll get rid of some but not all of them.

> b) applying client side encryption a la https://privatebin.info

> c) expire & purge the (encrypted) content quickly

If your site turns out to be being used by a group that is raided, this will not stop your services being confiscated and very thoroughly investigated. You might be legally in the clear, but it may cost you time and hassle (and potentially money if you need to take on the services of a lawyer to help prove you did not intentionally aid/abet).

Also an end-to-end encrypted solution like that might be rather attractive to users both illegal and otherwise, so be ready for a huge bandwidth bill if/when a sizable group latches onto it!

> get rid of some but not all

usually there's always one solution to get rid of all but that's prbly not what you think of.

So getting rid of some is what it's about, isn't it? And some more by another means.

Idea: Invite the police in from day one.

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