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Comment by avner | Hacker News Reader

While I am sympathetic to the cause, the biggest problem with routing anything tor is that you will almost certainly, rapidly lose control over the traffic and its content. The average geek should really know what sort of repercussions a tor node can unleash if things go wrong. The administrator (you) of the exit node has almost no control over this.

I urge anyone who plans to run a tor node to please take the necessary steps, if possible to avoid a situation like http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-o...

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This is all true, but if A LOT of people suddenly start running will the police knock on everyone's door?

Will the administration take any part in this, will they ask law enforcement to back off on tor exit nodes? They were tech savy enough to ask Twitter to reschedule their planned down time.

In any case, the EFF should publish a legal guide in what to do in case the police do come knocking on your door because your IP showed up in some crime related log.

I'm not sure what the EFF could put in such a guide. If the police believe you are involved in child pornography and get a warrant they will at a minimum come to your house and seize all of your computers to gather evidence. I can't imagine what exactly training the EFF can give people to prevent that from happening once the police show up.

And chances are that if you're tech savvy enough to run a Tor exit node that you'd rather not loose all of your computers for the several weeks or months it might take to get them back.

The EFF could advice people on the legal wall between corporations and individuals. Or how to start a corp. rent a tiny office and run a dedicated tor node from there.

I could be completely wrong, but it doesn't seem like you'd be much better off owning a corporation which is a front for child pornography (which is how it would be portrayed).

If you run a Tor middle server, you don't risk anything and you are still helping.

Hmm, that sucks. I'd like to do something helpful, and turning your Twitter icon green is truly the least you can do

I was hoping that running a Tor node would be a more viable, more useful alternative.

Showing green only supports one side in the fight. If that's what you want to do, go ahead. But promoting free speech helps everybody.

I was looking for that exact article, I read it a few months back. I'm a bit hesitant to run TOR on my home connection because of it. Would there be an alternative that only allowed twitter or social news/image/blogging sites (I know this may be defeating the purpose of running a filter-less proxy, but it seems a bit safer)?

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