Tor Project Sued
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But two pages in and plaintiff has already seemingly misrepresented to the court: where does Tor's website show that they are aware of either this particular hidden service, or this site?
There most certainly cannot be any "conspiracy" with someone they don't know about, or any "meeting of the minds" without evidence they've even spoken! That's just plain clear old-fashioned bullshit.
I've never heard of it before and there are no indications that they found the "pinkmeth.com" site hard to serve at all: it's a .com.
Tor should be discharged as a party: they are completely irrelevant to this case.
She has a real lawyer representing her.
He does have a pic of himself photoshopped into a courthouse. Weirdly floating at the bottom of this page: http://vandykelawfirm.com/index-2.html
I think this is going to be interesting - as I think the plaintiff will win in Texas against both parties, and this could end up being a significant tort case, if it ends up in higher courts.
This is not one of those, and it's in Denton County, Texas - I don't know about their reputation otherwise or the geography.
In any case, it is simply wrong: the Tor Project most definitely do not host or provide domain name services to this site (and hidden service descriptors are not domain names but keys - the Tor software project has no control over them).
Cloudflare are the forward proxies to the hosting and would have knowledge of the real host (Tor do not), and their domain name registrar are OnlineNic.com, as 10 seconds of robtex.com lookup can easily show you! 10 seconds this lawyer didn't take.
I can appreciate the plaintiff is upset - rightfully so, in my opinion - if nude pictures of her have been uploaded to Pinkmeth.com without her permission. But the Tor project are software developers and don't have anything to do with the hosting of that site. Her lawyer has, to be polite, made a grave error of judgment.
Meh. The Tor people will spend a couple thousand dollars hiring a Texas lawyer to explain it to them and then they can file again. The plaintiff hasn't lost anything and will gain some free technical advice at the expense of a third party. Maybe the Tor people will even pay them a little cash to make them go away.
Really, the lawyer has gotten her a good start.
I guess it is because it is a for profit business, now. Since you can have your lawyer randomly sue people, have them spend thousands in lawyers to defend it, and end up settling anyway because the costs of lawyers over an exacerbated court case with an ignorant judge who will rule however the fuck they want can cost way more.
And honestly, the only way I can think to solve it is the public subsidy of lawyers in general, except in cases between the state and private individuals. In cases like this one, where its between two private parties, you should get at least free legal council, and even then you should be reimbursed for your time in court because it is wasting everyones time.
If the gov't wants to make an overbearing insane "justice" system that allows wanton abuse that creates a legal market as large as most useful commodity markets, they should pay for it. Which means we all pay for it. But at least then people can complain about the insane tax rates to pay for millions of lawyers and judges over literal bullshit.
I'm tired of people suing the wrong company because their own personal knowledge of a domain is minute, and their fundamental lack of understanding (and sometimes refusal to understand) is the catalyst for the suit.
> TOR also provides services that permit users, such as Pinkmeth, to "publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site."
Perhaps they mean a user can use TOR to publish to Pinkmeth.com anonymously?
EDIT many edits
"Pinkmeth and TOR conspired to and had a meeting of the minds regarding the commission certain torts against Plaintiff more adequately described in paragraphs 5.1 - 5.15 above, as well as certain felony offense described in paragraph 4.8 and 4.9 above. The specific object to be accomplished by the conspiracy was the publication pornographic images of Plaintiff (and other women) on the Pinkmeth website"
I think "conspired" may be a little misguided here.
pp. 2-3
"According to its website, TOR "was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications." The TOR website further states that their products and services are used by individuals "to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers." TOR also provides services that permit users, such as Pinkmeth, to "publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site." [...] It is clear from the TOR website that TOR is knowingly assisting websites such as Pinhneth in committing torts against Texas resident..."
p. 5
"However, unscrupulous Internet service companies such as TOR offer "private" or "anonymous" domain name hosting services that allow criminals such as Pinkmeth and its users to escape accountability for their actions. TOR even advertises that with their service "nobody would be able to determine who was offering the site, and nobody who offered the site would know who was posting to it." [...] many unscrupulous companies offer services that allow illegal websites such as Pinkmeth to remain anonymous and difficult for authorities to shut down. Indeed Pinkmeth's Twitter feed advertises its website as being a website "where your state laws don't apply.""
pp. 8-9
"The specific object to be accomplished by the conspiracy was the publication pornographic images of Plaintiff (and other women) on the Pinkmeth website in such a mannner so as to prevent its operators and users from being held civilly and criminally accountable for this unlawful behavior."
This seems to be conflating a few things. The fact that "revenge porn" sites exist outside of anonymous content distribution networks like TOR shows that anonymity wasn't a required component in the tort allegedely commited by Pinkmeth. There are many cases involving sites like that being taken down from public hosting providers. The fact that TOR could allegedly allow defendant to escape prosecution does not equate to a real conspiracy to assist defendant in escaping prosecution. A person hosting a costume party isn't automatically responsible for a murderer taking advantage of the anonymity to commit a crime, without some evidence of collusion.
Edit: After reading the rest of the suit, this is clearly a frivolous suit. The entire filing is pretty unprofessional overall; hopefully the EFF can step in and stop this nonsense.
I'm not familiar with Texas civil procedure, but assuming they follow the federal rules on this point, the complaint as to Tor is probably underspecified. In a complaint, a plaintiff does not have to make out her full factual case, but does need to make sufficient factual allegations to raise a cognizable claim.
To make out a case for civil conspiracy in Texas, you have to show: 1) a combination of two or more persons; 2) an unlawful purpose; 3) a meeting of minds as to the purpose; 4) one or more overt, unlawful, acts; 5) damages.[1]
The plaintiff here alleges that Pinkmeth and Tor had a "meeting of the minds" but it is insufficient to simply parrot one of the elements of the claim. The plaintiff must allege "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). For example, the plaintiff must allege that someone affiliated with the Tor project provided Pinkmeth with technical support, from which we might infer a "meeting of the minds" as to the unlawful purpose. If the plaintiff can't make such an allegation, the complaint is probably going to get dismissed as to Tor.
Yes, Texas courts may indeed be starting to follow the federal Twombly/Iqbal doctrine in view of a statutory change a couple of years ago. Recently, in a similar case, GoDaddy.com successfully persuaded a state appellate court to overturn a trial court's refusal to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint on that ground [1].
[1] http://www.jonesday.com/godaddycom-llc-v-toups-a-texas-appel...
That seems pretty outrageous.
Furthermore, the Tor network is not moderated, nor managed by the Tor project. The Tor project is more-or-less unrelated to the Tor network, and it certainly does not provide any "services" to users. The Tor Project is literally a software project, not a service or platform.
The Tor project simply develops on and provides the Tor core library, from which, other users have taken and made products like TorBrowser.
I guess if the TOR network went around and randomly blew up machines that connected over it that would be different...
Simply suing them because someone used the TOR network to hide their website is absolutely ridiculous.
> The Tor project simply develops on and provides the Tor core library, from which, other users have taken and made products like TorBrowser.
Note that this is not exactly true: Tor Browser is developed by the Tor Project (developed by tp.o's (the organization at torproject.org, which is incorporated as "Tor Project") people.)
At least my take on it is that the core network daemon "tor" is one of the things that tp.o people develop, but it's not the only thing/program.
Some of the programs developed and maintained by people who are tp.o developers: https://www.torproject.org/projects/projects.html.en
These and others comprise the broader ecosystem of Tor software. Many of the programs are (to use your word) (for all intents and purposes) "managed" by Tor Project (not only the core daemon.)
That's because Congress has specifically shielded them from such liability.
Are you insinuating that Texas lawyers as a mass are bad or good?
This would be like someone commenting on a Java article by saying, "I'm not a programmer, let alone a Java programmer."
I didn't read any insult in his comment.
It seems this litigation has been going on since at least 2012 and Jason Van Dyke is still handling it with general attempts at litigating anyone and everyone who can be 'connected' in some way via 'the internet'.
I don't know if that's a common approach for Texas lawyers (one place I've never been) but it looks like this is some sort of ongoing 'war' against pinkmeth by Jason/Shelby. The tweets claiming to be from Jason are all pretty aggressive/out there and searches on Shelby Conklin are inconclusive even though it's a fairly unusual name. I wasn't even completely convinced she exists as described as the person in these papers.
Could this be some sort of publicity stunt ? Or am I just too suspicious ?
We can expect the defendants to move to dismiss the case on the merits, on grounds that their conduct is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [3]. Whether they'll succeed is another question, especially as to Pinkmeth, and Tor might have an uphill battle as well.
We can also expect the defendants to move to dismiss on procedural grounds -- they will claim that they don't have enough contact with Texas to be properly subject to suit there (here) [4]. That too will probably be the subject of "satellite" litigation in pre-trial motion practice.
This won't be an inexpensive exercise for the defendants, just in terms of legal fees.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_jurisdiction
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_fo...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...
If so, they are at much higher risk than mere lawsuits, and they are quite well aware of that.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation previously hosted the Tor project on tor.eff.org until it moved to torproject.org - I would expect a very forceful response and representation from EFF, probably already being drafted.
(If you meant the 'revenge porn website' in question, I've no idea, but that's not the interesting part here.)
Disclaimer: I'm one of the less privacy-obsessed posters on here. Even so: really?
Hypothetically speaking, if the US state apparatus wants to clamp down on Tor and anonymising services, then you don't want your test case to be a whistleblower for whom there may turn out to be wider public sympathy. You want it to be some obvious, incontrovertible scumbag. Plays much, much nicer in the public gallery. That's just how it's done.
Cf. how a more punitive defamation regime in the UK was won on the back not of politicians trying to protect their expenses or some such, but the hacking of a dead teenager's voicemail and various other dirty tricks of the gutter press. This is just the way you do things.
If they lose, then there's going to be precedent for when the stakes are high. And I can't see how they can totally escape culpability, since they can't even turn over the source if they wanted to.
The anonymity Tor provides is fundamental from an Internet activist perspective but in the eyes of the law (and the world outside our tech bubble) it's aiding and abetting. There's a reason why we're not allowed to have encrypted landlines.
I don't feel good about this at all.
Wait, what? Is that true? It isn't true, as far as I know, in the UK.
We can, it just requires that end users manage the keys if they don't want them turned over to the government by a third party (eg, the telephone company).
It's a problem inherent in trying to solve politics with technology; people can also use the technology for bad things.
Technology is inherently neutral.
Second, even if we take the "bombs as weapons of war" definition of the technology, it's still inherently neutral because the bombs can just as well be used as leverage to negotiate peace as they can be to blow up the enemy.
And finally, what part of the Tor Project is analogous to making bombs? Wouldn't the analogous argument have to be that Tor is purely a weapon of violence with no value to innocent parties like journalists or whistle blowers?
If there is no difference, then use something else, it was just an example. Say, machetes and swords.
> […] bombs can just as well be used as leverage to negotiate peace […]
It is precisely this argument that I don’t really buy. It feels akin to the argument of “If I don’t do it, someone else would do it, so it might as well be me.”.
> […] what part of the Tor Project is analogous to making bombs?
I was not talking about the Tor Project at all, and I was not trying to make a point about making privacy tools. I was merely trying to argue against the soothing falseness of “Technology is inherently neutral.”. If you make, I don’t know, bread or something, sure, we could agree on that being neutral. But don’t tell me that M1 tanks are neutral. Just because there is difficulty drawing a line at a specific point does not disprove the existence of a difference.
It isn't saying that at all. The issue is not that if you don't make weapons then someone else will do it instead. The issue is that if you don't make weapons then you won't be able to defend you and yours from ruffians and invaders with stones and bats who would kill your children and rape your women.
And when the invaders have trucks and guns instead of stones and bats then you need to have tanks and bombs, etc. Because weapons are neutral tools. In the hands of the good guys they deter the bad guys. That's why it's so important that the tools themselves not be condemned. "If you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns."
Firstly, that sentence is badly sexist – it presumes that I own “my” children and “my” women, and that I, myself, is not a woman.
And, isn’t this exactly what I was saying? I.e. “I must make weapons since someone else would otherwise make weapons and attack me, therefore it might as well be me who makes weapons and attacks them.”
Also, you must differentiate between the argument against having guns and the argument against making guns. A person might own guns out of practical necessity but still not want to participate in the manufacturing of more of them.
We can expect the Tor half of the case to be dismissed on the basis that this is not shown to be true (because it's just... not true), and it will continue against the website operators alone.
What you implying with this wording? That revenge porn sites are frivolous? They're one of the slimiest and most horrific things on the internet, and they should not exist. I hope you are not being dismissive of revenge porn. It can destroy people's lives.
It's a pity that Tor is getting wound up in this case, but revenge porn does need to fought against.
Wow. Weird to think of a non-profit software group which makes software that aims to decentralize/anonymize parts of the web through mostly the bandwidth of the users of their product as an "Internet service company", but I suppose it is. Kinda.
For example: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/time-directory-authority-ou...
Suing ARIN (and services like it) because there is a website somewhere which is connected to the INTERNET is a new form of silliness not seen before. Sure, technically, ARIN do "perform a service" which "enables" a revenge site to operate, but it is so indirect, so remote from the offending party, that it is just silly.
No not exactly, but unless you have the legal arguments so that it will not be treated as such by the courts, I'm just putting it out there.
Second, as a legal matter, too much indirection is typical not acceptable for accessory crimes. Common practice normally allow only one step of indirection.
ARIN lacks in both aspects. ARIN do not know who is a distributor, or what content those who are distributors might carry, and as logic implies, can't know the relationship between distributor and content. They are also several indirection away from the alleged crime. The only thing ARIN handles is location of network nodes.
"Pinkmeth has intentionally intruded on Plaintiffs solitude, seclusion or private affairs. Specifically, Pinkmeth gained unauthorized access to nude photographs constituting the property of Plaintiff"
The petition seems to be slightly clueless. Tor and Pinkmeth "conspired"? And then a list of anonymous comments from Pinkmeth... They clearly do not speak for Pinkmeth (or Tor). And who is this "Tor" anyway? Everybody who runs a relay or exit node? The software engineers?
Yes, Tor can be used to transfer information. You also need a computer for that. Did that computer's manufacturer also conspire? What about about the routers that transmit the information?
With some light digging you can find out that she also sued Verisign: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/12/06/52881.htm Same thing happened there, lot of smoke, no substance.
Not sure the account is legit however.
Ban Tights! We must stop people wearing tights. The world will not be free whilst people can buy tights.
Sometimes I'll change it to "Request for Relief", and I've never had a judge comment on the change.
> This Court has jurisdiction over the website and all of its administrators under the Texas Long Arm Statute because they (a) operate illegal"involuntary pornography" or "revenge pornography" websites on the World Wide Web that are accessible to and targets residents of the State of Texas
> This Court has jurisdiction over TOR because it (a) advertises and offers the services referenced above in Texas and to Texas residents
[1] There really should be some form of Goodwin's Law for this by now.
The reason why this isn't is that Apple needs to comply with European laws and standards in Europe. Not in the US or whichever other hellhole uses 110V 50Hz mains.
Not to mention Apple sells region-specialized units just like every other major computer retailer.
Oh wait there's more.
From https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en
>> Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now, and we need to fix that.
True, but distribution has always been the hard part in any kind of scalable criminal activity, and Tor is unwittingly facilitating this.
There's definitely a case here against PinkMeth.com. Revenge porn sites don't really receive protection under fair use.
So here's the sticky part.
Here's Tor's hidden services overview: https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en
Since the hidden services are themselves run over Tor, it looks to me like the only thing Tor can do is refuse to serve PinkMeth.com without identifying the agents. Which might be good for privacy precedent on the one hand, but bad if Tor as a result receives all the flack for all criminal activity run over Tor -- that means Tor relays (who are identifiable) are next.
Ideas to save Tor?
CAUSES OF ACTION AGAINST TOR
6.1 A civil conspiracy consists of a combination of two or more persons to accomplish an unlawful purpose or a lawful purpose by unlawful means.
6.2 Pinkmeth and TOR conspired to and had a meeting of the minds regarding the commission certain torts against Plaintiff more adequately described in paragraphs 5.1 - 5.15 above, as well as certain felony offense described in paragraph 4.8 and 4.9 above. The specific object to be accomplished by the conspiracy was the publication pornographic images of Plaintiff (and other women) on the Pinkmeth website in such a manner so as to prevent its operators and users from being held civilly and criminally accountable for this unlawful behavior.
Having said that, personally, I would just attack the hidden service directly. It's not particularly difficult to censor a node by DoS. More sophisticated attacks include setting up your own hidden service directory server and just return 404 for requests to PinkMeth. Researchers have shown it's possible and doesn't require much resources: Trawling for Tor Hidden Services: Detection, Measurement, Deanonymization. http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2013/papers/4977a080.pdf
>Q: Is this firm owned by the same Jason Van Dyke that got PinkMeth.com shut down? A: Yes. We have helped victims of revenge pornography in the past and will continue to do so in the future?[1]
I guess pinkmeth.com is already shutdown? I can still see the website up and working.
The response was "he didn't say to poison all of you, just East Texas!" as if I shouldn't be offended because I lived (at the time) in San Antonio.
facepalm
https://www.mail-archive.com/tor-talk@lists.torproject.org/m...
I feel like there's another -est he's forgetting about.
Either that or someone is just attempting to facilitate trolling/being a dick.
Nude pics can get online through a stolen phone, lost phone or a breached account of some sort. Once you have a picture of someones face it's pretty easy to get a name through the right channels.
"Scribd was seed funded by Y Combinator."
It is really frustrating to search for a more elusive document and find it on scribd only to discover its behind a paywall.
They break down search engines by allowing indexation of unavailable content.
I never considered Tor an ISP since their using their users connections to the internet which they have already payed for and are sharing for free but ok.
I would call it more of a social network where everybody is helping everybody else stay anonymous.
Tor project offer private and anonymous domain name hosting? Well technically maybe but not really... it's not like you can access .onion domains without installing Tor and if you do install Tor you're opting to be anonymous.
How does this work if a program is offering anything close to the domain to IP resolution used on the internet while preserving your anonymity within their ecosystem they are breaking the law?
It's a piece of software designed to preserve you privacy and anonymity of course everything in its ecosystem is going to do that and their going to advertize that.
If you provide the means to do something wrong - no matter what your intent - you are still responsible because without your actions the wrong would not have come to pass.
i'm sorry that reality is harsh.
if you give people the facility to hide and commit crimes than you are helping people hide and commit crimes - even if your initial reason was to aid political dissidents who don't want to be found, rather than pedophiles, murderers and other assholes...
arguing for tor is extremely hard because its much more useful for getting away with bad things than anything else...
Arguing for Tor is extremely easy because it protects a fundamental human right that has been routinely recognized and protected at the expense of short-sighted notions of safety and security for generations.
The one time I ventured into TOR (many many years ago), I got scared off immediately when I just saw the description of hidden services. Pure anonymity is almost as evil as no anonymity. Reading into the comment, it looks like the plaintiff was underage, had these posted against her consent, and then publicly distributed with her name attached.
Unless TOR finds a way to balance enablement with responsibility, it will eventually slide into nothing more then the criminal underbelly of the Internet, and all that is vile about modern civilization.
This is a really good point. The one thing to remember, though, is that criminals already have access to better tools for privacy than Tor. Million-node botnets, hacked servers, stolen identities...
I'm not sure what Tor can do to improve the current situation.
Because there's nothing fruitful to discuss. Yes, it's a terrible thing and the people behind it should be prosecuted and convicted. Most of us take that for granted, there's no point in saying it.
Pure anonymity is almost as evil as no anonymity.
The thing is, when you're talking about important enough acts, like dissidence from authoritarian regimes, there's no such thing as "non-pure anonymity". You're either anonymous or imprisoned (or worse). So there's really no much we can do if we want to keep Tor as a useful tool for whistleblowers. After all, the same software that powers pinkmeth.com also powers SecureDrop; the technology can't tell your intentions.
The most useful thing in keeping TOR alive would be for the community to continue to show how important something like SecureDrop is in the face of global electronic surveillance. That way any attack on TOR is an attack on free speech. All the comments on how the lawyer is so stupid and doesn't understand technology misses that the people that may ultimately decide the fate of TOR also probably don't understand technology.
In general, no-one who creates anything has any real control over what other people use it for. Tor has no control over what the network is used for (it is kind of the point that no-one does!). Sure, you can ask: "please use this software for good, or for awesome". But that's about it, and well, bad guys aren't known for listening to you, or to anyone - which the plaintiff would know very well, because control (or lack thereof) cuts to the very heart of this case.
When I sign model releases - though they are not strictly necessary where I am, they help to make sure all participants know the full consequences of what they're doing, and knowledgeably consent to it - I know media cannot effectively be universally de-published. I know that choice is basically irrevocable, and (for example) may well limit some future career prospects because some people vehemently Do Not Like That Sort Of Thing™. It's my free choice to model or not, being aware of all that.
That choice was reportedly denied to the plaintiff - and that's absolutely reprehensible, so I wish her the best of luck in going after that 'revenge porn' site if it does what they allege it does.
But my heavens I don't think she could have chosen a worse lawyer to represent her if she tried. Tor's just got nothing material to do with it whatsoever. He may as well have sued Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the web. (Please don't tell them that. They might actually think that's a good idea!)