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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

This is a good thing, because unless provision of anonymity is tested in court and shown to be legal and useful there's always the possibility that it's not protected by law and people will be in danger of getting sued or imprisoned if they make anonymising services. Far better to test it in court with a stupid revenge porn website than testing it with a case of, for example, a whistleblower where authorities feels they need to win. With some previous precedents set it'll make it far harder to argue that providers of anonymity are responsible or culpable when it actually matters.

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> Far better to test it in court with a stupid revenge porn website than testing it with a case of, for example, a whistleblower where authorities feels they need to win.

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.

Yes, exactly this.

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.

> There's a reason why we're not allowed to have encrypted landlines.

Wait, what? Is that true? It isn't true, as far as I know, in the UK.

Also not true in the U.S. (unless "not allowed to" means "the government has successfully deterred it" rather than "it's illegal").

> There's a reason why we're not allowed to have encrypted landlines.

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).

Other way round. It's likely that assisting in the anonymity of people committing crimes (if revenge porn is a crime there) is also itself a crime. We're back to "substantial noninfringing uses" of anonymity tech. Having this tested with an unsympathetic defendant makes it hard to support. Nastiness will be used to shut down anonymity.

It's a problem inherent in trying to solve politics with technology; people can also use the technology for bad things.

So. Much. This.

Technology is inherently neutral.

Well, weapons are also inherently violent. Many people try to reassure themselves with variants of what you wrote, which all are just variants of “I just make the bombs, I don’t drop them.”. I am less than convinced by this line of reasoning.

Dynamite can be used to bomb a city or to build a railroad but it isn't called a "weapon" when you're building a railroad.

True, there is a difference between explosives and bombs. But if you are actually making bombs, I don’t think saying “Technology is inherently neutral” is sufficient.

So you bring up three separate issues. First, what is the difference between bombs and explosives supposed to be? If you're just defining "bombs" as "explosives used for killing" so that you can condemn bombs as a consequence of condemning war, you're attacking the use rather than the technology. Nobody claims bad people can't use neutral technologies for evil purposes.

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?

> […] what is the difference between bombs and explosives […]?

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 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.”.

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."

> kill your children and rape your women

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.

The basis of the claim against Tor appears to be that "Tor Project, Inc" was hired by the website operators to help them run their site.

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.

> stupid revenge porn website

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.

The author of that comment implied nothing of the sort. You're an idiot.

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