Raided for Running a Tor Relay | Hacker News Reader

Raided for Running a Tor Relay

raided4tor.wordpress.com

56 pointschatmasta16 comments

I am a bit weary about this though as there are no details at all proving this person was raided or actually ran an exit node. There is a BTC address to donate to, but no name, no location, no news article or torrc file. I think skepticism is needed. And yes running exit nodes can potentially get you harassed by governments.

It's a good idea not to go into much detail if the lawsuit is still going on/is about to happen. If the other party comes across the post, they might be able to use something from the post in the lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer but this is what people usually say on like reddit when someone talks about some legal troubles they got themselves into.

This silence is a problem when the laws & penalties are unjust. If one cannot express the details of the suppression and why it's unjust, then you effectively have censorship. There is no system of checks & balances :-(

I had the same thought. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm quite skeptical in this case.

Has uProxy been abandoned/shelved?

It supposed to be opened to the public in January, then nudged back a few months, and now on their site it says summer of 2014.

Might have helped this guy practice his "altruism" without appearing to engage in money laundering better than tor.

This isn't the first time I have heard of someone being raided/arrested for running a tor relay. Makes me wonder why anyone would want to run a tor relay.

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Please don't trot out that rubbish.

Not wanting to run a relay is up there with things like not running an open Wifi access point, or not leaving your door unlocked. Willingly offering your personal internet address to complete strangers with no interest in your well-being is insane. It can only end badly.

Like the OP of this story, if you do not understand the risks of TOR, you should definitely not be using it.

> up there with things like not running an open Wifi access point

I always thought this is being a nice person.

I would put it one level below those. An exit/entrance node is like an open wifi. Just being a relay is not as bad but it is still sticking a middle finger up to some powerful groups.

> An exit/entrance node is like an open wifi.

No, it isn't. An open WiFi will most likely not be used by someone trying to do something that might be either illegal or piss off some powerful entity whereas a Tor node will be just that.

So you need to weigh whether or not you want to do this a bit more carefully than you would if you left your WiFi open. On top of that an open WiFi will likely not get you blocked by default from a ton of other online services but running a Tor node will get you blocked from plenty of services in a hurry.

This because Tor for most regular website equates to 'people that we have already gotten rid of using other means' or 'people that are up to no good'.

Even Comcast wants you to run an open Wi-Fi.

I can't believe you put me in the position of defending Comcast from cheap shots.

The open wifi requires you to log in with credentials that are linked to a credit card and name. So any weird activity would be correlated to that login. Of course someone could use a stolen credit card, but at a minimum, "bad" traffic would be correlated to that account, not the open wifi that Comcast is allowing to take up your bandwidth.

Having an open wi-fi shouldn't be a crime, especially when meshnets will become increasingly more popular in the future. I don't think running a relay should be either, however, I'm also of the opinion that this is bad design from the Tor Project. Torrents are good design. They force everyone who downloads to also upload. Tor should force everyone who uses the browser to also be a relay.

Yes, I know what you're going to say - "but then a lot less people will be willing to use it!". Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe it becomes something that's just "normal" and you don't think about it, just like seeding torrents. Then if it's something people don't think about, and it makes running Tor "more acceptable", I think even more people will use it.

Currently we're in the situation where potentially a large percentage of the relays are run by NSA/FBI. If millions of people would be relays, then that would either be much harder for them to pull off, or much more expensive. Either way, a better outcome.

Torrents are good design. They force everyone who downloads to also upload.

Nope: http://bitthief.ethz.ch/

Bittorrent is just a good example of the "defaults matter" guideline.

By the way, I don't think relays are the problem. Exit nodes are, and you can't force everyone to run one, since it would literally lead to detentions and even prison sentences.

FUD.

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