Brainstorming about Tor, Germany, and data retention

[Smuggler]

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The issue is mostly the part of the law that concerns "replacement of
addresses". Basically every node would need to log the original IP and
the new IP of a connection as well as the time when the connection
started and ended.

"Anonymisierungsdienste speichern die ursprüngliche und die neue Angabe
sowie des Zeitpunktes der Umschreibung dieser Angaben nach Datum und
Uhrzeit unter Angabe der zugrunde liegenden Zeitzone"

The problem here is that the "Technische Richtlinie" (technical
directive) has not yet been adapted to the law and/or not yet publicized.



Roger Dingledine wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> We need to build a plan for Tor, data retention, and Germany. The data
> retention law in Germany comes into effect Jan 1 2009. Coincidentally,
> this is just after the 25C3 congress, and many people there will be
> asking me about our plan. I hope to do a talk there on Tor's plan wrt
> German data retention. Maybe we should also consider a panel with an
> actual informed German person, like Frank or Julius or Andreas?
> 
> Now, part of the challenge here is that there's so much misinformation
> (and lack of information) floating around. Some questions we need
> answered:
> 
> 1) Will ISPs be required to log connection timing information of their
> users? What exactly will the information be -- destination IP address,
> port, timestamp of beginning of connection, timestamp of end? Or more
> than that? Or less?
> 
> 2) Are there ISPs that plan to not log? If so, how many?
> 
> 3) Do we expect the authorities will only use the logs in a pinpoint
> way, or will they also trawl? That is, will they go to an ISP and say
> "tell me what this user did during this five minute period", or can they
> ask every ISP at once "tell me all your info about every connection to
> amazon.com on Saturday"? As a special case of this, is asking for info
> from 500 Tor relays more like a pinpoint request or more like trawling?
> 
> 4) Is it just each ISP that directly interacts with customers that has
> to log, or is it all the ISPs, all the way up the chain? That is, are
> there tier-1 ISPs that will end up with massive logs, and will there be
> a lot of points you can go if you want to see what a user has been up to?
> 
> 5) Will Tor relays be required by law to log "stuff" too? If so, is it
> the same stuff as in question #1?
> 
> 6) Are there Tor relays that plan to not log? E.g. CCC or Foebud or GPF?
> Is fighting a law by not following it even a normal way of fighting a
> law in Germany? :)
> 
> First, let's recall that Tor is most vulnerable at the endpoints: the
> entry point and the exit point. If an attacker gets data about the middle
> of the circuit, but doesn't get both the entry point and the exit point,
> then they don't really win much.
> 
> There are two categories of users we can consider: people inside
> Germany and people outside Germany. And as Karsten keeps reminding me,
> the third category is relay operators in Germany, who really want some
> advice.
> 
> The first defense that comes to mind is to never set the Guard flag on
> German Tor relays. That means that people outside Germany will never
> reveal their location to a German Tor relay, since their guards will
> always be outside. Folks inside Germany will still have a problem, since
> *their* ISPs will probably still log connection data.
> 
> Note that German users contacting German websites are always going to
> have a problem; we can't do anything about it if the ISP of the user
> and the ISP of the website both log, and later compare notes.
> 
> That said, though, if the logs they keep aren't very precise, then
> comparing them won't actually be very useful. In particular, if they just
> have TLS connection start and stop timestamps from the entry node side,
> then we could adapt Tor so it starts the TLS connection well before
> it needs it (this is already done to a large extent, since we build
> circuits preemptively), and so it stops the TLS connection well after
> it is done with it (we are mostly set up for this already too, since we
> delay a while before closing unused connections -- we just need to make
> that a variable delay rather than a constant delay).
> 
> Of course, if every ISP were to keep logs of the timing of every _packet_
> on every connection, we'd be back in bad shape. But I think such a burden
> is impractical (to say nothing of illegal, even in the current Germany).
> 
> Another catch here is the lesson we learned from the students at U
> Colorado with their PETS paper: even if you only logged one side of a
> conversation, it's still really risky to have that log, because you have
> no idea who *else* happened to log somewhere else on the Tor network
> at the same time. Both parties could be thinking to themselves "hey,
> I've only got half the conversation, this can't hurt anybody", but if
> they both publish then suddenly users are linked.
> 
> If we conclude then that logging even one side of a conversation is
> bad (because you never know who else might have data that matches up),
> then we should be really uncomfortable with exit relays in Germany too.
> After all, their ISPs will have half the conversation logged already. And
> while there's no trivial way to turn a log from an exit relay into
> knowing where the clients are, it's still one of the steps down that path.
> Worse, logs at the exit relay side won't be padded by the above "start
> the TLS connection early and end it late" strategies, since they'll be
> seeing the bare exit connections.
> 
> If we truly believed that the databases these ISPs build will be kept
> secure against all attackers, and we truly believed that the databases
> would never be used for trawling (see question #3 at the top), then it
> might not be so bad. But that's a lot to ask.
> 
> On the other hand, it would be a real shame to withhold both the Guard
> flag and the Exit flag from all Tor relays in Germany. There really isn't
> much left, especially if we plan to experiment with 2-hop paths one day.
> 
> Now, what about the relay operators, and *their* duty to log? First,
> note that from the perspective of an exit relay, the game is already up:
> if the ISP logs connections, it has pretty much everything useful the
> exit relay could be logging anyway.
> 
> (Exception: that isn't the case if the circuit consists entirely of
> German Tor relays. No matter what strategy we conclude here, it seems
> clear that we should disallow circuits like that.)
> 
> I don't mean to say "therefore it is fine for Tor exit relays to log"
> -- I think it is a dark day when anonymity infrastructure operators
> start tracking their users -- but we should recognize that the damage is
> already done here by the ISP, regardless of what the exit relay chooses.
> 
> On the other hand, if we do the "make TLS start and stop times less
> dependent on stream connection times" trick, then what the entry guard
> knows and what the entry guard's ISP knows *are* in fact different. This
> argues for never letting German Tor relays be entry guards, so we don't
> put them in this position.
> 
> Speaking of which, there's another lesson we can learn from the distant
> past. Once upon a time, in my first congress talk about Tor back in
> 21c3, the Wikipedia people stood up and asked how they were supposed to
> deal with anonymous users. My answer at the time was basically "there
> are effectively anonymous users on the Internet already, sorry, you'll
> just have to deal." Their eventual answer was to build a big list of
> anything ever associated with Tor, and block edits from it. If we had
> worked with them from the start, we could have saved a lot of grief by
> giving them precise lists of current exit IP addresses, etc. The lesson
> here is that we need a better answer for both German Tor relay operators
> and for German law enforcement than "sorry, you'll just have to deal",
> since otherwise they *will* come up with answers that we don't like.
> 
> That said, my first reaction is still "Tor relays must not log, even in
> Germany. If you're planning to log, please shut down your relay instead."
> Is there some approach we can take that doesn't result in 1/3 of the Tor
> network disappearing in January?
> 
> For example, if Tor users always avoid German Tor relays for circuit
> positions where they know more than their ISP knows (i.e. entry guard),
> can German relay operators then argue that they don't know any more than
> their ISP does, so if you want logs just go hassle the ISP? If we explain
> the design clearly enough, that puts operators in a better position than
> "sorry, sir, I *could* log that for you, but I have chosen not to."
> 
> Ok, so let's break this down into cases.
> 
> 1) User outside of Germany, entry outside of Germany, exit and destination
> outside of Germany. User is in pretty good shape, other than relatively
> minor "partitioning" attacks coming from people with access to German
> logs being able to rule out a fraction of the Tor network.
> 
> 2) User outside of Germany, entry outside Germany, exit or destination
> inside Germany. User is also in pretty good shape, in that just by
> having exit or destination logs, you don't know where the user could be.
> We're vulnerable to somebody who happened to collect logs of entry
> traffic, and have to hope they never combine them with the German logs,
> but that's a plausible thing to hope.
> 
> 3) User inside Germany, entry outside Germany, exit and destination
> outside Germany. Country-wide logs could enumerate German Tor users
> (if they don't use bridges), but there wouldn't be anything to line up
> to on the exit side.
> 
> 4) User inside Germany, entry outside Germany, exit or destination
> inside Germany. If our TLS start/stop trick is good enough, and there
> are many Tor users in Germany, and the ISP logs can't be fetched in a
> trawling manner ("show me all German users who were connected to the
> Tor network during this time period"), then it's also not easy to line
> up user to exit.
> 
> As an aside, it seems that German Tor users may benefit from using
> (non-German) bridge relays as their first hop, as it complicates the
> "all German users who were connected to the Tor network" step.
> 
> Also, because we can make the "take away the Guard flag" change at the
> directory authorities, clients get the new protection without needing
> to upgrade. This will make it easier to argue that all Tor users are
> choosing paths in the new way.
> 
> One thing I missed in the analysis is Internet connections that traverse
> Germany, for example the connection from an Austrian Tor user to a Danish
> Tor entry guard. I don't know how common these paths are, and I don't know
> whether such connections are proposed to be logged under the proposed law.
> 
> I have also made generous assumptions on the part of the law enforcement,
> as to how rational they will be in evaluating the law. I know we can be
> paranoid and assume the worst, but in that case we might as well excise
> all German Tor relays from the network and be done with it.
> 
> What else did I miss?
> 
> --Roger
> 
> 

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