[tor-relays-universities] Tor on Campus

[Philipp Winter]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 03:13:45PM -0700, April Glaser wrote:
> It'd be great if any folks could chime in and let me know about relays
> or exits on campus. Also let us know if you're currently in process and
> facing road blocks.

I'll share our experience.  Since about three years, we are running a
relay at Karlstad University in Sweden.  We have been trying to turn it
into an exit relay and overcame the following roadblocks.

- We got a new /29 netblock from our ISP for our relay.  This is to
  avoid the scientific database issues, Ian pointed out.  While our
  library did have a list with all our subscriptions, updating that list
  would have been a lot of trouble they wanted to avoid.

- We were working closely with our IT department (which liked the idea
  of running a relay after talking to us) and our ISP.  Our relay's
  whois record points to our university's abuse email address but the
  agreement is that complaints can also be forwarded to a mailing list
  we set up for dealing with Tor-specific complaints.

- We also talked to several other parties at our university including
  our department head, the marketing department, the lawyer, and the
  head of the university.  This was probably the most difficult part.

- In case of issues with law enforcement, we clearly marked the Tor
  relay in our department's server room.  Should the relay ever get
  seized, we hope that only the relay is taken and no other, unrelated
  machines.

- We registered a new domain and configured our reverse DNS
  record in a way that it is obvious that it runs a Tor relay, i.e.,
  relay-194.tor-exit-kau.se.

Unfortunately, one instance in the hierarchy is still blocking the
process because of concerns regarding child pornography.


Cheers,
Philipp