Some legal trouble with TOR in France

[Tony]

Sounds like a format and key replacement is required as discussed then.
Thanks for the info.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-or-talk at freehaven.net [mailto:owner-or-talk at freehaven.net]
On Behalf Of france-info at Safe-mail.net
Sent: 14 May 2006 16:11
To: or-talk at freehaven.net
Subject: Re: Some legal trouble with TOR in France

I am living in France and working for some French security agency.
Please understand that I may not identify myself. Working for a security
agency does not mean that I approve all their actions, even those that I
MUST do.

Since about 5 years, French services are trying to control the
"anonymous" French based services. It includes TOR, and some remailers.

About 4 years ago (I don't remember exactly, and I am at home now, I
haven't my documents with me), we visited the operator of the remailers
FROG and AZERTY. We suspected him to be also the webmaster  of the
website CAMELEON, but it is another story.
We seized his computers, disks of course, etc, and arrested the man.
Then we told him "You have a choice between 2 options: You accept to
work for us, it means concretely to give us your remailers' keys and to
forward the remailer emails to us, or you will go to prison for threat
against the national security. Just a few months, the time we check all
your computers, make an audit on your disks, etc".

After 30 minutes, the guy gave us his remailers' keys, and accepted our
offer. He then re-installed his remailers, and all the traffic was sent
to us too. I remember that we asked him to NOT send us the garbage that
the remailers automatically send! Then our computers processed the
messages, using the remailers' keys. Of course we could not decypher
all, if Frog/Azerty was :"in the middle" we couldn't do anything. But
when these remailers where the first or the last one, it was very very
interesting...
I don't know now if these remailers are still operated, I am working in
another service.


About TOR now: I MAY not say all what I know, as the case is currently
investigated by our services and I don't want to get into trouble! Just
know that France's policy is to NOT allow ANY remailer or anonymous
service run from France, UNLESS the French special services can control
it. This is a NO exception rule.

The only recommendations that I can do to the TOR users, is to NOT use
any French-based TOR servers in entry ou exit.

People here and there are generally against the US gov and say that he
"violates their rights". I don't know a lot about the US gov. But what I
know about the French gov, and the instructions our services receive a
few times by week, make me sure that the French citizens' rights are
perpetually violated, about phone tapping and internet.