Some legal trouble with TOR in France

Sat May 13 17:02:41 UTC 2006

I remember reading that about JAP.

Given the recent enlightenments about the US National Security Agency's
illegal activities (gathering millions of telephone records from
average citizens, etc), what is the technical feasibility of the NSA or
other governmentt organizations establishing modified tor nodes/servers
which track activity and use?

--- Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com> wrote:

> If it's the JAP I'm thinking of, you shouldn't trust it. The german
> government ordered JAP top put in a backdoor to the program to catch
> one
> solitary JAP user even though it was against german law. The backdoor
> was
> released as an urgent security update and the guy was nabbed.
> 
> As for the tor server, I suggest that you completely wipe those
> drives
> securely, reformat, and reinstall everything. The best thing to do
> would be
> to sell those drives and buy new ones because it could be that they
> put taps
> in them. Also, they could have installed a keylogger. If I were you,
> I
> wouldn't use any of that equipment again. At the very minimum, you
> need to
> reinstall windows/linux/etc. and tor with a reformat because they
> probably
> put in a trojaned version of tor.
> 
> 
> On 5/13/06, Sherman Buck <sherman.buck at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I wanted to share this website in Germany working on a project
> similar to
> > TOR and Anonymizer which is called JAP, which should answer some
> questions
> > about concerns in Germany. The project is working on a grant and is
> > currently free to use while in beta and they actually have an
> interaction
> > with TOR. http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
> >
> > Sherman
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-or-talk at freehaven.net
> [mailto:owner-or-talk at freehaven.net]On
> > Behalf Of Landorin
> > Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 5:29 AM
> > To: or-talk at freehaven.net
> > Subject: Re: Some legal trouble with TOR in France
> >
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Hi Olivier,
> >
> > Wow, that's shocking to read. Honestly, though I'm not that
> surprised,
> > this had to happen sooner or later to exit nodes because some
> people
> > know how to arrest someone but have no clue about networks and
> their
> > possibilities. I feel sorry for the inconvenience that caused for
> you.
> > However, this might have a good part, too: at least now you know
> that
> > you can run an exit node without getting accused or so (it caused
> > inconvenience the most, but no accusation or so right?). If that
> > happened to me then at least I'd know next time they will know
> about Tor.
> > Here in Germany I wouldn't dare to run an exit node yet until it
> was
> > decided whether they can accuse you for this or not if something
> like
> > your case happens because some judges decide total bullshit
> sometimes
> > because of not having a clue.
> > And just like the wiki said: some sick criminal would use other
> means
> > to get what he wants if Tor wasn't there and it will always be like
> > that. It's not us or Tor which is the problem, it's just the pure
> > nature of evil/madness being the cause of these problems (and
> > politicians who want to spy on our privacy actually force use to
> build
> > these kinds of networks!). Yet nice to read you want to keep up the
> > good work. :)
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Landorin
> >
> >
> > Olivier Barbut schrieb:
> > > Hello dear tor talkers,
> > >
> > > I'm running the tor router "mini", located in paris, france, and
> I
> > > believe I have to share with you what happened to me last
> > > wednesday,the 10th of May. My router was an outside gateway,
> doing
> > > request for tor anonymous users.
> > >
> > > Last wednesday morning, at 7:45, three cops did knock at my door.
> > > They suspected me to have downloaded some child porn videos. As I
> > > was waking up, I understood it was tor-related. I did explain
> them I
> > > was a TOR outside gateway, but they didn't knew about it. They
> > > searched everywhere in my small home and took every support they
> > > could find: hard drives they removed from computers, cds, disks,
> and
> > > then they took me to the police station, at the child protection
> > > service, jailing me the whole day while they was searching my
> hard
> > > drives and cds for traces of the video they was looking for.
> > >
> > > They did asked me if they was a way to trace back to the criminal
> > > who downloaded this child abuse video, but I told them "not in my
> > > knowledge" and "the tor network is designed to make this
> impossible,
> > > keeping no log of traffic".
> > >
> > > At 19:00, having not found these video, having learned more about
> > > tor and confirmated I was running it, they freed me, giving me
> back
> > > my cds and hard drives.
> > >
> > > It's sad the way some people use their freedom, e.g.
> participating
> > > in child abuse, but I'm still a strong believer in the necessity
> of
> > > anonymity on the internet.
> > >
> > > As I asked them, they did assure me they accessed my hard drives
> > > read-only, using hardware write disabler, but I still prefer not
> to
> > > run it straight from the hard drive they had in hand for the
> whole
> > > day as I know cops are not that trustable. The "mini" router will
> be
> > > back in a few days. Not getting paranoid, but using paranoïa to
> make
> > > sane decisions !
> > >
> > > Do you know if similar things did happenned to other routers ?
> > >
> > > If you wants some more details, or have advice for me please ask
> and
> > > /or give.
> > >
> > > Thanks everyone for making this possible !
> > >
> > >
> > > Olivier Barbut
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > - --
> > Accelerate cancer research with your PC:
> > http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html
> >
> > GPG key ID: 4096R/E9FD5518
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