more letters from the feds

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 12:18:10PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> Is this isn't an active discouragement campaign, it certainly
> feels that way.

At 23C3, I spoke to several people who told me about chats with law
enforcement where a German fed was intentionally bothering Tor operators
with the goal of making Tor disappear.

Now, this doesn't mean they all think this way -- and as Alexander points
out, even if they liked Tor they might still have the same behavior due
to German law.

If you know a German fed who understands and likes Tor, please be very
friendly and offer to teach him/her more. Also, you should coordinate
with the CCC folks (anonymizer at ccc.de) so we can keep track of useful
smart people. They come in handy, since answering with "why don't you
give this fellow at your agency a call and he'll explain it to you"
works a lot better than "I know you think I'm a criminal, but let me
tell you why I'm not".

And if you know a fed or other decision-maker in this process whom you
think would like to learn more about Tor, you should also coordinate
with the CCC folks (and me if you like) to teach them more. I've found
that injecting facts into the conversations (along with being open and
helpful) helps tremendously -- take them out to coffee/beer when they're
not investigating you and see where it goes. :)

--Roger