What will happen to Tor after the new German data retention law takes effect?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 01:23:30AM -0700, JT wrote:

> Under the proposed new data retention law which will take effect 01/2008
> anonymizing services will be either banned or tor server operators will
> be required to log data which would render the tor software useless as

Just connection data, not routed data. Rather useless, unless you have
all logs from all nodes in the mix cascade, and captured the terminating 
stream from an exit server in cleartext.

I also question how much this is problem in practice. In practice I
was only a frequent guest at the local police station when I ran an
exit. All investigation were directly complaint-driven. 
I can imagine someone knocking on my door, because somebody with
an exit in Germany, or a collaborating country (even in the EU
this is not obvious, for petty crime cases) which logs shows logs 
that lead to my middleman.

I'd think this is rare, but I'd still wish people who ran a
logging exit point in Germany who read this would stop, or switch
to middleman.

> an anonymizing tool.
> 
> Other European countries will surely follow once the law is in effect.
> 
> If all European Tor nodes stop to operate will tor still be useful only
> using American and Asian nodes? Will European users be allowed to
> connect to the Tor network or will that already be a criminal act?
> Anybody knows?