[tor-talk] Tor Exit Operator convicted in Austrian lower court

[Zenaan Harkness]

On 7/5/14, no.thing_to-hide at cryptopathie.eu
<no.thing_to-hide at cryptopathie.eu> wrote:
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>
> Hello Tor!
>
> Running an internal relay in Graz since 7/2013, where William Weber's
> appartment was raided in 2012, when some idiot misused his exit for
> illegal stuff, I became interested in his case. But I know it only
> from the newspapers.
>
> The raid took place on Wed, 2012-11-28 (1). William did intensive
> blogging afterwards (2)(3), the legal process started, and ended this
> week Mon, 2014-06-30, with 3 y probation. I found a German article
> which provides a good summary (4, Google Translate).
> He was not convicted for operating an exit (!!), what is legal in
> Austria. But, according to the opinion of the judges, for
> "contribution to delinquency" ('Beitragstaeterschaft' in German):
> "(...) that he answered in an interview to the question whether he was
> aware that Tor could be used for distribution of child pornography,
> responded at a conference: "I do not give a fuck.(...)"
> "(...) that the prosecutor quoted from chat logs in which he for
> anonymous hosting of everything, including child pornography,
> recommended Tor (...)" (4)

"Contribution to delinquency" it seems he was charged with.

Evidently one must demonstrate one _does_ indeed
give a fuck (care for), at least for the law.


> - --> The proofs for such an attitude are not really helpful when
> getting to court.

Undoubtedly.


> Anyway, if you would like to help him with his lawyer costs, he takes
> Bitcoin donations (5).
>
> Perhaps next time it's you, or me, or ...
>
> Best regards
>
> Anton
>
> 1)
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-charged-for-child-porn-transmitted-over-his-servers
> 2) http://raided4tor.cryto.net
> 3) http://rdns.im
> 4)
> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffuturezone.at%2Fnetzpolitik%2Fstrafe-fuer-tor-betreiber-grazer-urteil-wirft-fragen-auf%2F73.173.618%2Fprint&edit-text=
> 5) http://raided4tor.cryto.net/donate
>
> - --
> no.thing_to-hide at cryptopathie dot eu
> 0x30C3CDF0, RSA 2048, 24 Mar 2014
> 0FF8 A811 8857 1B7E 195B 649E CC26 E1A5 30C3 CDF0
> Bitmessage (no metadata): BM-2cXixKZaqzJmTfz6ojiyLzmKg2JbzDnApC
>
>
>
> On 04/07/14 19:11, MacLemon wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> On 04 Jul 2014, at 15:31, Moritz Bartl <moritz at torservers.net>
>> wrote:
>>> I have talked to multiple lawyers, and this case would be very
>>> easy to defend against. William was sadly unable or unwilling to
>>> communicate properly, and he's not willing/able to put it to a
>>> fight. It is a sad situation overall, but it does not change the
>>> clear legal status of relay operation. All lawyers I talked to
>>> expect this case to be more complicated than it looks, and it
>>> makes no sense to discuss this purely based on what we have right
>>> now, which is some lawman's blog post.
>>
>> I've talked to William's lawyer in person as well as the ISPA
>> jurist (Austrian Inter Service Provider's Association) who both
>> joined our Tor-ops meeting in Vienna yesterday (2014-07-03).
>>
>> What I can sum up: It is not illegal to run a Tor relay/exit/bridge
>> in Austria. We can not take William's case any further. Doing so
>> would neither help William nor help to clear up the legal status of
>> running relays in Austria. William's lawyer said he personally
>> considers the court judgement to be wrong.
>>
>> The Austrian Tor-Community is working to form an official
>> association (Verein) to get a better standing. Goals shall be
>> education about anonymity, better communication with law
>> enforcement, better communication with ISPs as well as the usual
>> technical mumble to build secure and high bandwidth relays.
>> Building up a legal defense fund and getting a clear statement on
>> whether Tor-networks fall under the legal term of „communications
>> network“ as defined in ECG §13 is also part of that.
>>
>>
>> So if you're in Austria and run a relay/exit/bridge, please get in
>> touch, join our Mailinglist (yes another one) at torservers.at to
>> see if you can help and to stay in the loop.
>>
>> Best regards MacLemon