German Police Arrest Admin of Tor Anonymity Server

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a data center, over 500km away. In the last year, Germany has passed a draconian new anti-security research law and raided seven different data centers to seize Tor servers. While back in 2003, A German court ordered the developers of a different anonymity network to build a back-door into their system."

500km?

[flyingfsck]

That puts the server in another country I guess. Anyhoo, it sounds like is time to escape Honecker and the Stasi and jump the wall... Uhh, what?

Suggestion

[markov_chain]

I propose to suspend Godwin's law for this article, because it will be really difficult to have a debate of any depth.

Re:Suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a Nazi would suggest that.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

I do.. took us weeks to get it to revolve

Re:Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom

[JamesRose]

Iraq? :{P

Re:Kind of makes sense.

[chris_eineke]

So you have illegal traffic coming from your machine

Well, that's not entirely true. He doesn't know if it's 'illegal traffic' or not. Might as well be a Chinese citizen trying to read an American blog about democ.,,, HAHAAHA, I'm sorry. I couldn't write this a straight face. :-P

First Amendment!

[Nimey]

But... but... doesn't he have any First Amendment rights?
[/merkin]

But to go to ha-ha-only-serious land, our laws seem to extend to other countries anyway. When it suits us.

Re:yep, the firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who lives in germany, I find your post very sensible and on the spot.

Re:gestapo

[justin12345]

Congratulations! You were the first to Godwin the thread! Here are your lovely prizes...

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[JackMeyhoff]

They only have the authority that YOU GIVE THEM. You can take that away just as easily. Turn your back on the government that you give authority to and they will go away. I have had the police knock on my door many times in a dispute with my neighbour, I never opened the door. Why? BECAUSE I DID NOT GIVE THE POLICE ANY AUTHORITY OVER ME to come in :) They have no power if I do not give it to them. Easy. Now get your act together, government is made up of people. People only have power of you if you let them. Ignore them, they don't exist.

Trusted Computing can help

[SiliconEntity]

Tor users should run Trusted Computers. This is a technology that lets remote observers check the software configuration of the system they are connecting to. Most people think it is only for DRM but actually it has many privacy-protecting uses. If a Tor system were a TC, remote Tor clients could check that the Tor server was not logging connections, running a version of Tor with a back door, or doing other things to infringe privacy. Then if you were asked by a court why you didn't add features to your Tor software to log users and such, you could explain that if you did so, remote clients would be able to tell (due to Trusted Computing features) and so they would refuse to connect to your system and refuse to use it. Likewise if you were ordered to run a backdoored version of Tor it would not be effective, because people could see what you were doing.

Ironically, Trusted Computing, hated by the larger Internet community, can actually play an important part in protecting privacy. It is unfortunate that uninformed opposition has slowed the adoption of this potentially very useful and helpful technology. I am working hard to advance Trusted Computing and I can't wait for the day when I can run transparent servers which remote clients will be able to validate and trust. Someday I expect that all Tor servers, anonymous remailers and other privacy protecting technologies will run on Trusted Computers.

Re:Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom

[marcello_dl]

> So you're still free to steal the ideas of others.

Or we could allow silly patents like you do, patent roman and greek alphabets whose prior art are belong to us and watch americans resorting to cyrillic if they want to sell software here.

Oh wait, "PEAKTOP" is a cyrillic rendition, IIRC. You gotta go arabic, or chinese.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[ccguy]

I have had the police knock on my door many times in a dispute with my neighbour, I never opened the door

You must be the kind of neighbour I'm looking for. Where do you live? If I don't have to move very far I might talk my wife into it :-)

Dont....

[PrimeNumber]

....turn around, uh-oh
Der Kommissar's in town, uh-oh
And if he talks to you
And you don't know why
The more you live
The faster you will die

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[kefler]

Funny, the version I loaded on wikipedia just now says it was 'Dramatic Prairie Dog' and Jack Bauer who were guarding the Bastille. I'll have to reload again.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

so 107 are still alive?

Re:Old Memes vs. Karma

[PrinceOfStorms]

You might want to check your figures. I get 80.55% and 19.45%.

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[z4ckpete]

who are you gonna call?

Ghostbusters.