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."

HA! Denmark upped the ante

[Splab]

yesterday when the powers that be introduced the logging act. All data connections, emails and phone calls has to be logged and kept on record for at least a year. Beat that!

Re:Nazis?

[downix]

Ahem, you really need to learn your history.

The "Dont Tread on Me" flag, aka the Gadsden flag, was a flag bourne in the American Revolution, not the Civil War. The Rattlesake, before the Bald Eagle, was the symbol of the United States itself.

How can we take your anti-semitic comments in any kind of serious manner when you do not even know the history of the very symbol of the American Revolution, no, the core values of the United States itself?

Bully I say, Bully!

German gov hasn't outlawed anonymity (yet)

[erlehmann]

He will probably be convicted [...], which is an occupational hazard of doing things which the government has illegalized.

as i pointed out, the thing he did isn't a crime. [slashdot.org]

the point is, that this is either
a) police stupidity
b) scare tactics

i'd safely bet on the latter.

Re:HA! Denmark upped the ante

[Arkan]

Easy: 2 years of retention in France for any internet connection. And the ISP are the one footing the bill for processing power/storage/whatever it takes to comply.

--
Arkan

Incorrect!

[Jane Q. Public]

You are just plain wrong. The phrase "Slippery Slope Fallacy" came from the phrase "Slippery Slope", not the other way around. The fallacy has to do with asserting that a Slippery Slope exists when in fact it does not. It has NOTHINNG to do with actual slippery slope situations, which can and do exist.

And I am inclined to agree that this is one of them.

Re:Trusted Computing can help

[domatic]

The problem is that Trusted Computers will have keys built in that the owner of the machine doesn't control. These will be used by major software vendors and the entertainment industry against their own customers. If the TPM was a blank slate utterly under the owner of the PC's control then I'd agree with you that TC has beneficent uses. Unfortunately, TPM is slated to be used as a built-in universal super dongle and that overshadows any positive use of the technology; I only tend to favor technology that can be used for me rather than against me. I'm funny that way.

I see a lot of knee jerk reaction

[aepervius]

But did ANY OF YOU read the frigging article ? Let me quote it for you with relevant part in bold.
The police were investigating a bomb threat posted to an online forum for German police officers. The police traced one of the objectionable posts on the forum to the ip address for Janssen's server. Up until his arrest, Alex Janssen's Tor server carried over 40GB of other random strangers' Internet traffic each day. 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 different city, over 500km away. Janssen's attempts to explain what Tor is to the police officers fell initially on deaf ears. After being interrogated for hours, someone from the city of Düsseldorf's equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security showed up and admitted to Janssen that they'd made a mistake. He was released shortly after.

Summary : somebody saw his server was the originator IP, somebody reacted quickly, a bit like the US homeland departement IMO could have done, and fell on the face because 1) they gathered the wrong PC 2) once the dust settled they recognized their error after being interrogated for horus. Not DAYS. Not MONTH. Hours. Sure it sucks but it was a bomb threat, in other word there was urgency, and they did not torture him, they did not water board him and pretend afterward it ain't torture. They interrogated him for hours and released him and admitted mistake.

And people here are taking comparison to loss of liberty and Nazi ? Hellllooo ? Knee jerk reaction ?

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Toinou]

There is no such thing as a standard version of the french revolution. In fact, there is as many versions as political views.
What is clear is that the revolution was such a bloody event, with deep disorders, that the french people accepted democracy, half heartedly, only in 1870.
And France was the most powerful country (politicaly and economicaly) in Europe in 1789, and never was again after that.
About the bastille, it was a prison for priviledged people, and the prisoners were put again in prison shortly after being freed.
If you want a realistic view of the revolution, just read Chateaubriand (mémoires d'outre-tombe) or Hugo (1793).

The regularity of anti-German FUD

[vorlich]

We have been through all of this Red Herring before and it won't make any difference. There is no point trying to understand how unimportant this discussion is if you don't understand today's Germany. Germany is the biggest exporting nation on Earth and it is the biggest player in the EU - which is the biggest market on Earth. Post war Germany actively chose the social democrat model for their economy and political system. It has the finest constitution in Europe (modelled on the US but containing substantially more pages!) the welfare state supports everyone and the growing economy provides the work that creates the wealth that pays for all this. It is normal for such a society to create a bunch of laws odd to English speakers - but then my own country doesn't even have a written constitution and our councils tax the individuals home. The present day German is focussed on career, personal improvement and health and very little else.

It is an unusual characteristic of Germany that everyone suffers from angst (fair enough, they invented the word) but the angst is all about really unlikely events (acrylimide in barbeque food causing cancer for example) and yet they throw caution to the winds the moment they get in a car.

This angst condition is so endemic I have christened it "Fright Club". Only a few weeks ago they were obsessed with "wifi smog" people were switching of their routers and phones to protect themselves from this new scourge. It didn't appear to stop them from watching television or listening to the radio, but there you go - science and magic confused or just interchangeable.

Coupled with this angst is another curious condition called Gründlichkeit or thoroughness. Gründlichkeit is just so much part of the German character. Back in Scotland you could read the important parts of the Blue Book tax guide in the bookshop and easily identify any new legal tax avoidance strategies. You couldn't do that with the German Tax Books because there are about 127 of them (the last time I tried to count them). My accountant just photocopies pages out and sticks them in the tax return. You have to pay canal tax but there's no canal and you don't get one either.

In Germany when you change your address, you have to inform the special municipal department -Wohnamtmeldegung- (department of names and addresses)of the change and fill in three forms. A group of students could not understand how this did not exist in Britain or USA. "What's to stop you getting on a plane, flying to the UK, robbing a bank and then flying home?" was their completely serious question and my answer: "Even German bank robbers don't normally use their identity cards or leave a forwarding address during the robbery," leaves them completely unconvinced.

Conversation with Wohnamt Official:

Official:"What is your father's occupation?"

"He's dead, what difference does it make?"

Official:"I have a space in the form for it"

"which job would you like?"

Official:"His last one..."

Official:"What religion are you?"

(proudly) "Agnostic"

Official:"You can have: Catholic, Protestant or atheist."

"But I'm an agnostic"

Official: Ticks 'atheist'

As for thoroughness, Non-German partners are often very surprised when they clean the entire house from top to bottom only to have their partner point out that they forgot the single cup they drank their post cleaning coffee in which is standing on the immaculate sink - dirty. There is no mention of all the good work, because the concept of balancing good things against negative things (one good thing outweighs loads of bad things) is rather specific to English speakers. German anthropology uses the concept of a linear measure of perfection (or distance from it!) and the streets are so clean you could eat your dinner off them. Well, almost but this is the real reason behind this action, more national character than conspiracy.

Germany has these laws and they pale into insignificance compared to the UK's

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[Demolition]

Are you perhaps thinking of the Bolshevik Revolution? On October 25, 1917, a women's battalion tried to defend the Winter Palace against the Red Guards. Upon the battalion's surrender, several of the women were reportedly raped and at least one committed suicide afterwards.

Re:The regularity of anti-German FUD

[the eric conspiracy]

So why exactly do you make the same off-topic post any time there is an article on Slashdot that is unfavorable to Germany?

Re:Securty vs Freedom

[mrchaotica]

Huh? The Roman citizenry never revolted (Rome's various "civil wars" were fights between one rich patrician and another, not large-scale popular uprisings); Rome fell because it was invaded by foreign Gallic and Germanic tribes. All the bread and circuses did was weaken the Empire so that the barbarians had an easier time of it (and then again, they might have invaded regardless, since they were fleeing the Huns).

Re:Lazy masses ? Or direct democracy ?

[Original Replica]

I am writing from the USA. While it is possible with some digging to find out most of what legislation is being considered or passed in the state and federal level, there is the problem of many issues being bundled up in a single bill to be passed (earmarking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earmarking [wikipedia.org]) It is common practice here for Senators and Congressmen to hide special projects inside of larger bills. For example, there may be a bill up for vote that is titled "Education Reform Proposal #108" but the actual text of the bill is thousands of pages long. The first few hundred pages might actually have to do with education reform, but there will also likely be the funding for a bridge for one county, a tax break for a very specific company or industry, a regulation exemption for some other industry, and any other special things the politicians promised special interests that would be unable to pass as on their own merit. The result is that it is very difficult to know the entire contents of any bill to be voted on, and it is near impossible to have any bill make it as far as the voting stage without several earmarks being attached. So I do not know that I actually vote any better than my representative.

They tried this legislation

[MrKaos]

In Australia. A great many letter were written and sent to federal legislators, the problem was also explained to many civil liberties organisations to get thier assistance. Eventually the legislation was rejected, but more because I think the right *language* was used.

At least in the letter I wrote, I pointed out that making security tools illegal would only stop the legitimate use of these tools and cause economic damage to the country by not allowing the good guys to mount an effective defense. Nefarious use of the tools wouldn't be stopped because they were conducting illegal activities anyway evectivley making the legislation counterproductive. I think it's because these terms were used, the magic "economic" word, and many other pragmatic arguments that legislators responded by rejecting the legislation.

I think Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said;

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Re:500km?

[Anonymous Coward]

That puts the server in another country I guess.

Germany (even pre-reunion Germany) isn't THAT small. It probably was in a different federal state but since this is about federal law (as most of Germany's law as opposed to the US) that doesn't make any difference.