p2pnet.net News:- The EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Tor is an anonymity tool for organizations and people who want to, “improve their safety and security on the Internet,” says the Tor site.

It can help users anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol, it says, going on, “Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.”

Then came the inevitable.

Almost a year ago, “our security regulars broke down the logistics behind Tor,” Karl Bode reported on BroadBand Reports. “File traders have been reconfiguring their Bit Torrent clients to take advantage of the network. Unfortunately the Tor network wasn’t designed with high volume porn transfer in mind, so the activity is slowing it down to a crawl. The likely result will be the EFF running against the grain of their mandate, and restricting network use.”

Now, public prosecutors in Konstanz have raided computing centres run by seven German providers, “seizing ten servers because of the proliferation of child pornography,” says IT, life and me.

Nothing new there, it says, ” things like that happen all the time” and, “the juicy detail is that some of the servers were merely running a copy of the TOR, a software to anonymize the usage of the internet to protect your privacy.

“Those servers were most probably configured to be TOR Exit-Nodes, so their IP-addresses might have shown up in the server logfiles of the child-porn servers in question. One could argue that this is an attempt to frighten German TOR-node operators, but I’d just keep calm for the moment. I guess that the attorney of state is just after logfiles; they knew that those servers were operating as TOR-nodes. If you IP-address pops up in a child-porn case surely your IP looks interesting to the police.”

However, this situation is disturbing, says the blog, continuing:

I run a TOR-server myself (wormhole.ynfonatic.de) and the last thing I want to experience is the police kicking down my door, seizing my computer. (despite the fact that my server is rented and in Leipzig i don’t want them to raid my appartment. Child-porn, you know, the last reason. You could possibly justify everything with it.)

One operator whose server was seized as well wrote a letter to all the TOR-operators in Germany he was aware of, reaching me as well; he wrote that he is not aware of any charges pressed against him at the moment and that his provider, whose server-room was raided, was not avilable for a real comment on the weekend.

We just have to wait what’s going on, which charges are pressed – if at all, i somehow doubt that – and when the state will give that servers back. This is really something horrible for the TOR-operator – especially if you take into account that there will be no evidences at all to find on the harddrive. It’s just a hassle, stress which is put upon you.

But i guess we have to go through it. There was no lawsuit about TOR in Germany yet – i hope it’s not going into the direction of “supporting proliferation of child-pornography“. This would be the end of anonymizing services in Germany and probably everywhere in the EU.

I run TOR to get a certain level of privacy. Staying anonymous is no crime. I want my privacy.

Please morally support us, the TOR-operators.

Also See:
BroadBand Reports – Tor Network Bogged Down by P2P, October 13, 2005
IT, life and me – Germany: Crackdown on TOR-node operators, September 10, 2006

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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