On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 01:23:13PM -0400, Zack Weinberg wrote:
On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Andy Isaacson adi@hexapodia.org wrote:
Yes, there are cases of law enforcement seizing all computer gear from a house with a exit node -- not just the exit node computer. Most recently in Austria in a child porn investigation.
We did some operational planning for this risk, in conjunction with the university legal and IT departments, when we set up the CMU Tor exit.
Similarly for Noisebridge / Noisetor, we decided to host at a commercial facility separate from our "production servers" both for cost-per-bandwidth and separation-of-risk reasons.
I don't think it's very likely that cops would bust down a door at CMU to sieze equipment under an ill-conceived investigation; having an institution is quite helpful in getting the cops to actually do their jobs and validate their suspicions. (Unfortunately.)
Also, the greater operational threat is having the plug pulled by one's connectivity provider. I personally would not risk having an exit node in my house for that reason alone.
In my case (and, I suspect, most of us "well paid techies"), I would be back online with new hardware and a 4G modem a few hours after the cops finished their smash-and-grab, so while losing the higher bandwidth of the fixed line and the use of my hardware would be quite inconvenient, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It's important to have a contingency plan for this case, though.
-andy