Legal status of operating Tor exit in UK?
I run an exit node with an ISP who initially indicated they would not have a problem with Tor as long as I was transparent about what I was doing, and ran a sufficiently reduced exit policy. They have now sent me evidence of malicious traffic coming from the exit. I don't think they've had any 3rd party complaints about this traffic, but they have expressed various misgivings about Tor in general. They now also want me to consider running Snort IDS on the outgoing traffic. I don't intend to monitor my traffic. But it occurs to me I don't know whether my ISP needs to be worried about it or not. The last one wasn't, so why them? I've asked the EFF about the legal situation in the UK, who passed me to the Open Rights Group. They've not replied to my enquiry as of three weeks ago. So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK? What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse. In fact right now I'm resigned to closing down the node if my ISP turns up the heat. They probably have me by the balls. But I'm at least curious, and can't immediately find any information about things like public carrier status, or traffic monitoring conducted by people like me when it's done in the context of onion routing. Thanks in advance for any help.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hello, I am not from UK so I am also not familiar with the legislation there, but running an exit should be perfectly fine. Your ISP cannot "press" you to do anything! Only a govt. authority or law enforcement authority or judge can legally press you to do something ,and you really have to do it. The ISP doesn't have any power over you, regardless, worst case scenario they can suspend your service if they forbid Tor in their terms of usage and you have agreed to them when you subscribed. But that's all. The evidence of malicious traffic coming from your exit is a false positive, and you should explain that to them. Your server does not send any traffic of its own, unless not compromised, it just relays anonymous traffic for Tor users (kind of an open proxy) which you do not initiate, monitor or control therefor you cannot be held liable for it. On 9/8/2015 11:04 PM, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
I run an exit node with an ISP who initially indicated they would not have a problem with Tor as long as I was transparent about what I was doing, and ran a sufficiently reduced exit policy.
They have now sent me evidence of malicious traffic coming from the exit. I don't think they've had any 3rd party complaints about this traffic, but they have expressed various misgivings about Tor in general. They now also want me to consider running Snort IDS on the outgoing traffic.
I don't intend to monitor my traffic. But it occurs to me I don't know whether my ISP needs to be worried about it or not. The last one wasn't, so why them?
I've asked the EFF about the legal situation in the UK, who passed me to the Open Rights Group. They've not replied to my enquiry as of three weeks ago.
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK? What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse. In fact right now I'm resigned to closing down the node if my ISP turns up the heat. They probably have me by the balls.
But I'm at least curious, and can't immediately find any information about things like public carrier status, or traffic monitoring conducted by people like me when it's done in the context of onion routing.
Thanks in advance for any help.
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Which ISP is it? I'm a fellow UK person, but I don't use a UK VPS/ISP for this. Tell them that you are an advocate for anonyminity, and that you refuse to monitor traffic. No ISP can force you to do that (they have black boxes to do this shit anyway) - You can use https://exonerator.torproject.org/ to prove that you were an exit relay at the time. They want you to put Snort IDS on it because it QoS'es your internet, and Tor may cause a false-alarm. So you can tell them this, and ask if they'd consider a static IP, SWIP, and all that stuff so that you deal with the emails yourself, and you just send them the big template to stop them. When I briefly ran one on my ISP network, we got no letters complaining (I'm with British Telecom/BT), and they can't make you do anything, remember this. - --Billy On 08/09/2015 21:04, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
I run an exit node with an ISP who initially indicated they would not have a problem with Tor as long as I was transparent about what I was doing, and ran a sufficiently reduced exit policy.
They have now sent me evidence of malicious traffic coming from the exit. I don't think they've had any 3rd party complaints about this traffic, but they have expressed various misgivings about Tor in general. They now also want me to consider running Snort IDS on the outgoing traffic.
I don't intend to monitor my traffic. But it occurs to me I don't know whether my ISP needs to be worried about it or not. The last one wasn't, so why them?
I've asked the EFF about the legal situation in the UK, who passed me to the Open Rights Group. They've not replied to my enquiry as of three weeks ago.
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK? What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse. In fact right now I'm resigned to closing down the node if my ISP turns up the heat. They probably have me by the balls.
But I'm at least curious, and can't immediately find any information about things like public carrier status, or traffic monitoring conducted by people like me when it's done in the context of onion routing.
Thanks in advance for any help.
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
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The ISP is Jump Networks, with whom I have a co-location in their Telehouse suite. I'd recommend them highly otherwise, but somewhat unexpectedly, they're using the bad traffic report as an opportunity to engage me in a rather philosophical debate about Tor. It's interesting to hear their opinions on topics such as how they think most Tor nodes are compromised to drop malware on clients that use them; that there is probably little privacy to be had using Tor because most exits are run by government agencies, and that in their view anyone using Tor to anonymise their traffic is being naive. But the main message I'm hearing is that they have a problem with Tor, not necessarily anything to do with legal issues in fact, come to think of it. So it's a delicate situation really. When you say ask for static IP, I have that - in fact the node runs on a dedicated VM that's on the physical server, and has suitably clear reverse DNS entry, etc. No SWIP though. I think I might just get back to them and see if they can clarify their policy. I don't want to monitor traffic, if only because the Tor project warns again it. The ISP may of course say their policy is to shut down my exit, in which case, well ... I feel honoured to have contributed to Tor for the last six years. Jonathan On 8 September 2015 at 23:24, Billy Humphreys <PokeAcer549@outlook.com> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
Which ISP is it? I'm a fellow UK person, but I don't use a UK VPS/ISP for this. Tell them that you are an advocate for anonyminity, and that you refuse to monitor traffic. No ISP can force you to do that (they have black boxes to do this shit anyway) - You can use https://exonerator.torproject.org/ to prove that you were an exit relay at the time. They want you to put Snort IDS on it because it QoS'es your internet, and Tor may cause a false-alarm. So you can tell them this, and ask if they'd consider a static IP, SWIP, and all that stuff so that you deal with the emails yourself, and you just send them the big template to stop them.
When I briefly ran one on my ISP network, we got no letters complaining (I'm with British Telecom/BT), and they can't make you do anything, remember this. - --Billy
On 08/09/2015 21:04, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
I run an exit node with an ISP who initially indicated they would not have a problem with Tor as long as I was transparent about what I was doing, and ran a sufficiently reduced exit policy.
They have now sent me evidence of malicious traffic coming from the exit. I don't think they've had any 3rd party complaints about this traffic, but they have expressed various misgivings about Tor in general. They now also want me to consider running Snort IDS on the outgoing traffic.
I don't intend to monitor my traffic. But it occurs to me I don't know whether my ISP needs to be worried about it or not. The last one wasn't, so why them?
I've asked the EFF about the legal situation in the UK, who passed me to the Open Rights Group. They've not replied to my enquiry as of three weeks ago.
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK? What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse. In fact right now I'm resigned to closing down the node if my ISP turns up the heat. They probably have me by the balls.
But I'm at least curious, and can't immediately find any information about things like public carrier status, or traffic monitoring conducted by people like me when it's done in the context of onion routing.
Thanks in advance for any help.
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Sorry to respond to this late, but some advice I received from my legal team not long ago might help on this. I apologise in advance that I won't be able to disclose the whole letter of it but some of the stuff contained within it is legally privileged and very sensitive. - From the analysis of my solicitor, there is never a compulsion element as others have explained - no person other than a court of law may ever arbitrarily force anything upon you. However, of course some things do conflict with contractual agreements and whatnot which can jeopordise service. For example payment - nobody can force you to pay for a service but they can cease to uphold their end of an agreement and ask the court to order owed payments be made. The danger my legal team found from ISP level monitoring of this kind is that by retaining or "sniffing" traffic from a public service like Tor, you are putting yourself under the legislations of commercial enterprises such as the Data Protection Act and so forth, and it is an industry recommendation that in such cases you hold appropriate insurance and in some cases, require authorisation in advance from the ICO to do so since there would be a conflict with the article 8 rights in the EU Human Rights convention. Furthermore, to retain or otherwise collect possibly sensitive or personal information, there must be informed consent and the burden of proof would be on you to therefore prove you obtained consent to take such data. Thus there is no way within the Tor protocol to obtain such consent, therefore under UK and EU law you might be lining yourself up for very severe civil and criminal fallout by retaining the data. This may sound quite extreme, but the short answer from my legal team who investigated this quite extensively was do not ever retain the data unless you can prove you had consent, or you may one day find yourself at the sharp end of a very big legal stick. If your ISP wants you to retain data, it is probably worth asking if they can reimburse your insurance expenses and any further legal expense incurred when seeking independent (and qualified) legal advice. Lastly, I am not a legal professional, I am merely relaying information provided to me from my own legal team - so don't rely on this too much since there are too many factors that could be at play and not accounted for when I mention the above. That said, I hope it is a useful starting point for you. Tom On 08/09/2015 23:54, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
The ISP is Jump Networks, with whom I have a co-location in their Telehouse suite. I'd recommend them highly otherwise, but somewhat unexpectedly, they're using the bad traffic report as an opportunity to engage me in a rather philosophical debate about Tor. It's interesting to hear their opinions on topics such as how they think most Tor nodes are compromised to drop malware on clients that use them; that there is probably little privacy to be had using Tor because most exits are run by government agencies, and that in their view anyone using Tor to anonymise their traffic is being naive. But the main message I'm hearing is that they have a problem with Tor, not necessarily anything to do with legal issues in fact, come to think of it.
So it's a delicate situation really.
When you say ask for static IP, I have that - in fact the node runs on a dedicated VM that's on the physical server, and has suitably clear reverse DNS entry, etc. No SWIP though.
I think I might just get back to them and see if they can clarify their policy. I don't want to monitor traffic, if only because the Tor project warns again it. The ISP may of course say their policy is to shut down my exit, in which case, well ... I feel honoured to have contributed to Tor for the last six years.
Jonathan
On 8 September 2015 at 23:24, Billy Humphreys <PokeAcer549@outlook.com <mailto:PokeAcer549@outlook.com>> wrote:
Which ISP is it? I'm a fellow UK person, but I don't use a UK VPS/ISP for this. Tell them that you are an advocate for anonyminity, and that you refuse to monitor traffic. No ISP can force you to do that (they have black boxes to do this shit anyway) - You can use https://exonerator.torproject.org/ to prove that you were an exit relay at the time. They want you to put Snort IDS on it because it QoS'es your internet, and Tor may cause a false-alarm. So you can tell them this, and ask if they'd consider a static IP, SWIP, and all that stuff so that you deal with the emails yourself, and you just send them the big template to stop them.
When I briefly ran one on my ISP network, we got no letters complaining (I'm with British Telecom/BT), and they can't make you do anything, remember this. --Billy
On 08/09/2015 21:04, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
I run an exit node with an ISP who initially indicated they would not have a problem with Tor as long as I was transparent about what I was doing, and ran a sufficiently reduced exit policy.
They have now sent me evidence of malicious traffic coming from the exit. I don't think they've had any 3rd party complaints about this traffic, but they have expressed various misgivings about Tor in general. They now also want me to consider running Snort IDS on the outgoing traffic.
I don't intend to monitor my traffic. But it occurs to me I don't know whether my ISP needs to be worried about it or not. The last one wasn't, so why them?
I've asked the EFF about the legal situation in the UK, who passed me to the Open Rights Group. They've not replied to my enquiry as of three weeks ago.
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK? What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse. In fact right now I'm resigned to closing down the node if my ISP turns up the heat. They probably have me by the balls.
But I'm at least curious, and can't immediately find any information about things like public carrier status, or traffic monitoring conducted by people like me when it's done in the context of onion routing.
Thanks in advance for any help.
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org <mailto:tor-relays@lists.torproject.org> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org <mailto:tor-relays@lists.torproject.org> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
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On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Jonathan Baker-Bates < jonathan@bakerbates.com> wrote:
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK?
No but I run several UK based Tor exits and have had little issue other than the usual abuse reports, that said the relays in question are operated by a separate legal entity that is it's own ISP (RIR allocation / ASN etc). What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I refused
on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse.
**** IANAL **** but to elaborate on something that Thomas said there is also a consideration of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act and Counter Terrorism and Security Act. Starting with RIPA s1.
It shall be an offence for a person intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of—
(a)a public postal service; or
(b)a public telecommunication system.
RIPA s2. defines interception;
(2)For the purposes of this Act, but subject to the following provisions of this section, a person intercepts a communication in the course of its transmission by means of a telecommunication system if, and only if, he—
(a)so modifies or interferes with the system, or its operation,
(b)so monitors transmissions made by means of the system, or
(c)so monitors transmissions made by wireless telegraphy to or from apparatus comprised in the system,
as to make some or all of the contents of the communication available, while being transmitted, to a person other than the sender or intended recipient of the communication.
Finally an act is unlawful if it falls foul of s1 (5);
(5) Conduct has lawful authority for the purposes of this section if, and only if—
(a) it is authorised by or under section 3 or 4;
(b) it takes place in accordance with a warrant under section 5 (“an interception warrant”); or
(c) it is in exercise, in relation to any stored communication, of any statutory power that is exercised (apart from this section) for the purpose of obtaining information or of taking possession of any document or other property;
So it would seem that RIPA (which is due to be replaced in the next couple of months by the Investigatory Powers Bill) says that you are not allowed to intercept data. Moving on to the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (and by extension the Counter Terrorism and Security Act) there is s1. of DRIPA which says; The Secretary of State may by notice (a “retention notice”) require a
public telecommunications operator to retain relevant communications data if the Secretary of State considers that the requirement is necessary and proportionate for one or more of the purposes falling within paragraphs (a) to (h) of section 22(2) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (purposes for which communications data may be obtained
s2. defines a telecommunications operator; “public telecommunications operator” means a person who—
(a) controls or provides a public telecommunication system, or (b) provides a public telecommunications service;
“public telecommunications service” and “public telecommunication system” have the meanings given by section 2(1) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000;
Section 2(1) of RIPA has many definitions but this one closest applies to Tor; “telecommunication system” means any system (including the apparatus
comprised in it) which exists (whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) for the purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or electro-magnetic energy.
So, the Secretary of State or the Police can serve you a retention notice or an interception warrant *allowing* you to intercept data, past that point you can probably point to RIPA and say it'd be illegal.
I forgot to thank those on the list who replied to this thread. They have been very helpful. For the benefit of anyone else in a similar position: My ISP (after consulting with LINX) has conceded that the legality of monitoring the exit is unclear. They have now asked if I would be willing to block port 80 on my exit, or have them monitor my traffic instead in their capacity as a commercial operator. I've reluctantly opted for the former. Meanwhile, members may be interested to hear what the owner of the ISP had to say about Tor. I thought I'd put it here as a footnote to this thread by way of an example of the range of opinion in the technical community. I have no strong opinion on the matter. "I'm still not convinced that ToR isn't just an incredibly clever US government scheme where the US government stealthily operate a majority of the ToR (exit and intermediate) nodes, leading themselves to be able to anonymously inspect / MITM traffic from any exit node they operate, as well as correlate flows between non exit nodes to be able to find the original source of a flow." Jonathan On 9 September 2015 at 07:10, Gareth Llewellyn < gareth@networksaremadeofstring.co.uk> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Jonathan Baker-Bates < jonathan@bakerbates.com> wrote:
So does anyone know of any reliable source of information on running Tor exits in the UK?
No but I run several UK based Tor exits and have had little issue other than the usual abuse reports, that said the relays in question are operated by a separate legal entity that is it's own ISP (RIR allocation / ASN etc).
What would happen if my ISP pressed me to monitor my traffic, and I
refused on legal grounds? I'm not suggesting I actually do that, or that there are even any legal grounds to refuse.
**** IANAL **** but to elaborate on something that Thomas said there is also a consideration of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act and Counter Terrorism and Security Act.
Starting with RIPA s1.
It shall be an offence for a person intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of—
(a)a public postal service; or
(b)a public telecommunication system.
RIPA s2. defines interception;
(2)For the purposes of this Act, but subject to the following provisions of this section, a person intercepts a communication in the course of its transmission by means of a telecommunication system if, and only if, he—
(a)so modifies or interferes with the system, or its operation,
(b)so monitors transmissions made by means of the system, or
(c)so monitors transmissions made by wireless telegraphy to or from apparatus comprised in the system,
as to make some or all of the contents of the communication available, while being transmitted, to a person other than the sender or intended recipient of the communication.
Finally an act is unlawful if it falls foul of s1 (5);
(5) Conduct has lawful authority for the purposes of this section if, and only if—
(a) it is authorised by or under section 3 or 4;
(b) it takes place in accordance with a warrant under section 5 (“an interception warrant”); or
(c) it is in exercise, in relation to any stored communication, of any statutory power that is exercised (apart from this section) for the purpose of obtaining information or of taking possession of any document or other property;
So it would seem that RIPA (which is due to be replaced in the next couple of months by the Investigatory Powers Bill) says that you are not allowed to intercept data.
Moving on to the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (and by extension the Counter Terrorism and Security Act) there is s1. of DRIPA which says;
The Secretary of State may by notice (a “retention notice”) require a
public telecommunications operator to retain relevant communications data if the Secretary of State considers that the requirement is necessary and proportionate for one or more of the purposes falling within paragraphs (a) to (h) of section 22(2) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (purposes for which communications data may be obtained
s2. defines a telecommunications operator;
“public telecommunications operator” means a person who—
(a) controls or provides a public telecommunication system, or (b) provides a public telecommunications service;
“public telecommunications service” and “public telecommunication system” have the meanings given by section 2(1) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000;
Section 2(1) of RIPA has many definitions but this one closest applies to Tor;
“telecommunication system” means any system (including the apparatus
comprised in it) which exists (whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) for the purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or electro-magnetic energy.
So, the Secretary of State or the Police can serve you a retention notice or an interception warrant *allowing* you to intercept data, past that point you can probably point to RIPA and say it'd be illegal.
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"I'm still not convinced that ToR isn't just an incredibly clever US government scheme where the US government stealthily operate a majority of the ToR (exit and intermediate) nodes, leading themselves to be able to anonymously inspect / MITM traffic from any exit node they operate, as well as correlate flows between non exit nodes to be able to find the original source of a flow."
If the ISP really feels this way, a logical solution would be to allow exits from their network, thereby increasing the capacity of non-government nodes. The irony.
On 24 Sep 2015, at 08:19, Green Dream <greendream848@gmail.com> wrote:
"I'm still not convinced that ToR isn't just an incredibly clever US government scheme where the US government stealthily operate a majority of the ToR (exit and intermediate) nodes, leading themselves to be able to anonymously inspect / MITM traffic from any exit node they operate, as well as correlate flows between non exit nodes to be able to find the original source of a flow."
If the ISP really feels this way, a logical solution would be to allow exits from their network, thereby increasing the capacity of non-government nodes. The irony.
Unless they think there’s a significant chance *you’re* a US government agent. Tim Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP 968F094B teor at blah dot im OTR CAD08081 9755866D 89E2A06F E3558B7F B5A9D14F
On 2015-09-23 15:28, Tim Wilson-Brown - teor wrote:
On 24 Sep 2015, at 08:19, Green Dream <greendream848@gmail.com <mailto:greendream848@gmail.com>> wrote:
"I'm still not convinced that ToR isn't just an incredibly clever US government scheme where the US government stealthily operate a majority of the ToR (exit and intermediate) nodes, leading themselves to be able to anonymously inspect / MITM traffic from any exit node they operate, as well as correlate flows between non exit nodes to be able to find the original source of a flow."
If the ISP really feels this way, a logical solution would be to allow exits from their network, thereby increasing the capacity of non-government nodes. The irony.
Unless they think there's a significant chance *you're* a US government agent.
In which case little would annoy the aforementioned gov't agent more than one or more ISPs setting up their own network of high capacity exit nodes. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
participants (9)
-
Billy Humphreys -
Dave Warren -
Gareth Llewellyn -
Green Dream -
I -
Jonathan Baker-Bates -
s7r -
Thomas White -
Tim Wilson-Brown - teor