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Michael,

First of all thank you for running an exit. I run a large series of exits in the Netherlands (https://globe.torproject.org/#/search/query=Chandler&filters%5Bcountry%5...) and I am a UK citizen. Having experienced many troubles, including server seizures, I decided to move the servers to a jurisdiction I am not living in or plan on living in as if there is legal trouble, you want to put up as many layers as protection as you can. That means even if my node in NL is seized and I could face a conviction (theoretically), because it is not illegal in the UK there is nothing that the government can do to force me over there under the concept of dual-criminality.

Furthermore, running a Tor exit at a residential address is a very, very bad idea. I speak from experience here after encountering UK police already and their version of "knock and greet" is at 4am with the door taken off when they don't realise it is an exit node. You want to separate your traffic from that of your exits wherever possible because assuming you were asked in court if you ever used your own exit, it would be conceivable that ANY traffic from that exit server COULD have been yours if you've used or were on the same IP as it. This is of course not the case if you don't use the same IP/residence for your personal traffic.

Also, on the topic of blacklisting IPs I find it a bad idea both morally and legally. Most believe morals would dictate blocking child porn/peer to peer is a good act, but this is the same guise governments have used to overextend their reach and so I don't block any traffic regardless of how questionable it is. The second reason is because of your legal liability in the UK as my solicitor has advised me; by blocking one set of IP's you are then accepting control to filter and moderate the traffic of your servers and therefore you don't have the same (full set of) safe-harbor provisions protecting you. It then becomes a trivial matter for law enforcement to come to you and order you block more sites without a court order.

So overall, freedom of speech and the right to read are inherently against the idea of blocking content merely because the overwhelming majority of people believe it should be blocked. Freedom isn't free if it isn't totally free.

- -Tom

On 06/07/2014 08:51, Sanjeev Gupta wrote:

On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Michael Banks c@starbs.net wrote:

...

The block lists are very limited, i.e P2P, lists of known blackhats/paedophiles, unallocated IP ranges and most importantly: government-owned address and anti-tor addresses

True, and I agree with your definition of malicious.

My concern is that it is not either my place, or yours, to define what is good or bad for the Random User to visit, _IF_ we are offering a Tor relay. Our intentions in using this list, in particular, are not relevant. After all, the Govt of China also claims to be shielding its users from known bad guys.

We are against such censorship, so why should we add our own blocks, without warning, without anyway for the user to even know we have such a block?

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