[tor-relays] about the balls of steel level of relay nodes

[Andrew Lewman]

On Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:17:59 -0700
Nicolas Bock <nicolasbock at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was running a tor exit node until I came across this article:
> 
> http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-of-steel-to-operate-a-tor-exit-node/
> 
> While I don't live in the UK, I live in the US, I believe that the
> situation here has eroded to a point where running an exit node
> requires the mentioned balls of steel, which I admittedly don't have.

Well, then submitting to chilling effects isn't going to make the
situation better.  People in the UK continue to run exit nodes, I
believe there are now more of them since that blog post.

> Since I do want to support the tor project, I am wondering to what
> extend running a relay node is putting myself and my family at risk
> of legal prosecution.

In the US, of all places, is probably the safest place to run an exit
node.  There are organizations out there just waiting for a perfect
case where someone is sued for running an exit node to prove that tor
exit nodes are perfectly legal.

> My understanding is that my host would simply
> generated encrypted traffic that is not objectionable to the ISP
> (because they can't look into it) unless the use of tor itself is
> outlawed. Is that correct?

As a non-exit node, all your ISP will see is encrypted traffic to many
IP addresses on the Internet.  If Tor is outlawed, then not only have
the criminals won, the US will no longer be relevant in the world.

-- 
Andrew
pgp 0x74ED336B