[tor-relays] case law on for exit nodes

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed May 23 05:31:42 UTC 2012


>> AFAIK, this is still true in the US. However, I'm pretty sure I've seen
>> at least 3 court cases in the EU on this list (though too busy to dig
>> them up right now). There have also been several equipment seizures in
>> the EU that never escalated to a court case...

It does happen that exits are inquiried/seized from time to time.
But from my read on the list, all cases have been dropped before
anyone was found guilty. I'm pretty sure the list has instances of
actual court proceedings (that dropped). Maybe search for expert
witness or something. But the list isn't really searchable, nor do full
plaintext archives exist for that purpose afaik :(

> And there lies the rub.  The corporate interests can make things so
> difficult for people they oppose, including Tor operators, even
> without an actual court case, that the damage is frequently hidden.

Yes, we all know helpdesks/corps hate any sort of tickets. See
torservers.net for their take on ISP's. But note that putting
node on already existing ISP with node doesn't really help.

> The chilling effect of the direct threat of legal action makes the
> actual legal action unnecessary in all but a few cases.
> Mike Masnick at techdirt.com covers this phenomenon fairly frequently.
>  I equate it to the much older tactic of "somethin' bad could happen
> ... if youse know what I mean?" style but using the legal system as
> the "bad" that could happen ...

I've never heard of such threatening someone not to run an exit relay.
Only to shut down if they are receiving tickets, not as threat, but as
(legal) nuisance/entanglement from their point of view.

> Very few have the wherewithal to carry a case all the way to court.

And thankfully the cases seem to be dropped before then once
the prosecutor is aware of Tor as a common carrier.


More information about the tor-relays mailing list