[tor-relays] US Investigators seem to learn

[Andrea Shepard]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 04:59:09AM -0500, grarpamp wrote:
> > I thought I would let you know: Our US hoster is regularly contacted by
> > law enforcement about our exits there. Some agents ask if the traffic
> > pattern is balanced, ie. if the same amount of traffic enters and leaves
> > the box.
> >
> > I always argue that this is a good indicator for Tor traffic, and that
> > it is bad to mix Tor traffic with other traffic for that exact reason.
> 
> Due to encryption and compression it might only be balanced to
> within some typical ratio. I'm sure you have a handle on that number.
> But that any non 1:1 ratio could make it appear to be serving (or
> receiving) continual amounts of data. Which in the eye of agents
> could raise question. Another question is whether these US hosts
> are just volunteering this data to whoever comes asking, with or
> without your instruction, or complying with formal legal orders?
> 
> On the plus side, hopefully everyone is coming away with the
> fact that it's just an uninteresting, agnostic, relay service and
> time is better spent elsewhere.

Interesting; I'm pretty sure we do not use TLS compression.  Nick M., that's
true, yeah?

On the other hand, it could also be unbalanced because of:

 * Using that Tor process as a client
 * Running a hidden service on that Tor process
 * Running a directory mirror

-- 
Andrea Shepard
<andrea at torproject.org>
PGP fingerprint: 3611 95A4 0740 ED1B 7EA5  DF7E 4191 13D9 D0CF BDA5
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