[tor-relays] Subpoena received

[Zack Weinberg]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Tyler Durden <virii at enn.lu> wrote:
> I just wanted to let you know that Washington sent us a subpoena
> regarding one of our exit nodes in Romania

Just FYI, "Washington" doesn't appear to have anything to do with
this.  The subpoena is on the letterhead of an office of Cook County,
Illinois, which is the locality containing the city of Chicago.  Per
http://www.cookcountyil.gov/office-of-the-independent-inspector-general/
this office investigates misconduct by county officials.

This matters because, first, this is probably a tiny little outfit
with little or no clue about either the Internet or international law.
They *should have* hired an international lawyer when they saw they'd
need to talk to someone operating out of Romania and/or Luxembourg,
but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they didn't.  And
they've probably never even heard of Tor before.  Second, the incident
which triggered the investigation, whatever it is, is probably quite
minor.  (This is backed up by their asking for one IP address active
at a single point in time.)  It would have been booted up to the state
or federal level if it were any kind of serious.  For both those
reasons, I would rate the odds of them actually bothering to jump
through all the necessary legal hoops to get a court order binding on
a foreign national as slim to none.

The appropriate response, I think, is a polite but firm brush-off
stating that (a) they have no jurisdiction, and (b) even if they did,
you cannot provide the information requested because <insert
explanation of Tor here>.  Probably worth hiring your own lawyer to
draft it, though.

(I'm fairly sure this agency has no jurisdiction over *me*, just a
couple of states east, but I'd definitely go talk to CMU's lawyers if
I got one of these.)

zw