Why TOR Operators SHOULD always sniff their exit traffic...

[Jeffrey W. Baker]

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 10:51 -0700, Parker Thompson wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> I'm new to the list, forgive me if this has been discussed already,
> but this discussion is very apropos to a few things I've been thinking
> about.
> 
> I just installed a Tor server and I can see what the process is doing
> in terms of CPU/bandwidth/memory pretty easily, but those stats aren't
> all that interesting.  What would be more interesting would be to
> collect statistics on the type of traffic exiting from my node, as
> well as destinations.  This might be perfectly reasonable, for
> example, if I were an academic researching anonymous
> communication/free speech and took proper precautions to protect users
> from identification.
> 
> My question is, what kinds of traffic analysis are legal (and ethical,
> if you wish to speak to that), and would this be dependent on context?

If you seek actual legal advice, you should retain an attorney.

If the larger Tor operator community wants to engage in a high-level
discussion of these matters, perhaps we should try to involve to legal
players, like the cyberlaw center at stanford.

-jwb