Researchers could face legal risks for Tor network snooping

[Christopher Soghoian]

Full article available here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9997273-46.html

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A group of researchers from the University of Colorado and University of
Washington could face both civil and criminal penalties for a research
project in which they snooped on users of the Tor anonymous proxy network.
Should federal prosecutors take interest in the project, the researchers
could also face up to 5 years in jail for violating the Wiretap Act.

The team of two graduate students and three professors neither sought legal
review of the project, nor ran it past the Human Subjects Committee at their
university, putting them in a particularly dangerous position.

The academic paper, "Shining Light in Dark Places: Understanding the Tor
Network<http://news.cnet.com/www.cs.washington.edu/homes/yoshi/papers/Tor/PETS2008_37.pdf>"
(pdf) was presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Symposium<http://petsymposium.org/2008>yesterday, in Leuven, Belgium.
The authors are listed as: Damon
McCoy <http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Esicker/students/mccoy.htm>, Kevin
Bauer<http://systems.cs.colorado.edu/%7Ebauerk/index.html>,
Dr. Dirk Grunwald<http://systems.cs.colorado.edu/mediawiki/index.php/User:Grunwald>,
Dr. Tadayoshi Kohno <http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/yoshi/> and Dr. Douglas
Sicker <http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Esicker/main.html>.
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