William Weber, a LowEndTalk member, was raided by Austrian police in 2012 for operating a Tor exit node that was allegedly used to distribute child pornography. While he was not arrested, many of his computers and devices were confiscated. He was later found guilty of supporting the distribution of child pornography through his Tor exit node, though he claims it was unintentional and he was simply supporting free speech and anonymity. He was given a 5 year probation sentence but left Austria shortly after. Though some articles portray him negatively, it is debatable whether he intentionally supported child pornography distribution or simply operated in the legal grey area of Tor exit nodes.
Child pornography is in no way acceptable and cannot be rationalized as normal. He got what he had coming to him as far as I am concerned.
Why can’t I downvote this?
I just noticed that lemmy doesn’t have downvotes lol.
It depends on the instance you signed up with. Mine, and it looks like yours, doesn’t have downvotes. It’s the host’s decision. Annoying at times like this, huh?
The feds in multiple countries have used the tactic of hacking someone’s computer, putting charlie papa content on it, and then using that as a reason for arrest. I’m with you that partaking in it is completely unexcusable and sick, however that fact is why it’s used by governments to gain more control. “Think of the children.”
I have heard of this happening. It is why I have a healthy distrust and dislike of law enforcement. Law enforcement serves the wealthy, powerful, and the interests of the state itself. It is almost like the wealthy have their own paramilitary to do their bidding for them.
He wasn’t searching for it or knowingly distributing it. The way Tor exit nodes work is that you’re hosting a machine that lets other people on the Tor network communicate with the internet. You’re essentially routing a portion of the entire network’s traffic through your machine. You can’t really control who is using it or what it transmits at that point.
He got punished because somebody else shared CP, using his equipment to do so. It’s like being jailed for having your car stolen and being used to hit a pedestrian.
It would be better for you to leave the original comment, use markdown to strike it through*, and create an edit showing that you realized it was wrong.
It shows humility and reflects positively on you, but it also allows the history of this conversation to remain preserved.
*not sure if this is possible on Lemmy yet
Edit: it is :)
Please don’t, the misunderstanding is common, and it just reinforces the point of the rebuttal. I’ve seen sooo many anti CP laws trying to be forced through congress, but most of it is just bullshit surveillance or drm stuff but it gets the support from people like you who (understandably) hear about the propagation of CP and support stopping it via those laws.
It’s like being jailed for having your car stolen and being used to hit a pedestrian.
Exactly this, except that nobody stole your car. You are providing free and no-questions-asked open access to your car for any member of the public who needs to use it. Many other people also used the car that day for legitimate business or for fun, but then one guy got in it and ran over 32 people in a furious rampage.
Clearly the driver is at fault here, but a case can be made (and apparently, was) that this would not have been possible had you not provided access to the car to the perp in question.
This logic holds the ISP and backbone providers liable as well, does it not?
Clearly the driver is at fault here, but a case can be made (and apparently, was) that this would not have been possible had you not provided access to the car to the perp in question.
This is the equivalent of holding gun manufacturers culpable if someone buys a gun from them and then uses it to commit murder - right?
It’s like being jailed for having your car stolen and being used to hit a pedestrian.
Kind of… only you parked the car in front of a jail, left the door open, keys in the ignition, and a “FREE TO USE” sign next to it.
Hey, maybe the next guy will just use it to go buy some groceries… maybe.
I hate this analogy. Its more like you parked it in a very public space and said “free to use” and someone who had been to jail used it. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to use TOR that aren’t child porn, and acting like because it can be used to view child porn makes it truly horrible and hosting hardware to use it makes you part of the problem shows a misunderstanding of what its for.
Let me pose it to you this way. Do you use a VPN? Do you know someone who has used a VPN? Have you watched a YouTube video that was sponsored by a VPN? Do you remember the reasons to use a VPN? Those are all things Tor does well. Better even. And for free. Meanwhile, hosting VPN hardware comes with all the same “people could use it to host child porn” downsides as TOR exit nodes
In my personal life, I use Orbot all the time for things like keeping my Syncthing traffic secure and quickly anonymizing my traffic. I also host a relay because Iranian women and Ukrainian soldiers are currently using the Tor network for life and death circumstances.
This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why would someone willingly host an exit node when the risks are so high?
Because they believe in what tor represents. It absolutely is used for terrible things, but it is also a pretty critical resource to a lot of people in a lot of dangerous parts of the world where thought crimes get people killed.
But yeah, no way am I running one. The potential costs are way too high.
Because Iranian women deserve to tell their stories. Because Ukrainian soldiers need the most secure relays for their messaging services possible. Because the Chinese government’s great firewall is designed to keep people from seeing reality. Because Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google want to control the future of the web, and that future includes willing participation in incomplete police action that gets minorities and people of color killed. Because control of your personal identity is a matter of grand security when it comes to preventing the most successful kinds of attacks: social engineering. Because all of these things can either be accomplished with a paid VPN owned by a corporation who might ALSO be complicit in all of the problems above, or they can be acheived on donated computing time, and be more effective in their application.
Child porn happens on the internet. I don’t see anyone clamoring to shut down the whole thing. So which do you want? To destroy every single tool that can be used to acquire it, or to foster a more fact and policy based government that performs root cause analyses and works to make a better society rather than doling out punishment and asking quearions later
