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.
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
