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.
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.
Iranian women and Ukrainian soldiers
As much as I sympathize and approve of that… try to take a step back and look at it from the side: you’re still saying you do it to help others “break the law”, it’s just someone else’s law that you don’t agree with, and hopefully it doesn’t break the law where you live (stay safe, although running a relay is not the same as running an exit node… but still). My analogy tried to capture that.
BTW, I do use Tor, and may also host a relay or two, but still no exit nodes.
Orbot all the time for things like keeping my Syncthing traffic secure
I thought Syncthing already used encryption with a dual public key system to do the syncing? Is there an extra reason to add Orbot to it?
you’re still saying you do it to help others “break the law”, it’s just someone else’s law that you don’t agree with
I don’t quite understand this. How is this different from this case: a substance is prohibited in a country X, but not in yours. You sell the produce in your country, and people from country X come to visit your store and buy the produce. They might take it back home, and hence, break the law. Or they might use it down the street.
How are you to blame for this? Though in OPs case the produce is given away.
It’s not different, and many countries have established laws against “drug tourism”, “sex tourism”, “abortion tourism”, or other stuff punishable under their law that people would seek to do in other more permissive countries.
Those laws often include punishments for the enablers, so while Iran may not be able to punish you in your own country, beware of ever visiting Iran, or any other country whose laws you may be helping people to break… or getting doxxed for some “extreme law defending enthusiast” to pay you a visit (see cases like Charlie Hebdo).
And you’d rather have Iranian women and Ukranian men not being able to voice their opinions because you don’t agree with helping them “break” laws?
Did you create a new account just to misinterprete a year old comment of mine? That’s amazing.
Pray tell me how I misinterpreted it? If running an exit node is going to help marginalized communities bring forth their voice (even the fringe cases that I don’t agree with, because I believe technology should be accessible to everyone), why shouldn’t one do it? Other than mortal risks like jail time because stupid senators can’t be bothered to get their heads out of each others asses.
The reason to use Orbot is to obfuscate the IP
Edit: I’m a different guy from the one you responded to earlier
