"Article 5 eV, a civil rights group helping to maintain the Tor network, has reported that German police raided the private address where the non-profit was registered.
The authorities came knocking at the Essen-based office on August 16th, 2024, the group said, with armed officers spending nearly two hours in the office. Article 5 eV facilitates Tor network by operating its exit nodes.
“There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual Tor users. At least that is what they claim in the paperwork,” Gero Kühn, the leader of the group, said…"
EU countries are going full on fighting privacy now.
Just makes me want to fight back by helping other people to use Monero, Tor, and other privacy services.
Then why aren’t they catching more “criminals”? Also, why hasn’t the $600,000 US dollar bounty from the IRS been claimed?
Makes me feel we are two faced. On the one hand, we are inventing laws to protect privacy of eu citizens. And then stuff like this happens. On the other hand: Just fucked up that the people who use the platform for what is was intended for are now in jeopardy for people who want to look at underage kids, get their SO killed, look at kill cams or buy drugs.
GDPR explicitly exempts government entities. Still, way better than not having it IMO.
Regulating governmental intrusions into privacy would take a completely separate and probably much larger bill.
EU countries are going full in fighting to protect privacy right now.
Its a battle and there’s people in the government in both sides. Germany has actually been one of the best Member States in the EU preventing erosion of privacy.
Governments are made up of many different people, frequently with differing goals
This is insane.
Stuff like this makes me want to run a Tor node out of spite
Get a distinct line in a dedicated room.
That way when they confiscate all the equipment, it will only be the equipment used on that Tor network.
This is the official advise from the Tor project, by the way
Silly question but how would they know that that it the Tor equipment? Wouldn’t the just come and take it all?
You should call the local police office ahead of time and tell them you’re going to operate an exit node. Then literally label everything so that when they come in the future, they know what to take. Like I said, its best to literally have this project in its own room. Like a closet. So its very clear which equipment is used for your exit node.
Again, the Tor Project provides boilerplate letters for these things. Law enforcement usually thanks you. Remember, they use Tor too. Of course, most officers are dumb, but at least someone in their office should know about Tor at this point.
The police are stupid (how did they think they could catch any criminal by raiding an exit node operator? Did they manage to compromise TOR completely? Didn’t think so), and I hope the people of the NGO are alright.
It’s possible that this raid was connected to a current police operation to arrest users of a darknet child abuse website.
People should be using tor just as Fuck U to the pigs.
The entire regime relies on peasants not doing anything. Gonna be a generation or two but we will hit critical mass or will be enslaved.
Your choice folks!
