"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…"
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.
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.
While I agree this definitely feels like more of a threat than an action, it IS worth understanding the many times that tor nodes have been compromised. Exit nodes are a well documented mess (and have many of the same vulnerabilities normal VPNs do) but eavesdropping and traffic analysis are also probabilities based upon how much of the network any given org has access to.
If that NGO was doing hinky stuff or just doing a sloppy job? Those cops might actually have a LOT of actionable data that just needs a bit of processing.
Which is why it is always important to understand what your risks and benefits from a privacy related tool are. People often think “I’ll just put everything through a vpn/tor” which DRASTICALLY increases their risk profiles. But they also don’t understand how tor works well enough to even know what it gives them over a traditional vpn (as opposed to “Dark Web” stuff which is a different mess).
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!
