German police raid Tor-linked group in bid to uncover Tor network users
German police raid Tor-linked group in bid to uncover Tor network users
"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.
97Makes 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.
17GDPR only applies to big tech apparently
11EU 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
4
This is insane.
Stuff like this makes me want to run a Tor node out of spite
47Totally. For now, I'm only running I2P though. But it maxes out my uplink so it's probably better this way for now.
7Get 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
4
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.
27It's possible that this raid was connected to a current police operation to arrest users of a darknet child abuse website.
20Even if it's not they will definitely say how it was to stop cp or drug sales no matter what the reason was. People will always look the other way if they say that.
10
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!
18As annoying as it is not being able to really exit to a main internet from I2P, I think they have the right idea by not allowing exits. Though it does most definitely have an impact on how many people are able to use it.
11They have exits they are just not a part of the core project. I also like how the source code is hosted on i2p
8
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).
11