* Joel jaeggli (joelja@bogus.com) wrote:
On 11/29/12 23:18 , Joakim Aronius wrote:
I am all for being anonymous on the net but I seriously believe that we still need to enforce the law when it comes to serious felonies like child pr0n, organized crime etc, we can't give them a free pass just by using Tor. I dont think it should be illegal to operate a Tor exit node but what just happened could be a consequence of doing it.
The seriousness of crimes that can be committed using anonymization services should not be diminished. That said the motive I had for running a tor exit when I did was that speech, and in particular political organization (dare we call it sedition) are in fact very serious crimes in many places. R.g. they can result in indefinite imprisonment, torture, judicial or extra-legal execution and so forth, I don't consider that unserious..
The internet is potentially quite a useful tool for getting your message out so long as using it isn't holding a gun to your own head. While we site here with the convenient idea of some legal arbitrage which allows me to do something which isn't illegal in my own domain to facilitate something that is quite illegal elsewhere, the fact of the matter is if you run a service like this you don't get to pick and choose.
I agree. I was about to set up a tor node a few years ago but never got around to it. I send cash to orgs working for human rights in countries with oppressive regimes. I am all for providing anonymized access to help free speech. Perhaps its better with anon access to specific applications like twitter, fb etc and not general internet access. I suspect that the 'free speech' part of the total tor traffic volume is pretty small(?). Cheers, /Joakim