Bristol Digest, Vol 560, Issue 8

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: [OT] The use of anonymity technology by criminal groups
(Bob Ham)
2. Re: [OT] The use of anonymity technology by criminal groups
(Martin)


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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 14:23:23 +0000
From: Bob Ham <rah@settrans.net>
To: Bristol and Bath Linux User Group <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [bristol] [OT] The use of anonymity technology by
criminal groups
Message-ID: <1406384603.11045.25.camel@myrtle.6gnip.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

With the proviso that Tor is very different from Freenet and running a
Tor exit node is conceptually distinct from running a Freenet node:

On Fri, 2014-07-25 at 22:03 +0100, Zak Wilcox wrote:

> <http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/549645/tor_exit_node_operator_convicted_abetting_spread_child_porn/>

'The decision highly depended on the special circumstances of the case
and particularly on the statements of the defendant which were seen by
the court as encouraging the use of Tor services and its servers for
the dissemination of child sexual abuse material'

So, in this case the prosecution is largely based on the person
encouraging the use of Tor to disseminate child pornography. Not just
the dissemination of child pornography but actually telling other people
that it's possible to use Tor for that:

'You can host child porn on our servers'

If you host a publishing service with freedom, it's not a good idea to
go around telling people they can use it for hosting child porn.
Eventually, the police will come knocking. One would have thought
common sense would make that clear. Regardless, as the article quotes:

'We are thus positive that it cannot be seen as a general ruling
against Tor services'

And again, this is limited to running a Tor exit node; running a Freenet
node is completely different concept.

--
Bob Ham <rah@settrans.net>

for (;;) { ++pancakes; }
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:31:49 +0100
From: Martin <inkubus@interalpha.co.uk>
To: bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [bristol] [OT] The use of anonymity technology by
criminal groups
Message-ID: <1406395909.22923.224.camel@raphael>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Wed, 2014-07-23 at 19:55 +0000, Bob Ham wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-07-23 at 19:14 +0100, Martin wrote:
> > The following two articles are on a child pornography
> > group who made use of Tor, gpg and a number of other technologies:
>
> > it is
> > interesting to see the evidence that this sort of thing is an issue.
>
> This is not a new issue. Tor has been around since 2002 (12 years),
> Freenet has been around since 2000 (14 years) and GPG has been around
> since 1999 (15 years). There has been plenty of "evidence" before.
> I'll bring your attention to the Freenet FAQ:
>
> "Q. What about child porn, offensive content or terrorism?
> A. While most people wish that child pornography and terrorism did not
> exist, humanity should not be deprived of their freedom to communicate
> just because of how a very small number of people might use that
> freedom.
>
> Q. I don't want my node to be used to harbor child porn, offensive
> content or terrorism. What can I do?
> A. The true test of someone who claims to believe in Freedom of Speech
> is whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find
> disgusting. If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a
> Freenet node."
>
> https://freenetproject.org/faq.html#childporn

This isn't quite what I meant by evidence. I am aware of allegations,
anecdotal evidence and discussion from the creators of such systems
(and, TBH, always took the line that I would be surprised if
there /wasn't/ such content on these networks). However this is the
first case I have seen where the use of such technology has proven a
significant barrier to law enforcement. Perhaps this happens more
frequently and I have missed it / been looking in the wrong places.
Perhaps it happens but it rarely becomes public knowledge (as I suspect
all involved have a vested interest in not discussing this kind of
thing). None the less I think it is perhaps an interesting point of
evidence for a discussion which is often short on hard numbers.

Cheers,
- Martin





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End of Bristol Digest, Vol 560, Issue 8
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