Is something like this unexpected? I personally never ever thought so (which is the reason why I never ever even
considered running a TOR exit node).
As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help.
> I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down.
On one hand I admit that that might be the case, on the other hand even government organizations/departments/agencies can be "local" and scattered (e.g. similar IT departments for each "canton" in Switzerland) and not have huge amounts of resources/knowledge to track/identify perpetrators of all ongoing (sophisticated?) IT crimes => somebody somewhere might see the same IP involved in a lot of "bad" stuff not realizing it's just a TOR node.
I hate the current general trend pushing a position of an either absolute "yes/no" for any theme, including this one (of encryption for privacy/etc vs. crime).
In my opinion it's obvious that the current situation of solutions is in general bad: too much pressure on services that provide privacy because it's too easy for crime to misuse them :o(
As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help.
> I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down.
On one hand I admit that that might be the case, on the other hand even government organizations/departments/agencies can be "local" and scattered (e.g. similar IT departments for each "canton" in Switzerland) and not have huge amounts of resources/knowledge to track/identify perpetrators of all ongoing (sophisticated?) IT crimes => somebody somewhere might see the same IP involved in a lot of "bad" stuff not realizing it's just a TOR node.
I hate the current general trend pushing a position of an either absolute "yes/no" for any theme, including this one (of encryption for privacy/etc vs. crime).
In my opinion it's obvious that the current situation of solutions is in general bad: too much pressure on services that provide privacy because it's too easy for crime to misuse them :o(