"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…"
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
As 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.
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.
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).
EU countries are going full on fighting privacy now.
Makes 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.
Just makes me want to fight back by helping other people to use Monero, Tor, and other privacy services.
Monero is not safe, CIA cracked it long time ago
Then why aren’t they catching more “criminals”? Also, why hasn’t the $600,000 US dollar bounty from the IRS been claimed?
I can’t speak to monero specifically
But:
- Why aren’t they catching more criminals? They are. They just are finding alternate sources of evidence. Dick Wolf shows love to talk about how cops need to protect themselves from any poison fruit and blah blah blah. The reality is that they immediately go to the poison fruit and use that to make a plausible excuse for why they investigated something else that can confirm information they got from the illegal source. If you’ve ever wondered why they would think to investigate a random unrelated company that ends up being the smoking gun…
- Why didn’t anyone claim the bounty? Because the CIA and the like don’t want people to know they compromised it?
Back in my pure research days it was always fun to guess what the latest “big thing” was actually about. It was especially fun when you would be looking for funding opportunities and see really weird stuff that made no sense for the org sponsoring it but would have made perfect sense for a different 3LA.
It was ALSO real fun to totally never notice when certain funding opportunities dried up and then there was a big push in the news about how we need to outlaw technology those opportunities totally didn’t already compromise.
Like, for the better part of a decade The Big Thing was graph analysis techniques. And the number of kids who had no idea they were basically writing algorithms to process social media (especially twitter) was downright sad. And the people who DID realize what their work was geared toward? They applied for jobs where they got paid a lot more to do exactly that without needing to pretend it is actually about data storage technologies or optimizing cell tower load.
And… let’s just say that most of those algorithms ALSO apply toward cryptocurrencies and transaction logs (since they had great applications for bank transactions…) and even doing a number on tumblers and so forth.
I too don’t know much about monero specifically, however:
Parallel construction is still a thing, yes. But so is spreading the false idea that everything is already compromised so there’s no point trying to defend yourself.
No. There is every reason to “defend yourself”. The key is to actually be aware of what research and efforts are out there and minimizing your risk profile any time you are dealing with a black box.
I mean, it is known that people can pick locks. Do you plug your ears every time you hear someone talk about how doors can be compromised? Or do you give up on everything and remove every single deadbolt in your home?
Or… do you do a bit of research and figure out what you can do to make your home harder to break into. Whether it is sturdier screws, a reinforced doorjam, or other methods?
Well then, what specific research do you have suggesting that monero has been broken? After all it is not in any way a “black box”. The algorithm is well known.
GDPR only applies to big tech apparently
GDPR explicitly exempts government entities. Still, way better than not having it IMO.
Regulating governmental intrusions into privacy would take a completely separate and probably much larger bill.
EU 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
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!
