this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 127 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

They convicted him on "supporting the transfer of underage pornography", i.e. he ran an exit node that "allowed" the upload of CP to an Austrian image hoster. Apparently, he wasn't protected because he ran the exit as an individual, not a registered company. Most likely, the Austrian authority checked who uploaded the images, and found his IP address, which became the basis for convicting him. He didn't have any of the materials because all those stuffs were encrypted in transit.

He mentioned that law that was used to prosecute him was changed a few weeks later to protect individuals as well. He apparently now ran Tor exits under an offshore company.

In summary, from what he said, he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP.

[–] AgentCorgi 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does he/people get paid for running the exit node?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are 7,000+ Tor relays, and 2,000+ bridges being run by entities including individuals, orgs, corporations, and most likely governments. (https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html) So, the answer is yes, no, and something in between. He himself didn't say, but the article portrayed him as being an individual who believed in free speech, an activity which Tor does help support.

[–] gleph 39 points 1 year ago

He was convicted (and given probation) for supporting the transfer for Child Porn, not for accessing it or creating it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I read in one of VPS rental service Discord that someone rented a VPS to run tor exit node and HDDs of the server were confiscated without prior notice.

[–] dunestorm 7 points 1 year ago

This is insane! It's like prosecuting a postman for delivering child porn content to a customer.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sorry I am not very techy, can someone eli5 what is an exit node? What is the point of running an exit node? Should the user have known his exit node (not sure if i am using the term right) could be used for cp?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

if you join the tor network other tor users proxy their trafic through a chain of tor users and therefore maybe though you, sometimes youre the exit node that then actually sends the request to the server in question, sometimes you just pass it on to another tor user.

so the person in the OP did technically send the reques to the server that served CP, but he didnt really have anything to do with it nor could he have even accessed the data.

[–] regular_human 20 points 1 year ago

Just to clarify, running an exit node is not something that happens automatically when you browse via tor. It's something intentional that you configure

[–] ryannathans 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

One would not expect an exit node to be used for cp. A relay node would be more likely used for cp as one would expect the request to be internal to the tor network. A tor exit node is only used to access sites on the regular internet, not the "dark net"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don’t care if he was guilty or if the government whatever, the post title makes me sick already.

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