this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024

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Privacy

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German police raid Tor-linked group in bid to uncover Tor network users (cybernews.com)

submitted 5 days ago by gytrash@feddit.uk to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"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..."

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[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 106 points 5 days ago (4 children)

EU countries are going full on fighting privacy now.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 52 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Just makes me want to fight back by helping other people to use Monero, Tor, and other privacy services.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 days ago

Same.

[+] stuckgum@lemmy.ml -8 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Monero is not safe, CIA cracked it long time ago

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 5 days ago

Source? I don't believe it.

Why else would the US be working so hard to ban it and make it very difficult to obtain?

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then why aren't they catching more "criminals"? Also, why hasn't the $600,000 US dollar bounty from the IRS been claimed?

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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?

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 5 days ago

... not that I especially trust Monero much; not even as much as Tor. What I object to is the tendency to be too quick to go ahead with the assumption that it probably has been broken even in the total absence (such as in this thread so far) of any evidence to demonstrate that.

It's the same misguided instinct that leads people to believe that all encryption is futile, that the NSA already knows all the keys no matter what we do. It's not really true. It is true they can easily compromise the security and privacy of any one of us normal people they choose to single out, but for those of us who don't practise unreasonably strict op-sec the point of choosing secure and private modes of communication (including monero if your sense of morality allows for the use of a proof-of-work cryptocurrency) is not to protect one target against all possible threat models. And it's not only to protect against lesser threats. Much of the time the most important thing is to contribute to the effort to make it impossible for anyone to systematically spy on the whole world all at once. Nobody should have that power.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 days ago

Interesting information, although I'm not the one best suited to process it, I would recommend you posting this to something like the skepticism Sunday threads on !monero@monero.town. If it truly has been broken, they are managing to keep it very quiet. And if it has been broken, then there's a good chance that the vast majority of encryption has also been broken, such as HTTPS.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 5 days ago

regardless if that's true, it had a lot of improvements across a long time, and they did not stop coming

[–] ray1992xd@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What’s a kill cam?

[–] ray1992xd@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Kind of like the red room they tell you about on Youtube

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Are you being intentionally vague?

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think they are referring to videos of people dying.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

Thank you for an actual response.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

GDPR only applies to big tech apparently

[–] ccx@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 4 days ago

Regulating governmental intrusions into privacy would take a completely separate and probably much larger bill.

It would take a revolution honestly

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 5 days ago

and that even is just circus

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 3 points 4 days ago

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

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 46 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This is insane.

Stuff like this makes me want to run a Tor node out of spite

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 7 points 5 days ago

Totally. For now, I'm only running I2P though. But it maxes out my uplink so it's probably better this way for now.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Silly question but how would they know that that it the Tor equipment? Wouldn't the just come thew and take it all

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You should call the local police office ahead of time and tell them you're going to operate an exit node. Then literally label everything so that when they come in the future, they know what to take. Like I said, its best to literally have this project in its own room. Like a closet. So its very clear which equipment is used for your exit node.

Again, the Tor Project provides boilerplate letters for these things. Law enforcement usually thanks you. Remember, they use Tor too. Of course, most officers are dumb, but at least someone in their office should know about Tor at this point.

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 26 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's possible that this raid was connected to a current police operation to arrest users of a darknet child abuse website.

[–] hate2bme@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago

Even if it's not they will definitely say how it was to stop cp or drug sales no matter what the reason was. People will always look the other way if they say that.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 17 points 5 days ago

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!

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 5 days ago

They have exits they are just not a part of the core project. I also like how the source code is hosted on i2p

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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).