Hi,
(Sorry if this question has already been asked in the past, feel free to point me to the relevant resources.)
I know that the legal FAQs by the EFF state that: «we believe that running a Tor relay — including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic — is legal under U.S. law.»[1]
I also know there is a list of countries for which there is legislation that exclude communication service providers from liability. They are indicated in the Legal of the Tor Exit Guidelines page[2], they are USA, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, and Sweden.
From some articles in the press[3a][3b] it may be illegal - depending on
how you interpret the wording[*] - to use Tor (and other technologies such as VPNs or proxies) in the UAE, with fines ranging in the millions of dirhams (hundreds of thousand of dollars).
A couple of weeks ago it was discussed - on this list as well - that a law was introduced to the state parliament to ban Tor[4a][4b]. This follows a case of some months ago of a Russian Tor exit node operator being arrested for inciting mass riots and terrorism[4c][4d]. The idea of blocking VPNs or Tor seems to have already been considered in the past[4e].
This infographic about pluggable transports[5] suggests access to the Tor network is censored or limited in China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Tor being censored orblocked may be different from it being illegal.
What about other countries? Is there a place where I can find more about this topic?
Cristian
[1]: https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en [2]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorExitGuidelines [3a]: http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dh500-000-fine-if-you-use-fraud-ip-... [3b]: http://news.softpedia.com/news/people-caught-using-vpns-tor-or-proxies-in-th...
[*]: «Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery» [4a]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043293.html [4b]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22055 [4c]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-April/043109.html [4d]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/ [4e]; https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-and-tor-ban-looming-on-the-horizon-for-russia-1... [5]: https://www.torproject.org/images/PT/2016-07-how-to-use-PT.png
On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 10:26:51PM +0200, Cristian Consonni wrote:
Hi,
(Sorry if this question has already been asked in the past, feel free to point me to the relevant resources.)
I know that the legal FAQs by the EFF state that: «we believe that running a Tor relay — including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic — is legal under U.S. law.»[1]
I also know there is a list of countries for which there is legislation that exclude communication service providers from liability. They are indicated in the Legal of the Tor Exit Guidelines page[2], they are USA, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, and Sweden.
From some articles in the press[3a][3b] it may be illegal - depending on how you interpret the wording[*] - to use Tor (and other technologies such as VPNs or proxies) in the UAE, with fines ranging in the millions of dirhams (hundreds of thousand of dollars).
A couple of weeks ago it was discussed - on this list as well - that a law was introduced to the state parliament to ban Tor[4a][4b]. This follows a case of some months ago of a Russian Tor exit node operator being arrested for inciting mass riots and terrorism[4c][4d]. The idea of blocking VPNs or Tor seems to have already been considered in the past[4e].
This infographic about pluggable transports[5] suggests access to the Tor network is censored or limited in China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Tor being censored orblocked may be different from it being illegal.
What about other countries? Is there a place where I can find more about this topic?
Hi Cristian,
The easy answer is no. Over the years, some of us have heard/read different countries classify Tor as illegal. The actual meaning of this is often not clear (tor client? tor relay? advocating the use of tor?). As a community, we don't have anywhere near the army of volunteer lawyers we'd need to say with certainty that Tor is illegal (and what that means) in every country.
Off the top of my head, the only other country I've hear about is Ethiopia, but that was a few years ago and I don't know the current status of it.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ethiopia-introduces-deep-packet-inspection http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18461292
- Matt
Cristian
[*]: «Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery» [4a]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043293.html [4b]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22055 [4c]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-April/043109.html [4d]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/ [4e]; https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-and-tor-ban-looming-on-the-horizon-for-russia-1... [5]: https://www.torproject.org/images/PT/2016-07-how-to-use-PT.png _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
Matthew Finkel:
On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 10:26:51PM +0200, Cristian Consonni wrote:
Hi,
(Sorry if this question has already been asked in the past, feel free to point me to the relevant resources.)
I know that the legal FAQs by the EFF state that: «we believe that running a Tor relay — including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic — is legal under U.S. law.»[1]
I also know there is a list of countries for which there is legislation that exclude communication service providers from liability. They are indicated in the Legal of the Tor Exit Guidelines page[2], they are USA, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, and Sweden.
From some articles in the press[3a][3b] it may be illegal - depending on how you interpret the wording[*] - to use Tor (and other technologies such as VPNs or proxies) in the UAE, with fines ranging in the millions of dirhams (hundreds of thousand of dollars).
A couple of weeks ago it was discussed - on this list as well - that a law was introduced to the state parliament to ban Tor[4a][4b]. This follows a case of some months ago of a Russian Tor exit node operator being arrested for inciting mass riots and terrorism[4c][4d]. The idea of blocking VPNs or Tor seems to have already been considered in the past[4e].
This infographic about pluggable transports[5] suggests access to the Tor network is censored or limited in China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Tor being censored orblocked may be different from it being illegal.
What about other countries? Is there a place where I can find more about this topic?
Hi Cristian,
The easy answer is no. Over the years, some of us have heard/read different countries classify Tor as illegal. The actual meaning of this is often not clear (tor client? tor relay? advocating the use of tor?). As a community, we don't have anywhere near the army of volunteer lawyers we'd need to say with certainty that Tor is illegal (and what that means) in every country.
Off the top of my head, the only other country I've hear about is Ethiopia, but that was a few years ago and I don't know the current status of it.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ethiopia-introduces-deep-packet-inspection http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18461292
Hi all,
Tor also appears to have been banned in Belarus in 2015 and blocked in late 2016:
https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/02/25/belarus-bans-tor https://ooni.torproject.org/post/belarus-fries-onion/
It matters whether Tor users can be detained for being Tor users under local laws, just for ethical reasons, whether we can protect them or not.
Question for Nima or others: Does it matter if there is a very small number of Tor users in a given country? Can they actually be targeted because of that?
-Kate
- Matt
Cristian
[*]: «Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery» [4a]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043293.html [4b]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22055 [4c]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-April/043109.html [4d]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/ [4e]; https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-and-tor-ban-looming-on-the-horizon-for-russia-1... [5]: https://www.torproject.org/images/PT/2016-07-how-to-use-PT.png _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
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Cristian Consonni -
Kate -
Matthew Finkel