I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic. My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order. Hmmm...
The topic of country-specific conditions raises 2 questions in my mind:
1. Does the Tor Project keep a list of Tor-hostile countries? I understand that such a list over time would vary in reliability, but it would be nice to know.
2. Given the ability to set up a Tor relay in any political jurisdiction, which ones would be recommended? I'm thinking of both local political conditions and the distribution of relays from a topological perspective.
I'm inclined to want a non-US relay because the highest bandwith relays locations are skewed toward the US, which biases the Tor traffic though that jurisdiction. (Today's Tor Metrics report shows 17.55% of traffic coming from the US.) Is this a reasonable approach?
Thanks.
On Friday, November 25, 2011 10:12 AM, "Steve Snyder" swsnyder@snydernet.net wrote:
I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic.
Manifestly untrue. There are several exit relays in the UK and lots more middlemen.
My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order.
Substitute 'customer' for 'user' and that would be true. That would be you.
GD
On 25/11/11 15:12, Steve Snyder wrote:
I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic. My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order. Hmmm...
Did they quote the relevant legislation? It smells of bulls**t. AFAIK the ISP only needs to be able to identify *you*. A court order served on the ISP won't be binding on you. And data protection law should mean that you don't have to disclose anything to your ISP about people who use your service. Think about if you were providing a business service; your customers would be entitled to confidentiality (under DPA). Are you prepared to name the ISP?
I'm asking as I'm in the UK (but not a lawyer). I know this country has become incredibly hostile towards anonymity of late, but to the best of my knowledge no existing legislation outright forbids it.
Julian
It's been suggested that perhaps I mis-interpreted what I was told about establishing the relay in the UK. I specified a host name that reflected the use of the server as a Tor relay, and this was the response I got:
"When it came to filling out the hostname for your VPS, the name struck me. I need to make you aware that we cannot allow anonymous tunneling of traffic through our servers. If it's for your own personal use that's fine, even if it's for the public it's fine so long as records are kept and are disclosed if presented with a legal requirement under UK Law."
This company was OK with setting up the same VPS with the same terms in Texas.
FYI.
-----Original Message----- From: "Julian Yon" julian@yon.org.uk Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 10:38am To: tor-relays@lists.torproject.org Subject: Re: [tor-relays] In which countries are relays needed, disallowed?
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays On 25/11/11 15:12, Steve Snyder wrote:
I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic. My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order. Hmmm...
Did they quote the relevant legislation? It smells of bulls**t. AFAIK the ISP only needs to be able to identify *you*. A court order served on the ISP won't be binding on you. And data protection law should mean that you don't have to disclose anything to your ISP about people who use your service. Think about if you were providing a business service; your customers would be entitled to confidentiality (under DPA). Are you prepared to name the ISP?
I'm asking as I'm in the UK (but not a lawyer). I know this country has become incredibly hostile towards anonymity of late, but to the best of my knowledge no existing legislation outright forbids it.
Julian
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 11:12:44AM -0500, Steve Snyder wrote:
even if it's for the public it's fine so long as records are kept and are disclosed if presented with a legal requirement under UK Law
Yeah, right.
UK Tor exit operators with some law experience, this strikes me as bullshit. Is that correct?
This company was OK with setting up the same VPS with the same terms in Texas.
On Friday, November 25, 2011 11:12:44 Steve Snyder wrote:
It's been suggested that perhaps I mis-interpreted what I was told about establishing the relay in the UK. I specified a host name that reflected the use of the server as a Tor relay, and this was the response I got:
"When it came to filling out the hostname for your VPS, the name struck me. I need to make you aware that we cannot allow anonymous tunneling of traffic through our servers. If it's for your own personal use that's fine, even if it's for the public it's fine so long as records are kept and are disclosed if presented with a legal requirement under UK Law."
They are confusing their own Terms of Service with UK law. Ask for a pointer to the law that makes a proxy server illegal. The UK government uses Tor for their own agents to find criminals and stay anonymous. I suspect this person or VPS provider is simply misinformed.
On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:12:56 -0500 (EST) "Steve Snyder" swsnyder@snydernet.net allegedly wrote:
I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic. My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order. Hmmm...
Rubbish. I run two tor exit nodes in the UK (and have run three in the past). The ISP in question is at best misguided, at worst lying. The ISP must be able to identify its customer - i.e. you. Try a different ISP. I currently use ThrustVPS and Daily because they give a lot of bandwidth for not much money. But I have also used, and can thoroughly recommend, Bytemark. I'd use bytemark for all my traffic if they offered as much bandwidth as I get elsewhere.
Just be sure that you tell your chosen ISP that you are going to run a Tor node and read their AUP carefully.
Mick
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