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Comment by p0w3n3d

2 days ago

I wonder, according to law, what are the outcomes of maintaining an exit node, apart from having, I quote, _balls of steel_

7 comments

p0w3n3d

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mitxela  1 day ago

According to law, in most places, it's legal. The legal problems people are worried about are not being charged and convicted, they are everything that happens before the conviction. Police can raid your home, take all your electronics and shoot your dog - sometimes. Other times they go, oh that's a tor exit mode, we won't get anything from that.

parl_match  2 days ago

depends on the jurisdiction

in the us, entirely legal. you may get law enforcement knocking on your door with questions, from time to time.

best to do it as part of a non profit or other organization, and being open about running a node, so that law enforcement/etc knows what they're dealing with

  • marc_abonce  1 day ago

    > best to do it as part of a non profit or other organization

    I've always thought that universities would be a great safe haven for exit nodes, probably managed by a student club but using campus's infra (with their fully informed permission and support, of course).

    I think this would make them less likely to be shut down by the police because a university would lend them more credibility as a civic-driven research project rather than some random person running "shady" stuff, as most people unfortunately assume.

    Here in Mexico there's very few Tor nodes running at all, but some of the longest running (non exit, TIL) nodes are run by UNAM [1], which is the biggest university.

    That being said, I studied in a different university and I didn't have the confidence or knowledge to propose anything similar, so I've no idea of how effective would such a project be or how hard would it be to run.

    [1] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/country:mx

    • mitxela  1 day ago

      They are. In general, having a big and respected institution to hide behind does wonders for avoiding suspicion. It would have to be formally approved by whoever is responsible for these things at the university - you couldn't just plug it into a random port (well you could but you might get Aaron Swartzed).

  • p4bl0  2 days ago

    > you may get law enforcement knocking on your door with questions

    If you host an exit node on your home internet connection, the daily thing you will struggle with is not law enforcement, but rather the fact that your public IP will be blocked by most big websites to the point that simply browsing the web will become a pain.

    • kevinpacheco  2 days ago

      Then whoever did this experiment will likely shut down the node and reset their router to pull a new IP, which could be reassigned in short order, thereby causing trouble for an innocent neighbor.