TOR servers seized in Germany

By EDRi · September 13, 2006

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The public prosecutor’s office of Konstanz, Germany raided, during the
last weekend some computing centres and seized several servers that were
running copies of TOR, a well known software used for the anonymisation of
the Internet usage.

The action was related to a child pornography case, and, apparently, the IP
addresses of the servers were found in a chat room where these kinds of
images were traded. Those servers were probably configured as TOR
Exit-Nodes.

No charges have been brought against any of the owners of the servers – at
least for now. Moreover, according to one of the persons whose servers were
seized, a prosecutor told him that it was legal to run TOR servers in
Germany.

According to some, this might be one of the results of the last month
declarations of the German officials that combating terrorism has become a
much more important objective than respecting privacy and the right to
anonymity on the Internet.

Shava Nerad, the executive director of the TOR project, has confirmed that
six TOR servers were seized during the investigation, among others. He
also pointed out that: “This is not a “crackdown” on TOR, as has been widely
reported. We expect and hope that the volunteer TOR server operators in
Germany will get their equipment back after this has blown over, and there
will be no action against TOR.”

Germany: Crackdown on TOR-node operators (10.09.2006)
Germany: Crackdown on TOR-node operators

German police seize TOR servers (11.09.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/11/anon_servers_seized/

German Computer Confiscations NOT an Attack on TOR (11.09.2006)
German Computer Confiscations NOT an Attack on TOR

EDRi-gram : German Minister of Justice wants limits to the anonymiser
service (30.09.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.16/anonymiser

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
http://tor.eff.org/