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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

> The 1st [subpoena] was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email.

...

> I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way.

This really doesn't strike you as cognitive dissonance? I mean, yes, I get it, it's easy to construct a scenario where you're "helping people". But you're also "helping" people engage in terrorism and identity theft in exactly the same way.

Surely that deserves at least a little thought and moral calculus, no? You're not making a first principles argument about fundamental rights or anything, you're saying you run exits because it's "helping". Well, shouldn't it help more than it hurts?

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Doesn't running a post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious things? Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same? What about cellular hardware providers and maintainers?

Tor isn't a post office or telephone network. We have post offices and telephone networks. Tor also isn't a replacement for a web browser or internet, we have those too.

Tor's feature isn't "communication" in the abstract, it's anonymity. And yes, that can be used for good or for evil. But the upthread comment was saying how nice it was to run an exit node because it was "helping people". And to the extent that's true, I think correct thinking demands you also account for the harm.

And let's be clear: Tor is definitely harmful. Almost all Tor traffic is some degree of nefarious. The tiny handful of dissidents are drowned in a sea of phishing and contraband.

They do. But all of the above bend over backwards to help law enforcement.

> post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious thing

The US postal service scans and stores the outside of every envelope and package they handle. Law enforcement agencies can query this metadata.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T...

> Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same?

They do, but they are not only share the metadata with law enforcement, but also let them wiretap. (Often they require a warrant for this, but that is not a hard burden for a LEO.) And this capability is not some aftertought, but deeply integrated into their tech stack.

> But all of the above bend over backwards to help law enforcement.

We prefer they assist LEO operating under court order, instead.

You don't need tor for terrorism or identity theft, and it probably isn't widely used in those circles. There are easier ways. But plenty of people use tor to avoid what amount to terrorist govenments and regimes.

This statement is made without basis. What percentage of tor traffic is used for terrorism, identity theft, or people avoiding persecution?

I'm not going to make a value judgment on the use of tor, but I do think it's important to be honest about how it may be used.

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