Austrian Tor Exit Node Operator Found Guilty As an Accomplice

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TechDirt: Three years ago we wrote about how Austrian police had seized computers from someone running a Tor exit node. This kind of thing happens from time to time, but it appears that folks in Austria have taken it up a notch by... effectively now making it illegal to run a Tor exit node. According to the report, which was confirmed by the accused, the court found that running the node violated 12 of the Austrian penal code, which effectively says:"Not only the immediate perpetrator commits a criminal action, but also anyone who appoints someone to carry it out, or anyone who otherwise contributes to the completion of said criminal action." In other words, it's a form of accomplice liability for criminality. It's pretty standard to name criminal accomplices liable for "aiding and abetting" the activities of others, but it's a massive and incredibly dangerous stretch to argue that merely running a Tor exit node makes you an accomplice that "contributes to the completion" of a crime. Under this sort of thinking, Volkswagen would be liable if someone drove a VW as the getaway car in a bank robbery. It's a very, very broad interpretation of accomplice liability, in a situation where it clearly does not make sense.

Traffic laundering will soon become a crime

[Anonymous Coward]

We're moving, slowly but surely, towards making your IP address the equivalent of your social security number in the US.

It's accomplices all the way down!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the ISP an accomplice too? And the operating system vendor?

Re:Parents are all guilty

[ganjadude]

i get what you are saying, but if this guy is running an exit node, wouldnt EVERY other node on the route also be an accomplice? where is verizon and ATT on this list? im sure the NSA intercepted it and let it go through, does that make them accomplices as well? why is this single person the only one in the chain of nodes being held to a different standard??

Re:It's accomplices all the way down!

[Ash Vince]

Is the ISP an accomplice too? And the operating system vendor?

Are you really not able to see a difference between your examples and running a tor exit node?

Let me spell it out for you: ISP's are selling you a service but tracking you in order to make sure any people using their network for anything illegal can be traced, a tor exit node is designed to let people be anonymous and untraceable. The judge made the assumption that anyone who wants to be untraceable to law enforcement must be a criminal, which is actually not such a huge stretch.