Re: Letter from the feds
On 1/3/07, Fabian Keil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Alexander Janssen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "The owner of the IP-Addres $my_servers_address is suspected of > posession of child pornography. Hereby we order you to tell us the > real name of the owner and disclose all relevant logfiles according to > §113 TKG in the time of the 26th of October, 7:00 PST. We also demand > the names of all your customers which use your service and we inform > you that disclosing our request to your customers may be punishable." I got a similar letter about two weeks earlier, but the language was quite polite and no punishment promised. The language wasn't offensive, it was still polite; I think that they thought that I was offering some kind of comercial service and therefore pulled all strings the german law allows. The BKA was interested in the person who used my exit nodes at the 26th of October, 6:40 PST, so I guess the thought crime offender was the same. I explained what Tor does and why German law forbids me to log the information they wanted and haven't heard anything back so far. I wrote a similar letter but didn't send it, because I didn't know if I was going to be suspected after sending out an explantion, that's why I hired a lawyer. > Hm, they finally seem to have come to their senses. They really scared > the shit out of my wife and me, believe me. I don't know if their > floppy requests was intentional or not or if they wanted to scare me, > but that's nothing a lawyer can sort out. Unfortunately you'll still have to pay the lawyer yourself. Well, yes, however, I knew that something like this would happen any time soon anyways. I absolutely agree with the feds that they have to investigate for I don't approve abuse of the TOR-network at all, especially not child-pornography. On the other hand this is an improvement compared to what some LKAs did in the last months, just randomly seizing machines without bothering about how this could be related to anonymizing services. So I actually approve the BKA's modus operandi, that's how it's supposed to work. Just the style of the letter was scary. Fabian Alex. -- "I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped." -- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901.
Re: Letter from the feds
"Alexander Janssen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > my turn for a story to tell now. I run the TOR-server "wormhole" in > Germany. I run Zwiebelsuppe and Zwiebelkuchen. > On the 28th of December I got a letter from the BKA (the german > Federal Office of Criminal Investigation). The content of the letter > was something like that: > > "The owner of the IP-Addres $my_servers_address is suspected of > posession of child pornography. Hereby we order you to tell us the > real name of the owner and disclose all relevant logfiles according to > §113 TKG in the time of the 26th of October, 7:00 PST. We also demand > the names of all your customers which use your service and we inform > you that disclosing our request to your customers may be punishable." I got a similar letter about two weeks earlier, but the language was quite polite and no punishment promised. The BKA was interested in the person who used my exit nodes at the 26th of October, 6:40 PST, so I guess the thought crime offender was the same. I explained what Tor does and why German law forbids me to log the information they wanted and haven't heard anything back so far. > Hm, they finally seem to have come to their senses. They really scared > the shit out of my wife and me, believe me. I don't know if their > floppy requests was intentional or not or if they wanted to scare me, > but that's nothing a lawyer can sort out. Unfortunately you'll still have to pay the lawyer yourself. Fabian -- http://www.fabiankeil.de/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Letter from the feds
Hi all, my turn for a story to tell now. I run the TOR-server "wormhole" in Germany. On the 28th of December I got a letter from the BKA (the german Federal Office of Criminal Investigation). The content of the letter was something like that: "The owner of the IP-Addres $my_servers_address is suspected of posession of child pornography. Hereby we order you to tell us the real name of the owner and disclose all relevant logfiles according to §113 TKG in the time of the 26th of October, 7:00 PST. We also demand the names of all your customers which use your service and we inform you that disclosing our request to your customers may be punishable." Obviously I was a bit scared about the "the owner of the IP-address part" so I hired a lawyer. The overall text was also a bit far-off for my taste, but whatever. My lawyer sent out a fax yesterday to the BKA asking if I, as his client, am a suspect or a witness. He also stated that I'm running a TOR-server and that no relevant log-files according to §113 TKG exist. I case that I'm a suspect he asked for all the files dealing with the investigation. That was last night, today, about 20 hours later, we already got an reply. The BKA acknowledged, that they understood my lawyer's statement that the TOR-server does not create relevant logfiles and claimed that this information is enough for their ongoing investigations. Furthermore they say that they need no further "statements" from my side. (which can be read as thanks, we're fine, but who knows...) Hm, they finally seem to have come to their senses. They really scared the shit out of my wife and me, believe me. I don't know if their floppy requests was intentional or not or if they wanted to scare me, but that's nothing a lawyer can sort out. Cheers, Alex. -- "I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped." -- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901.
