Re: philosophical issues

[Nato Welch <nate@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 21 April 2005 07:36, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 11:46:05AM -0300, alexyz@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Generally speeking, the strongest defense with Tor ops is that
> > servers only act as a conduit for other people´s doings. Thus you
> > are not the perpetrator of those doings and are not liable for
> > them. But people are also creative... What happens if an attacker
> > decides to run a server to disguise his own wrong-doing? When
> > questioned, he could just point to the server and say it came from
> > Tor network. As it is anonymous, he can´t detect the source, blah

If you really wanted to throw off the trail, why wouldn't you actually 
use the network to conceal your efforts instead? The abuse potential is 
the same, whether it's actual or whether it stems from deniability. Not 
that this makes your concerns invalid.

> It is already the case that accusers need more proof than "it came
> from your computer." As more and more computers on the net are
> running vulnerable operating systems, it is becoming almost the norm
> to tell somebody "hey, your computer is compromised" rather than to
> accuse them of actually doing the activity.
>
> So people already need more evidence, such as finding the bad files
> on your computer, before they can believe that you're doing bad
> things. Tor doesn't change the situation as much as you might think.

This sounds oddly like saying tor really isn't as useful as you might 
think. At least, for concealing bad behaviour, anyway. 


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Nato Welch
nate@xxxxxxxxx