[immibis]

Your home can be raided for, say, running a Tor node, and you best believe they'll be looking for anything to charge you with because that's their job. I don't see anything wrong with this one.

Fun fact: having nmap installed on your computer is illegal in Germany.

[danbruc]

Fun fact: having nmap installed on your computer is illegal in Germany.

That does not sound right and I am unable to find any source for that claim.

EDIT: Nmap might fall under § 202c STGB [1] and »verschaffen« (obtain) probably does not even require installing it, downloading it would probably be sufficient. But my non-lawyer interpretation would be that this only applies if you are doing it for the purpose of a crime as it starts with »Wer eine Straftat nach § 202a oder § 202b vorbereitet, indem er [...]« (Who prepares a criminal act according to § 202a or § 202b by [...]).

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__202c.html

[immibis]

Do you think the police, when they raid your house on some pretext, will accept your argument that it wasn't to prepare for a crime?

[danbruc]

Innocent until proven guilty, it is their job to show that I was preparing some crime, I would not make any arguments.

[immibis]

Having nmap on your computer and a plausible story from the police is sufficient proof of guilt.

[poincaredisk]

In my country "tools designed for hacking" (simplifying legalese a bit) are illegal, but I'm not aware of anyone who was sentenced purely because of this. I think it might've been an additional charge during trials of actual cybercriminals.

[immibis]

Indeed. If they raid your house for running a Tor exit node and find nmap installed, they'll add on a hacking tools charge to your running a drug marketplace charge and your money laundering charge, and in court, the hacking tools charge will actually stick because you actually did that.

[Beretta_Vexee]

Fun fact: I operated a TOR node for a while (not an exit node). It was in a datacenter and I mostly got yelled at because the IP was flagged as malicious outbound and the reputation of the IP range was degraded. I stopped the node but I still have the IP adress which is still inaccessible to most office workers years after ;-).

At no time did I think that I was risking jail time if my computer was seized. I'm lucky enough to live in a democratic country and I have a clean conscience.

There are two main types of people who are interested in TOR, the defence of privacy and the development of privacy protection software:

- Those who think about the situation of homosexuals and journalists in countries where they risk the death penalty or life imprisonment. Police state, government overreach, woman health, etc...

- Those who live in democratic countries but have a lot to hide.

The two populations coexist but do not mix.

[PhilipRoman]

Interesting, I thought that only exit nodes carry a reputation risk. I guess there must be some really zealous scrapers who ban middle nodes based on the public list.

[Beretta_Vexee]

Entry nodes also run a big reputational risk. A number of list providers filter them. Many organisations want to prevent their users from accessing TOR to bypass filtering or exfiltrate data.

[immibis]

All nodes are allowable entry nodes, although the standard client uses a guard selection algorithm that ensures the entry node will always be one with a good uptime record.