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by tedks 4240 days ago
>This in itself is not sufficient: there are thousand of Tor bridges, relays and exit points. All of them carry lots of traffic and all of them could be hosting hidden services as well. The total traffic in itself doesn't necessarily show that a server hosts hidden services. It could also me masked by generating fake traffic to/from the server.

Relays (exit and non-exit relays) are listed in the consensus, so you can easily rule them out, or just watch the hidden service and the relay and correlate downtime.

Bridges are not listed in the consensus, but they also don't survive very long, and don't carry very much traffic, since they tend to be used by a small number of individuals. So bridges will naturally churn out of your target set.

>neither Europol nor the FBI can just walk into any data center and request images of any server that handles Tor traffic without a warrant,

This seems optimistic at best. They could certainly ask to install a wiretap, or just threaten their way into installing a wiretap (i.e., install this wiretap or my buddy at the EPA is going to be allllll over you for how bad your parking lot is drained, etc). They could just ask and say they suspect the computer is involved in child pornography, which will probably override most people's objections.

But beyond that, people tend to cooperate with authorities. It's either a natural state of humans to be subservient, or we've been indoctrinated through eons of hierarchy, but now, the only thing necessary to get someone to kill someone else is a stern command. If you don't believe me, look up the Milgram experiments.

2 comments

> but now, the only thing necessary to get someone to kill someone else is a stern command. If you don't believe me, look up the Milgram experiments

I think you're being a bit hyperbolic here.

Look up the Milgram experiments and tell me I'm being hyperbolic.
Etheteum web3.0 + TOR