William Weber, a LowEndTalk member, was raided by Austrian police in 2012 for operating a Tor exit node that was allegedly used to distribute child pornography. While he was not arrested, many of his computers and devices were confiscated. He was later found guilty of supporting the distribution of child pornography through his Tor exit node, though he claims it was unintentional and he was simply supporting free speech and anonymity. He was given a 5 year probation sentence but left Austria shortly after. Though some articles portray him negatively, it is debatable whether he intentionally supported child pornography distribution or simply operated in the legal grey area of Tor exit nodes.
You keep focusing on exit nodes, and your favorite groups of people… while missing that relay nodes still help, and in either case you don’t get to choose whom you’re helping.
Laughing off the risk of actually getting killed, is also too naive, in a world with zealots just too happy to travel anywhere you might be.
In any case, I don’t feel like risking even jail time for maybe helping some people I might like, while most likely helping people I definitely don’t. If you do find that risk acceptable, then go for it.
Orbot, aka Tor, doesn’t just obfuscate the source IP, it hides it. What does that bring to the table with Syncthing?
PS: I don’t know who you are, other than you created a new account just to have this conversation, which strikes me as a bit odd.
And I’m running 2 relay nodes. The TOR network desperately needs exit nodes to relieve the bottleneck at the exits, and that’s where I want to help.
Of course, it’s not for everyone, which is why one could just donate to the TOR foundation (or whatever they are called) and that money goes into infrastructure.
I’m not a native speaker, I assumed obfuscate meant hiding the IP address. I mentioned it because you asked.
I didn’t make a new account just for this lol, it’s just that I’m passionate about it.
The Tor network was designed for spies. In particular, for US&friends spies to have a plausible deniability when “phoning home”. It is pretty much guaranteed to have exit nodes with a traffic capacity of “whatever spies need × whatever amount is needed to preserve plausible deniability”.
That means it doesn’t “desperately need” exit nodes, the required amount of exit nodes keeps being financed by the spy agencies involved. Overhead capacity just happens to be a nice thing for everyone, but is not a goal, so non-sponsored exit nodes that provide extra capacity, run all the risks, without any of the protections of some higher-ups waving any denounces away.
If you think you can run an exit node as a non-sponsored/protected individual, go for it… but the chances are not in your favor. Donating to the Tor foundation is much safer, buy I don’t think they host exit nodes either, they just develop the software (which is also important).
Relay nodes are mostly safe, since there is no way for you to know any of the traffic, and they don’t link your IP to any of it, while they do help with the overall robustness and capacity of the network. Relay nodes also add capacity when accessing hidden sites, without running any of the risks.
“Obfuscating” means to make it hard to find out, while “hiding” means there is no way to find it out, at all.
And you did make a new account, it’s visible in the “about” info. The account hasn’t had any other interactions either… but whatever.