I say this as someone who has been in the unfortunate position of defending a pedophile in court, please stop defending child pornography and pedophiles.
Child pornagraphy is not an abstract concept. Child pornography isn't outlawed simply because it's obscene. Child pornography is outlawed because it is depraved, frequently violent imagery or videos of real children actually being violated. This is not speech. This is one of the most horrific, most sadistic acts that a human being is capable of perpetuating against another. It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them. (There are a few situations where images are faked, i.e., by photoshopping children's faces on adult bodies, but this represents a drop in the bucket.)
This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.
Will he be convicted of possessing and/or distributing child pornography?
Probably not. Tor is not as anonymous as people think it is; an FBI forensics team will probably be able to track down the real criminal. In such case, this idiot will probably be off the hook. But if they are unsuccessful in backtracing to the real criminal, he will be the sacrificial lamb offered up by the prosecutors for this crime. His conviction (and trust me, there will be a conviction if this goes to trial) will serve as a warning to others: if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn.
> please stop defending child pornography and pedophiles.
Please reread my comment and tell me where I defended either of those things. You seem to be saying that you're a lawyer. I'd have thought that line of work would require a modicum of reading comprehension skills.
>It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them.
Oh for fuck's sake. Do you know how incredibly demeaning and psychologically harmful it is to victims to tell them that they'd be better off dead?
>This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.
Yes, because there are obviously no legitimate and noble reasons to have anonymizing networks.
>if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn
I'm calling bullshit on you being a lawyer. Someone is an idiot for running Tor, one of the last hopes for long term free speech on the internet? I guess you must think the founding fathers were pretty fucking stupid too, since the broke the law as well, eh?
How do you suppose one should make sure the exit node you run won't be used for sharing of child porn? And how is he automatically an idiot for running a TOR exit node? All node operators run them knowing they could be used for illegal activities, and that it could bring them some legal trouble.
Child pornagraphy is not an abstract concept. Child pornography isn't outlawed simply because it's obscene. Child pornography is outlawed because it is depraved, frequently violent imagery or videos of real children actually being violated. This is not speech. This is one of the most horrific, most sadistic acts that a human being is capable of perpetuating against another. It is worse than murder; these victims usually survive what happens to them. (There are a few situations where images are faked, i.e., by photoshopping children's faces on adult bodies, but this represents a drop in the bucket.) This idiot was dumb enough to run a anonymizing network that he knew could be involved in illegal activities. He ran several nodes despite this, knowing and accepting that the Tor network would shield the identities (for the most part) of the actual criminals using his systems as through-ways, leaving behind his IP address as the sole traceable link.
Will he be convicted of possessing and/or distributing child pornography?
Probably not. Tor is not as anonymous as people think it is; an FBI forensics team will probably be able to track down the real criminal. In such case, this idiot will probably be off the hook. But if they are unsuccessful in backtracing to the real criminal, he will be the sacrificial lamb offered up by the prosecutors for this crime. His conviction (and trust me, there will be a conviction if this goes to trial) will serve as a warning to others: if you want to use Tor, make damn well sure you aren't a pass-through for child porn.