Legally, "you should have known something fishy was going to occur" is a very different beast from "you knowingly participated in a felony conspiracy, and a co-conspirator committed murder that depended on your material aid."
Home invasions have a tendency to end up with someone dead. Don't help your friends commit them by giving them guns or the vehicles to get there. (Also, don't be the getaway driver for a bank robbery.)
Without the court finding that Holle knew his friends were going to commit burglary, the prosecutor could wave his arms all he wanted about how he should have known his friends were scumbags and he should not have lent them even his watch, but the actual legal requirements for felony murder would have fallen apart.
It's not hard to argue that TOR has non illegal useses which provide a fair amount of protection. DARPA provided early funding. Further the US State department is currently funding TOR development giving US exit nodes much better legal standing.
More importantly TOR is not going to work much worse if your exit node(s) shut down. Selling spray paint to a 15 year old might be used for tagging but you don't know and not selling it is not going to stop crap.
Home invasions have a tendency to end up with someone dead. Don't help your friends commit them by giving them guns or the vehicles to get there. (Also, don't be the getaway driver for a bank robbery.)
And, I suspect a jury would add to that...Don't offer up your internet connection with the specific intent to aid in shielding the identities of child pornographers, spammers, and all manner of thieves.
Halle was convicted specifically under Florida's felony murder law, which lists a number of felonies (including arson, escape, home invasion, and carjacking) that, if you participate in them, you are liable for any murders that occur during them.
We might someday find that everyone is responsible for their Internet connection. But it won't be because of felony murder laws.
You're being pedantic. The point is that there are similar laws regarding conspiracy that are even more broad, that could easily put an exit node operator in prison.
> On the other hand, one who has no knowledge of a conspiracy, but happens to act in a way which furthers some object or purpose of the conspiracy, does not thereby become a conspirator. Similarly, a person does not become a conspirator merely by associating with one or more persons who are conspirators, nor merely by knowing that a conspiracy exists.
There's your defense. An individual running a TOR exit node with the purpose of passing news to people behind the great firewall of China does not become a conspirator because an anonymous individual uses that node to commit wire fraud. They had no knowledge that a conspiracy was being committed - they may have furthered it (by simply running the node) but that is insufficient for a conspiracy charge.
> Running a TOR exit node almost certainly would not constitute an agreement under federal law.
You may very well be right. All I'm saying, and this is the EFF's position as well, is that at some point a prosecutor (or several) will test this. By running the node, you have agreed to have traffic run through your system. Given the shady reputation, you are saying "come do illegal things with my internet connection, I'll protect your identity".
Federal prosecutors are smart, and most are gunning for jobs at high-end law firms. Someone is going to try to get a nice resume bump by testing this eventually, and there will be an unlucky exit node operator that will at best only have to pay a six figure defense bill, and at worst will spend time in prison.
If that were really "all you were saying" the comment thread wouldn't be so deep. But earlier you said, "that's enough to make someone culpable," implying not that a prosecutor would test it, but that someone would be convicted. There simply isn't a sturdy argument for that proposition.
Home invasions have a tendency to end up with someone dead. Don't help your friends commit them by giving them guns or the vehicles to get there. (Also, don't be the getaway driver for a bank robbery.)
Without the court finding that Holle knew his friends were going to commit burglary, the prosecutor could wave his arms all he wanted about how he should have known his friends were scumbags and he should not have lent them even his watch, but the actual legal requirements for felony murder would have fallen apart.