Waking up to local police detectives pounding on one’s door is hardly an ideal way to start a morning but that’s what happened on Wednesday to a Seattle couple that hosts a Tor Exit node on their network.
A Tor exit node is simply a form of anonymous relay that other Internet users – from criminals to activists – can use to remain anonymous. Tor is a network by and for those who wish to remain anonymous; hosting a node of this type is in no way illegal and is in fact a rather important part of how the “dark Internet” works.
Acting with a warrant, the Seattle Police Department detectives were looking for indecent images of children. In a statement to Seattle’s The Stranger, the SPD stated that it "served a warrant at the home while investigating information received from the National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children”. They found none. And the couple, Jan Bultmann and David Robinson were not arrested.
According to a spokesman for the SPD, the detectives were acting based on a tip to the NCMEC from the notorious website 4chan which had relayed to the center the IP address of a user that had uploaded a video of a woman abusing a child aged about 2 or 3 years-old. The IP address likely corresponded to the couple’s Internet connection and action was taken.
Recently, the existence of the “dark Internet” -- which includes services like Tor -- has become common knowledge to the non-hacker types who aren’t as apt to use it and public perception has been largely negative. This is because some do indeed use it for less-than-acceptable reasons. That said, it’s also a powerful tool for those who require privacy and anonymity for do-good reasons as well.
Some officials want to regulate or even shut down the “dark Internet”, but most experts agree that doing so would be excessive and would block legitimate services that some use for the forces of good. Like encryption, Tor and services like it are simply a tools and can be manipulated to both positive and negative ends.
When asked if the couple were off the hook, the SPD told Forbes that, “The case isn’t closed yet, there’s still some stuff we have to review. Obviously, though, they were not arrested and nothing was seized.”
We hope that whoever is responsible is brought to justice, of course, but we also hope that the could gets to spend the foreseeable mornings sleeping in.
