Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

The part that should really enrage you is the way people will selectively understand this based on whether they agree or disagree with the context.

If some electronics repair guy repairing vehicle ECUs in bulk who doesn't ask questions but has an inkling that they're gonna get used for emissions laws violations got rolled up on by the feds for refusing to go out of his way to help them out HN would find all sorts of ways to cheer and justify it.

But when they do it to a tor node it's bad.

As someone who works in this industry: we do ECU modification and repair and as such, have regular contact with the EPA. Our products all align with all required emissions regulation and testing, which is why we're allowed to continue selling them. If the EPA says jump, we ask how high.

I say this because this cultural vibe of government agencies kicking in your door for doing innocuous shit needs to die already, that is simply not how this happens. We get letters, we get calls, VERY occasionally we get visits and said visits are scheduled weeks, sometimes months in advance. We always cooperate and the relationship, therefore, is not adversarial.

Honestly we have way more fucking problems with huckster vendors trying to fuck us out of a few extra dollars on parts than anything to do with the big scary government.

While we're at it, fuck coal rollers with a cactus.

You, you are an instance of the problem.

For any given issue, subject, industry or niche there is always a you. And you are the enablers. Multiply by every equivalent idiot and niche and that's how you get the world in which some guy gets whacked for running a tor node.

If not that it would be some other niche, maybe some guy importing gray market power equipment to the chagrin of the branded dealers would be getting whacked. If not that then it's the amish farmers getting whacked over one of their many "in letter but not spirit" compliance measures.

Yeah, in every case the letters of the law are broad enough to nail these sorts of people but that's not an outcome the general public wants except for the occasional zealot on any given subject. And the equivalent enablers would be endorsing it just as you are now.

And at the end of the day your behavior (you plural) undermines the legitimacy of these institutions and the government they serve because these are outcomes that nobody wants, but single industry enforcement enough of a back burner issue that elections mostly don't get won and lost over them so the fire just keeps smoldering year after year (fed by our tax dollars, of course).

>As someone who works in this industry

Perfect illustrative example for one of HN's favorite quotes:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

>Our products all align with all required emissions regulation...the relationship, therefore, is not adversarial.

You might as well compare a medium company with an encrypted file share service to some 1-man package maintainer for software that does the same. Who is law enforcement gonna try and abuse?

>While we're at it, fuck coal rollers with a cactus.

A bunch of reactionary yokels are a symptom of the degree to which your ilk has undermined the legitimacy of the laws they violate and enforcement agencies they thumb their nose at, not the root cause. If society solves people like you the yokels will mostly go away on their own. That is what I seek.

> For any given issue, subject, industry or niche there is always a you. And you are the enablers. Multiply by every equivalent idiot and niche and that's how you get the world in which some guy gets whacked for running a tor node.

I am not defending at all the actions of the FBI. The FBI/CIA/NSA are overzealous law enforcement serving the will of colonial capitalism. Their history of targeting whistleblowers, activists, and technologists; like, for example, the guy running a Tor node; is well documented and deeply problematic. That same machinery has also been deployed against environmental activists, which makes the irony even more bitter that it's being cited here.

I'm defending the EPA, which in contrast, works with numerous industries, including ours, to benefit society as a whole.

The problem is this exact mindset where we insist that everything is on one massive slippery slope and there's simply no way to differentiate from proper, needed regulation, and the boot of law enforcement being deployed to fuck with the working class at scale.

We can tell the difference and it isn't difficult, it simply requires thinking which an unfortunate number of voters don't like doing.

> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

Completely backwards. There is a LOT of money to be made circumventing emissions regulations, which is why almost every OEM has been caught with their hands in that particular cookie jar, either fingernail or wrist deep.

We COST ourselves money locking up those features because we agree with the regulations in place.

> A bunch of reactionary yokels are a symptom of the degree to which your ilk has undermined the legitimacy of the laws they violate and enforcement agencies they thumb their nose at, not the root cause. If society solves people like you the yokels will mostly go away on their own. That is what I seek.

Reactionary movements have existed for every time the Government says don't do anything since time immemorial. There is ALWAYS reactionaries because there is ALWAYS a segment of the population that never matures past the age of ten. The fact that they occasionally have a point is nothing but statistical likelihood; if you constantly say "no" to everything, by sheer chance, you will occasionally say no to something bad.