![]() ![]() ![]() What makes you think your law enforcement is different?Īnd, with data potentially held in perpetuity, any past action may become grounds for prosecution, depending upon how law at the time of prosecution is defined. see nothing wrong with "logless access" as a way of avoiding law enforcement, when it is practiced in other countries whose law enforcement can - including within the scope of their laws - be quite abusive. In that case, I think the distinction is that Tor is meant to help fight censorship in authoritarian countries, and the fact that it can be used for nefarious purposes is an unfortunate side effect that doesn't outweigh the benefits.Īnyway, I do think there is a line between valuing the privacy of users and shielding them from legitimate law enforcement requests, but I'm open to discussion on where exactly that line falls. Another thing is that I consider Tor to be ethical, even though that's essentially a VPN that doesn't log anything (from the perspective of not being able to respond to law enforcement requests, I know there are significant technical differences). I'll admit my opinion here isn't fully fleshed out. a VPN service not logging things? I'll be honest here, I could list out a bunch of differences between those two scenarios (houses tend to have a reasonable expectation of privacy while internet services may not, the likelihood of catching criminals and the severity of their crimes, the potential for abuse, in the case of your house you could always serve as a witness to a crime so cameras might be overkill, etc.) but I honestly don't know which one of those differences is the reason why I find one scenario to be ethical and the other unethical, or if it's some difference I haven't thought of (or I might be wrong!). What's the difference between your scenario of a house with cameras vs. I'll also add that I think your scenario is ethical, you don't have any obligation to put cameras around your house. Intent is the difference between a tragic accident and cold-blooded murder. ![]() I'll start by saying that intent can matter a lot in ethics. Do not leave such determinations to engineers and support staff. Let them first verify who and what authority is making the request. I tell my client's to not even respond to communications from any sort of law enforcement. And often times the person claiming to be a cop is either well outside their authority, or just lying about being a cop. The cops from some countries cannot be trusted. > VPN companies operate at an international level. But that's subjective and I understand others may not feel the same way. Personally, I trust the US justice system enough that I wouldn't have a problem with complying with a valid warrant (after legal due diligence, of course). Like I said in another comment, you have to think about the odds of dealing with an LE request you consider unethical, and balance the consequences of providing logs or not providing logs. I think operating a VPN service for Chinese citizens to evade censorship and not doing logging to protect those users would be ethical, for example. I agree that it depends on who the law enforcement is. I tell my client's to not even respond to communications from any sort of law enforcement or intelligence agency. VPN companies operate at an international level. What about a Chinese officer going after someone for "treason"? What about a Russian cop looking for someone who tweeted pics taken at a protest rally? Or what about a Canadian cop asking questions about a teenager in Sweden, someone well outside Canadian jurisdiction? Or what about the FBI agent asking for some celeb's home address? Rather than pick sides, the best answer is to just not collect the data in the first place. An FBI agent going after someone distributing child pornography is a rather sympathetic police action. I guess that depends on which law enforcement you are talking about. I also think that explicitly not keeping logs to protect users from law enforcement is shady to say the least. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |