- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
William Weber, a LowEndTalk member, was raided by Austrian police in 2012 for operating a Tor exit node that was allegedly used to distribute child pornography. While he was not arrested, many of his computers and devices were confiscated. He was later found guilty of supporting the distribution of child pornography through his Tor exit node, though he claims it was unintentional and he was simply supporting free speech and anonymity. He was given a 5 year probation sentence but left Austria shortly after. Though some articles portray him negatively, it is debatable whether he intentionally supported child pornography distribution or simply operated in the legal grey area of Tor exit nodes.
Rule of thumb: You get the blame.
TL;DR: Ask a lawyer.
You can compare them to VPNs for the severity of restrictions (in 2020):
For some more historical info, there is this list on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)#Reception,_impact,_and_legislation
For a more US-centric FAQ, you can check: https://community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/eff-tor-legal-faq/
Still, most countries don’t like random people to let other unidentified random people to do random stuff, most police officers are ill equipped or educated to deal with it, legislation hasn’t been tested in most places, and you’re running a hard to define, changing, and sometimes random level of risk.