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.
I am from austria and honestly I feel ashamed. What honestly gets my blood boiling is the fact, that there is a high chance the people that connected through his exit node are probably still free.
It is like jailing the postman for delivering a letter containing CP. Anyway I hope the people actually actively distributing and using CP get what they deserve.
Here the crime is privacy, which is the same thing many countries are trying to curtail, including France, which is clamping down hard on encryption.
With time we will see services like protonmail or vpns vilified in order to make them inaccessible to the public.
You shouldn’t feel too ashamed, in the end Weber got 5 years of probation on the sentence of “support of general distribution”, and shortly after the law was amended to give private persons like Weber the same protection from liability that ISPs enjoy from how people use their network. At least, according to Weber.