Start of a Tor Legal Support Directory

by phobos | January 12, 2010

Over the past few months, a number of exit relay operators have contacted us asking for help with some legal issues encountered while running their relay. While we can't provide legal advice in all jurisdictions, we can frequently find you a next hop in the legal chain to get you the advice or representation you need. Sometimes this advice is free/pro-bono, other times it is not. It's up to the legal organization to decide if they can take your case or refer you to someone else.

Rather than keep a secret list of people willing to help, we're building a public list for operators to contact directly, in their own country. A big thanks to Fred and Gwen at the EFF for helping to start this list and for making introductions. And, of course, a big thanks to the organizations for agreeing to be listed and for offering support to Tor relay operators.

If you'd like to add your name to this list, please let me know.

The current list of legal support organizations by country is:

Finland:
Turre Legal
http://www.turre.com/
Fax +358985657006
contact person: Herkko Hietanen
http://www.turre.com/lawyers/

The Netherlands:
Bits of Freedom
http://www.bof.nl

Australia:
Electronic Frontier Australia
http://www.efa.org.au/
email: email@efa.org.au
Phone: +61 2 9011 1088
Fax: +61 2 8002 400

Germany, Switzerland, Austria:
Chaos Computer Club
http://www.ccc.de/
anonymizer@ccc.de

Zwiebelfreunde e.V.
http://www.zwiebelfreunde.de/
support@torservers.net

United States:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.eff.org/about/contact
information@eff.org

Switzerland:
http://www.privacyfoundation.ch

Comments

Please note that the comment area below has been archived.

would it be legally risqué

would it be legally risqué to put this list in the wiki?
i suppose you are verifying with each organization that they are willing to be listed.

I have reservations about

I have reservations about this also. If you are listing solely on the representation of the legal firm, without any references or other vetting, is there not a risk that some covert GO or other will get itself listed in an attempt to compromise Tor users or providers? I do not know how effective such an attempt would be, but I can quickly think of several "three letter" agencies that might consider it.

I talked to each firm or

I talked to each firm or group first. They come vetted by reputation and by recommendation from others we already know and trust. All of these groups listed have either already defended Tor exit operators, or have stood up for free speech and free expression.

It's up to you what you do with the information provided.

Now the pedophiles will get

Now the pedophiles will get help to share child pornography. Congratualtions Tor project.

Now the Chinese will have

Now the Chinese will have free speech. Congratulations, Tor Project.

Thanks to the Tor Project

Thanks to the Tor Project from a Chinese people behind the Great Fire Wall. But the Tor net is too slowly.

"Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world" is the first email from China to Germany in 1987. Now we say, "Across the Great Fire Wall we can reach every corner in the world".

About the slow Tor: The main

About the slow Tor:

The main reason for Tor being slow is that many people (ab)use Tor for sharing/downloading things like movies or software.

My suggestion is to redirect these poeple to software which is better suited for this kind of stuff. For example MUTE, Freenet, OneSwarn and Gnunet, maybe WASTE. One could advertise them with having more speed. IMO there should be written on the download page in big letters:

DO YOU WANT TO SHARE FILES ANONYMOUSLY?

linking to a page with links and a little description about this stuff. I guess MUTE and OneSwarm are the best projects, because they do what they should do and are pretty easy to use. But Wikipedia has a nice article named Anonymous P2P about this.

well i happy and it's a good

well i happy and it's a good news, i am one of sued operator actually and i still without any new after 4 months, so any help will always appreciate or given advice to peoples who need with sharing our experience

Big Thanks

SwissTorExit

legal support directory is

legal support directory is very good.i thought is very nice.
..............................
mica l
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/start-tor-legal-support-dir

Can you provide a legal

Can you provide a legal support organisation for France ? I'm a French TOR relay operator and I just being sued for e-commerce fraud.

Thanks,
Staanii.