(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
The public prosecutor's office of Konstanz, Germany raided, during the last weekend some computing centres and seized several servers that were running copies of TOR, a well known software used for the anonymisation of the Internet usage.
The action was related to a child pornography case, and, apparently, the IP addresses of the servers were found in a chat room where these kinds of images were traded. Those servers were probably configured as TOR Exit-Nodes.
No charges have been brought against any of the owners of the servers - at least for now. Moreover, according to one of the persons whose servers were seized, a prosecutor told him that it was legal to run TOR servers in Germany.
According to some, this might be one of the results of the last month declarations of the German officials that combating terrorism has become a much more important objective than respecting privacy and the right to anonymity on the Internet.
Shava Nerad, the executive director of the TOR project, has confirmed that six TOR servers were seized during the investigation, among others. He also pointed out that: "This is not a "crackdown" on TOR, as has been widely reported. We expect and hope that the volunteer TOR server operators in Germany will get their equipment back after this has blown over, and there will be no action against TOR."
Germany: Crackdown on TOR-node operators (10.09.2006)
http://itnomad.wordpress.com/2006/09/10/germany-crackdown-on-tor-node-...
German police seize TOR servers (11.09.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/11/anon_servers_seized/
German Computer Confiscations NOT an Attack on TOR (11.09.2006)
http://themostboringblogintheworld.wordpress.com/2006/09/11/german-com...
EDRi-gram : German Minister of Justice wants limits to the anonymiser
service (30.09.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.16/anonymiser
Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
http://tor.eff.org/