asswipe Posted February 24, 2016 Report Posted February 24, 2016 A federal judge in Washington has now confirmed what has been strongly suspected: that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers at its Software Engineering Institute were hired by the federal government to do research into breaking Tor in 2014. The judge also made a notable statement in his court order that "Tor users clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP addresses while using the Tor network." However, some of the details that Tor alleged previously seem to be wrong: the research was funded by the Department of Defense, not the FBI. Tor Project Director Shari Steele told Ars earlier this year that the organization still couldn't get straight answers from CMU. According to the judge, that research was then subpoenaed by federal investigators. The Tor Project did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Meanwhile, Kenneth Walters, a CMU spokesman, refused to answer Ars' questions, referring us only to the university's last statement, from November 2015, which hinted that the university was served with a subpoena. The revelation, which was first reported by Vice Motherboard, came out as part of the ongoing criminal case against Brian Farrell, allegedly one of Silk Road 2.0’s top administrators. CMU's research enabled investigators to find him. Farrell was arrested over a year ago in Washington state—his trial is scheduled for April 25, 2016, to be held in federal court in Seattle. The Tuesday court order by US District Judge Richard Jones was in response to a still-sealed motion to compel discovery filed by Farrell. According to Judge Jones, "the defendant seeks to compel disclosure of additional material pertaining to the relationship between SEI and federal law enforcement and the methods used by SEI to identify the defendant’s IP address." In the order, the judge seems to suggest that even though Farrell took measures to protect his privacy, his actual IP address—which was what betrayed him and made it trivial for law enforcement to find him—was not in and of itself private. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/judge-confirms-what-many-suspected-feds-hired-cmu-to-break-tor/ https://motherboard.vice.com/read/carnegie-mellon-university-attacked-tor-was-subpoenaed-by-feds Quote
