CCC criticizes German police action when searching Tor association members

The German CCC, the Chaos Computer Club, is critical of the police’s actions against a Tor association. Members’ homes were searched for raising money for an email service used by a site calling for violence at a party congress.

The CCC writes that it concerns the Zwiebelfreunde association, which means as much as ‘onion friends’. This is another reference to Tor, which uses onion routing. The association runs Tor relays via TorServers. The German police are said to have searched the homes of board members of the association on June 20 and seized equipment. The members are not themselves suspects, but are seen as ‘witnesses’. The action took place because money was collected on the website of the association for the American service Riseup, which offers e-mail, among other things. This e-mail service was used by a website not related to Zwiebelfreunde that called for violence at a party congress of the German AfD party.

Police declined to respond to questions about the action to Der Spiegel, saying only that the members are not suspicious and that the seized equipment is still under investigation. The site writes that hard drives, telephones and documents have been seized. Documents available to Der Spiegel would show that only documents that were not older than January 2018 could be taken. That did not happen, however, as the police would also have taken much older material. The site publishes a photo of a seized 3D-printed object resembling a small replica of an atomic bomb that belongs to a launcher. The police labeled the object with the associated crime, namely ‘causing an explosion with explosives’.

The CCC is critical of the action, because it would be incomprehensible how the police came to the decision to search the homes of the board members. “As a result of this clearly nonsensical logic, those involved as witnesses and their families have faced very disproportionate violations of their home peace,” the organization said.

In their own message on TorServers, the board members write that the security of relays and mail and web servers has not been compromised by the action, even though the police would also have seized smart cards and yubikeys. The police would most likely have gained access to data from people who have ever made a donation to TorServers, Tails or Riseup. Netzpolitik has published an interview with one of the board members and his partner.