CCC criticizes the actions of the German police when searching members of the Tor association

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

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

The police wouldn’t opposite Der Spiegel respond to questions about the action, but said 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, among other things, have been seized. Documents available to Der Spiegel would show that only documents that were not older than January 2018 could be taken. However, that did not happen, the police would also have taken much older material. The site publishes a photo of a seized 3D-printed object that resembles a small replica of an atomic bomb and belongs to a launcher. The police labeled the object with the corresponding 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 houses of the board members. “As a result of this patently nonsensical logic, those involved as witnesses and their families have suffered very disproportionate breaches of their domestic peace,” the organization said.

In its 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 one interview published with one of the board members and his partner.