Woman sues Tor project for ‘revenge porn’

A Texas lawyer has sued The Tor Project on behalf of a woman. Developers of the anonymization network software would help make it possible for the Pinkmeth website to serve illegal pornographic material.

A lot of so-called ‘revenge porn’ is posted on Pinkmeth. In many cases, according to lawyers, this is illegal because the persons concerned have not given permission for this. A Texas woman previously sued Pinkmeth.com for similar reasons, but she has now ordered a Texas attorney to file a lawsuit against not only the porn site’s administrators, but also The Tor Project.

According to the indictment, developers working at The Tor Project are complicit in allowing Pinkmeth to operate anonymously on the ‘dark net’ Tor and allow users to anonymously upload prohibited content. Lawyer Jason L. Van Dyke is also said to have written to Tor2web, a website that makes it possible to request content on Tor via the ‘normal’ internet.

It is not yet clear whether the Texas court will declare the case admissible, but the matter raises questions about whether individuals who participate in The Tor Project, and in fact only develop the protocol and provide the necessary software, can be prosecuted in the US. The Tor network has grown in popularity over the past year following several revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden.