Encryption service Tor has been caught up in a Texas revenge porn lawsuit. Yesterday, attorney Jason Lee Van Dyke linked to a lawsuit filing against Pink Meth, a nude photos site accessible only to users of the encryption software. The complaint accuses Pink Meth of offenses that include potentially distributing child pornography and gaining unauthorized access to privately hosted nude photos, neither of which are uncommon ways to go after a revenge porn site. But Van Dyke’s case also extends to Tor, which he says is guilty of conspiring with Pink Meth by helping it operate.
According to Van Dyke, the two organizations “had a meeting of the minds” in order to let Pink Meth publish photographs of women without their consent while letting the site’s operators and visitors escape legal consequences. In addition to uploading photographs sent by users, Pink Meth posts contact and social media information of subjects. Among the victims was college student Shelby Conklin, who has been filing suits against Pink Meth and various hosting services since 2012. A settlement with Verisign temporarily took down the site’s main domain, but it’s continued to operate under various addresses. Van Dyke equates Tor and its anonymous web tools with traditional hosting services, calling it an example of “unscrupulous internet service companies” that “allow illegal websites like Pink Meth to remain anonymous and difficult for authorities to shut down.”
[…] According to Van Dyke, the two organizations “had a meeting of the minds” in order to let Pink Meth publish photographs of women without their consent while letting the site’s operators and visitors escape legal consequences. In addition to uploading photographs sent by users, Pink Meth posts contact and social media information of subjects. Among the victims was college student Shelby Conklin, who has been filing suits against Pink Meth and various hosting services since 2012. A settlement with Verisign temporarily took down the site’s main domain, but it’s continued to operate under various addresses. Van Dyke …read more … Read more »