Responsibilities of Mix Operators
Operators are bound to the laws in their country and should not work against
them. Otherwise, their Mixes would be shut down very soon.
Law Enforcement
Especially Operators of last Mixes, that send out the user request data, will
eventually get messages from individuals, organisations and law enforcement
agencies that request to know the originator of certain web requests. You can
tell them that it is, even for you, technically impossible to determine this
originator if not all other operators in the cascade work with you. This will
be especially unrealistic if they are from different countries. And, if one of
them doesn't log any data, even if all Operators collaborate you could not link
past requests. You will find more information on this topic here.
Maybe the law enforcement agencies in your country have the power to force
you to monitor web requests for a certain time and let you store the data. If
they also have the power to say "If you do not give us the possibility to
track a web request, we will shut down your service", you have three
possibilities:
- Shut down the Mix (this is the worst alternative a no one has a use of
it)
- Ask your cascade members to log data.
- Start a new cascade with other Mix Operators that will log data.
In neither case you should share the collected data without need or give
someone else than yourself direct access to it. This would undermine the trust
of your users. Release the data only if law enforcement agencies force you to
do so and there is no other way. If you are forced to implement any kind of
automatic "supervision channel", by that law enforcement agencies could collect
any data they want, you will have to shut down your service, as you have lost
control over it.
Remember that, before running a Mix, you must be sure this is not illegal
in your country! Otherwise you have the risk of being punished or
arrested!