Theodore Reppe, a well known net activist and crypto-anarchist was charged with posting false information on the internet and causing 38 euros in damages. As many of you may remember, he had his house raided earlier which was likely due to his name being on the wikileaks.de domain name. He also runs a Tor exit node, allowing users (and leakers) to access the internet anonymously. Somebody used his exit node to do something that was illegal in Germany however the courts found that he was not guilty of it as clearly he did not commit the act despite it being tracked to his IP address. The original press release is below.

Jena, 29.10.2009

Today, the Local Court of Jena, Hall 1, held a criminal trial against the
domain owner of wikileaks.de, Theodore Reppe. The criminal charges were
computer fraud - Reppe was accused of posting false information on the
Internet and thereby causing damages amounting to 38.55 euros. The only
evidence: An IP address that led to Reppe's customer data. After the opening
statement, defense attorney Norman Lenz read out comments and other
statements from Reppe that the court and prosecutor had to see that Reppe
was not the culprit. In fact, it turned out that the Tor server operated by
Reppe had been misused by someone else.

The question ensued between the court and defense as to whether Reppe was
still guilty since he had allowed the transfer of the fraudulent data. The
court offered the popular conservative view that projects such as Tor are
more harmful than useful, stating claims such as, "There's nothing to fear
if you have nothing to hide!" and "This server could also allow anonymous
distribution of child pornography!" The defense countered: "These sorts of
statements could also justify the elimination of private mail and personal
correspondence." In the end, the presumption of innocence was upheld:
Reppe's Tor server only anonymizes and encrypts activity, it is not itself
the source of illegal activities, and thus the court had to acquit him.

Please send questions to tor@morphium.info and they will be promptly
answered.