Several years prior I had a coworker get arrested on CSAM charges because, you guessed it, he ran an Tor exit node.

Of course there was no reporting on the Tor aspect, just “local man arrested for CSAM” in the local papers. He eventually had the charges dropped after years of court battles, but his name is forever tarnished as a result.

This particular job we had a lot of idealist folks, two of whom ran relays - they immediately ceased to do so in the aftermath of the coworker’s arrest.

> This particular job we had a lot of idealist folks, two of whom ran relays - they immediately ceased to do so in the aftermath of the coworker’s arrest

Even from the early days of Tor I remember all of the warnings to not run an exit node in a country where internet activity was likely to lead to prosecution.

Running any sort of proxy (including Tor exit nodes) allows other people’s traffic to appear as your traffic. That’s the entire purpose of the software. You’d have to be willing and able to handle the consequences of any traffic any other person decides to send through the system.

Reminds me of a similar case against Dmitry Bogatov in Russia in 2017, it was a big deal back in the day (though of course times have drastically changed and now something like this wouldn't even appear in the news over there).

If you run a Tor exit node, it is quite possible that you will end up downloading things on behalf of other people. CSAM carries strict liability charges.