> 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.