I'm not sure if the above comment is downvoted because of the Patriot Act claim, but that claim happens to be correct. I wrote about this for CNET here:
http://www.cnet.com/news/how-bin-laden-and-911-attacks-shape...
"Long before 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice drafted the so-called Enhancement of Privacy and Public Safety in Cyberspace Act (PDF), which goes by the awkward and not very memorable acronym of EPPSCA. In July 2000, the Clinton administration forwarded EPPSCA to Congress, where it was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and met with a generally chilly response... EPPSCA was designed to give police more authority to conduct Internet surveillance, not thwart terrorists armed with box cutters... within hours of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department had dusted off EPPSCA as a way to respond to bin Laden. On September 13, 2001, two days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, the U.S. Senate approved the "Combating Terrorism Act of 2001," which includes portions copied directly from EPPSCA."
As for the rest of the above comment, this is likely to be a fluid situation and I'm reserving judgment until we know more. It is possible that the good folks at Tor are wrong (I'd like them to be!) and no seizure happens. Government authorities sometimes bluff.
http://www.cnet.com/news/how-bin-laden-and-911-attacks-shape... "Long before 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice drafted the so-called Enhancement of Privacy and Public Safety in Cyberspace Act (PDF), which goes by the awkward and not very memorable acronym of EPPSCA. In July 2000, the Clinton administration forwarded EPPSCA to Congress, where it was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and met with a generally chilly response... EPPSCA was designed to give police more authority to conduct Internet surveillance, not thwart terrorists armed with box cutters... within hours of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department had dusted off EPPSCA as a way to respond to bin Laden. On September 13, 2001, two days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, the U.S. Senate approved the "Combating Terrorism Act of 2001," which includes portions copied directly from EPPSCA."
As for the rest of the above comment, this is likely to be a fluid situation and I'm reserving judgment until we know more. It is possible that the good folks at Tor are wrong (I'd like them to be!) and no seizure happens. Government authorities sometimes bluff.