> If they're not suspected more then it isn't a lead.

Sure it is. "The thief was a member in the AA meeting held on the 28th, but we don't know which one. We do know one person in that group's name though, so let's follow up on what we can." A lead is anything that can be followed up on. If it can't be followed up on, it's not a lead.

This is getting pretty far into the weeds, so I'm going to try to summarize my position more concisely, and from a different direction. I'm interested in if our stances on this are actually all that different.

My stance: The running of a Tor exit node should not be used to exclude a suspect from an initial look just because the traffic has a statistically much smaller chance of having originated with the suspect (based on percentage of traffic, not number of users). That is, it should not be a "fruit of a poisoned tree" type scenario, where the running of the exit node somehow provides protection, as I think none is warranted.

By running the Tor exit node through your home connection (or in any way that easily tracks back to you), you are associating your identity to that traffic. Not necessarily as the originator, but you are associated. If that association happens to bring attention to you that makes you look like a viable suspect (hopefully from more than just that association!), then that should be followed up on, even if it happens to end up not yielding the correct suspect (you can't know ahead of time). To me, this isn't about Tor, or an open WiFi, but about associating your name in any way in criminal activity, no matter how small, no matter how removed. There is increased risk there purely because you've made yourself more present in the minds of the investigators, and they may see something there to your detriment.

I don't think it's any different than if I walked around handing my business card to every person I saw on the street. If one ends up murdered or arrested, the police may see that and decide to take a look at me. Should I be arrested or raided purely on that criteria? No. But if I'ma lawyer, and there was a lawyer associated with the crime in some way, I might start looking like an interesting suspect. It is very clear to me that I have increased my risk by being very undiscerning of who I hand my cards out to.

My position on this comes from a prior article on the same event, discussed at HN[1], where the raided party said:

Robinson admits it might be safer, legally, to host the Tor relay on rented space from a commercial Internet service to avoid mingling his personal traffic with Tor, but he says he shouldn't have to.

"Why should I be spending extra money?" he asks. "There need to be more Tor exit nodes, more Tor nodes generally, and you don't need to be discouraging people from doing it by intimidating them with bogus criminal complaints," he says.

He doesn't have to, but he also doesn't get to act like his actions are completely removed from reality, and don't have any consequences whatsoever. Clearly they do, and they did, and I think it's unrealistic to think they won't or shouldn't, as that's not how people's minds (and thus investigations) work.

1: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/04/04/472...