Re: Self-important little pricks
"In other words, Tor's ethical guidelines don't apply to them".
Sadly, AC is right. Some researchers need to learn that The Internet Is Not Your Chew-Toy.
"Doing Research" does not give you the right to be a dick towards other people on campus or elsewhere on the internet. There have been times where I've had to pull the plug on research projects that have accidentally DDoS'd other sites, or attempted to access traffic that was not intended for them. There have also been times where I've had to firewall off projects that were in danger of being attacked/misused themselves.
If that relay node had been compromised, it would have made one hell of a "listening post" for pretty much anybody with an interest in intercepting Tor traffic - law enforcement, three-/four-letter security agencies, hostile foreign powers, criminals, take your pick.
I've no sympathy for these guys, because there are clear guidelines for research ethics:
4. Examples of unacceptable research activity
It is not acceptable to run an HSDir, harvest onion addresses, and publish or connect to those onion addresses.
Could they be any clearer ? Harvesting .onions is bad, mmmkay.