They thing is, they knew he was running a TOR node. They knew they wouldn't find anything. In a _real_ raid for suspected child porn, they confiscate all the equipment. If it's encrypted, you don't get it back (without the money to spend on good lawyers, and then it will be 6 months minimum. Without good lawyers, even if you're never charged, it will probably get wiped and auctioned off, because US police can confiscate anything they damn well please).

There was another article, either here or slahdot or somewhere, talking about how there have been several of these TOR node raids. I doubt they even had any evidence of illegal material being downloaded. I think the FBI got all these local police departments to do this intentionally to scare people.

The guy should have never turned over his passwords either. He would have lost his machine, but IIRC, the Seattle privacy group he's with decided to scrap those machines anyway since they couldn't be sure the PD didn't tamper with the tor server.