121–130 of 397 posts
I certainly sympathise, but actually don't find it at all surprising. Tor is totally used for criminal activity. That doesn't mean it is inherently a bad thing, or that it is this guy's fault, but he can't completely wash his hands off it. If bad guys use the postal service, it's not the postman's fault, but he has to cooperate with law enforcement if they demand that. I don't know about the US, but contempt of court…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this the goal of most laws?
The goal of the laws is that you have to obey the laws. Here the case is that you have to obey the people holding the badges.
Your local zoning code is probably chock full of them. And if not there then your local stormwater/runoff rules probably have a bunch of examples too.
Federal stuff is much more highly litigated so you don't see as much of it there. State is a middle ground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, I think I found the original thing Rockenhaus was convicted of. Back in 2014, Rockenhaus worked for a travel booking company. He was fired. He used stale VPN access to connect back to the company's infrastructure, and then detached a SCSI LUN from the server cluster, crashing it. The company, not knowing he was involved, retained him to help diagnose and fix the problem. During the investigation, the company figu…
good find, there's often more than meets the eyes in these stories. folks forget that the court/case records will reveal hidden details.
People take this to the extreme and think that their country is somehow a lawless hellscape where police are openly shooting innocent people, dragging them from cars for seemingly no reason etc... but those stories make the news precisely because it's not the norm.
Interesting, Trump administration pardoned Ross William Ulbricht who run drug dealing business specifically because it was done behind Tor using cryptocurrency. So this was a one off? This sounds awful lot like Middle Eastern mafia stuff, where it's technically illegal to do some things but you can do a lot of things if you are aligned with the people in power. I have no idea what this person was up to but this selec…
That was the National Libertarian Party and the party chair was forced to resign in disgrace shortly after, due to accusations of kickbacks and embezzlement.
For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant: 1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release 2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to coope…
This always happens though. Every time someone is thrown in a cage unjustly, the state tries to redirect us (yes, us, here in this forum and others like it) to look at other details of the situation, whether it's details of the person's political or personality or, in this case, details of this (also seemingly unjust) probation violation. Who cares if he smoked weed or installed a VM or evaded a government keylogger?…
Isn't the reddit post doing the same thing by trying to imply he was jailed for running a TOR node when he was officially jailed for breaking parole terms? Even if they think those were just excuse to jail him, the refusal to acknowledge those details makes the account at least deceptive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, I think I found the original thing Rockenhaus was convicted of. Back in 2014, Rockenhaus worked for a travel booking company. He was fired. He used stale VPN access to connect back to the company's infrastructure, and then detached a SCSI LUN from the server cluster, crashing it. The company, not knowing he was involved, retained him to help diagnose and fix the problem. During the investigation, the company figu…
If all of that is true, then that is a very serious CFAA charge. It makes sense that they would want to downplay it as "minor" and "not relevant". It sounds like the parole violations came later? In any case, thank you for researching. There is always more to the story.
Shutting down the server (you solely maintained) before leaving would be "minor" to me... intentionally causing damage, earning money from that, getting caught, and again causing physical damage.. that's pretty "major" to me.
For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant: 1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release 2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to coope…
This always happens though. Every time someone is thrown in a cage unjustly, the state tries to redirect us (yes, us, here in this forum and others like it) to look at other details of the situation, whether it's details of the person's political or personality or, in this case, details of this (also seemingly unjust) probation violation. Who cares if he smoked weed or installed a VM or evaded a government keylogger?…
If someone who did some serious stuff, couldn't follow easy terms, it is cause for concern.
For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant: 1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release 2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to coope…
This always happens though. Every time someone is thrown in a cage unjustly, the state tries to redirect us (yes, us, here in this forum and others like it) to look at other details of the situation, whether it's details of the person's political or personality or, in this case, details of this (also seemingly unjust) probation violation. Who cares if he smoked weed or installed a VM or evaded a government keylogger?…
Go check page 28, lines 3 to 8 on https://rockenhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/U.S.-v.-Ro...
The FBI said he downloaded a client, here Spice, which can be used to access a VM and visited the tor project website to look into how he could download a Tor client. That happened in the 24h which followed him agreeing to electronic monitoring and voluntarily installing a spyware. They argue that he has the knowledge and mean to circumvent the monitoring he agreed to and his pattern of actions indicate he is likely to do so if left free. A huge part of the argument lies on him having agreed to voluntarily participate in his own monitoring. The CFAA charge seems to be sealed but I'm far from convinced it's a minor work related issue.
If you read the website, they keep firing their attorneys and pretending they are colluding with the government to keep him in jail. Parts of the description are frankly bizarre. It seems they are actually suffering for paranoia.
I would read the post with a huge grain of salt.
For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant: 1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release 2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to coope…
This always happens though. Every time someone is thrown in a cage unjustly, the state tries to redirect us (yes, us, here in this forum and others like it) to look at other details of the situation, whether it's details of the person's political or personality or, in this case, details of this (also seemingly unjust) probation violation. Who cares if he smoked weed or installed a VM or evaded a government keylogger?…
There has to be some penalty for noncompliance or you get more of it.