Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not the key precedent they are setting. They are working on a much more important case: Making the population understand that disobedience will result in punishment
Isn't this the goal of most laws?
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Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
171–180 of 397 posts
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weev 'violated' the CFAA for incrementing a GET request, with his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction. So the government has put us in a position where it's hard to take the CFAA seriously. We also know from prosecutions in other statutes that the government will often prosecute a a broad crime with many separate sub-definitions of the various way you can break it, then refuse to tell you under which su…
The CFAA isn't super complicated. It basically boils down to: Don't fuck with other people's shit if they don't want you to.
Are you a lawyer by chance?
I seem to remember cases or interpretations of the CFAA in which even guessing the username password combo of "admin:admin" would violate the act, resulting in teenagers or children being caught up in cYbEr FrAuD
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#173Insert joke about federal agents shooting dogs...
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And yet fraudulent warrants, if they are indeed fraudulent, are still illegal and immoral and a violation of this criminal's rights.
As far as i can discern, the warrants aren't fraudulent.
Warrants (in the US anyway) require reasonable belief that the crimes listed were committed.
They don't have to be right, mind you (after all, that's what trial is for), they just need reasonable belief.
They also can't recklessly disregard the truth (IE deliberately write lies they know are wrong).
Again, it's okay for them to be wrong about their belief. It's just not okay to know they are wrong and write it anyway.
Here, reading the warrant, etc, there is nothing obviously fraudulent here.
Perhaps it is, of course, but i read everything i could find and it's completely non-obvious which part of the warrant is supposed to be fraudulent.
Even the sort of retaliation claim made here is strange - Arresting you when you appear to actually hvae broken the law is generally only considered retaliation if (among other things) the enforcement of the law is uneven - IE targeted at you and nobody else.
Given the arrest was for a parole violation and they arrest parole violations like this all the time, ....
Like if you are at a traffic stop becuase you ran a red light, call a cop an asshole, and they arrest you because you have 50kg of cocaine bricks in your back seat, it's not retaliation.
Retaliation would be if you call a cop an asshole on facebook, and they come arrest you for violation of an 1825 law that hasn't been used against anyone in 200 years.
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#175Earlier 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 grief. This is also part of the reason why I have a pact with my coworkers: if I’m terminated, kill my access immediately and universally, and I’ll do the same for them. I don’t even want to have the ability to look at stuff anymore. Remove any shred of possibility that I could get into shenanigans later.
I also follow the closely related addendum: I do not want standing admin access to your system, unless I need it often enough it really impacts my productivity. Doubly so if it's not hooked up to SSO. If the database gets breached, I don't want my name on the list of people who had the admin password.
Most big businesses are good about that, but I've helped a couple family members with their business' WordPress and just have standing access that I really don't want. They don't want to juggle activating/de-activating my account though, so /shrug.
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean this is how the law enforcement part of the federal government uses its weight, Aaron Swartz's prosecutor-style to bully people. Cannabis is harmless and a lot of people use it as medicine, even if they think of it as recreational. "Oh I need it to relax." Then its an anti-anxiety drug, not a 'party' drug. Limiting this is just cruelty and an easy 'win' for LE. Same with justifying the slaying of Philando Cast…
No. He wasn't convicted of a cannabis offense. He was convicted of a fairly grave computer fraud/abuse claim, and part of the contract of his early release from federal custody was a set of terms that included monitoring and sobriety. He allegedly violated those terms, and you stipulate those violations here. Like any parolee, he's being put back into custody.
Why is that added, there's an agenda there. Why does "sobriety" matter in a computer crime? This is oppression and this (plus the other conditions) simple set up people like this for a fall.
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#177I can attest as a personal experience in the past that this kind of behavior is not uncommon with feds, and has happened even before the current administration. I've had a five years probation in the past for what the FBI argued that I "hacked" some company from changing the URL in specific ways, not to mention the "clear hacking tools" I had installed in my computer, e.g CCleaner. You know something is wrong when yo…
> I can attest as a personal experience in the past that this kind of behavior is not uncommon with feds, and has happened even before the current administration One the first comments on reddit was actually: > … in trump's america lmao Someone had to awkwardly point out it was biden’s america. Which makes it easier and saves keystrokes: it’s just “america, lmao”. Then other countries can be even worse so it’s “lmao”…
The wife’s description of the charges is not honest. See all of the other comments which revealed a much longer list of offenses he committed.
The Reddit post is an attempt to garner sympathy by leaving out all of the actual crimes committed.
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#178For 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…
From reddit post, from transcript at https://rockenhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/U.S.-v.-Ro...
8 Q. Due to the nature of the offense charged being a
9 computer-related crime, did he have specific
10 restrictions on his pretrial release as it relates to
11 his computer usage?
12 A. Yes. One of the conditions was that he must
13 participate in the Computer Restriction and Monitoring
14 Program.
15 Q. How is that program enforced?
16 A. That program is enforced -- the defendant has to
17 download a software program onto his computer or iPhone
18 or whatever, any type of device that has access to the
19 Internet. That information is -- the monitoring
20 company, they monitor -- they are able to monitor what
21 he is accessing on the Internet. And the Probation
22 Officer has been allowed to review weekly reports about
23 what sites he's accessing, things like that.
24 Q. And is the defendant notified and made aware and
25 provided with a document that states the terms of that
1 agreement?
2 A. Yes.
The chain would then appear to be: convicted of computer crime -> required computer monitoring software during supervision -> installed and used Tor -> supervision violation and revoked to prison.
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Weev 'violated' the CFAA for incrementing a GET request, with his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction. So the government has put us in a position where it's hard to take the CFAA seriously. We also know from prosecutions in other statutes that the government will often prosecute a a broad crime with many separate sub-definitions of the various way you can break it, then refuse to tell you under which su…
> We also know from prosecutions in other statutes that the government will often prosecute a a broad crime with many separate sub-definitions of the various way you can break it, then refuse to tell you under which sub-definition you're being charged, meaning you have no way to know if the jury even were unanimously convicting for the same thing and no way to know what you're even defending against.
Could you give some examples of this?
Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node
#180Earlier 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…
Oof. Any links to this one?
I believe this is the primary case being currently contested: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69848942/united-states-...
This appears to be the earlier filing, but I'm not savvy enough to pull the underlying docs if indeed I can (where I am used to viewing PACER documents I get a permissions error): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66960649/united-states-...
(If you install the RECAP extension in your browser you can cache downloaded PACER docs and they will get linked from Courtlistener. Lay users can sign up for a PACER account and if you use less than $30 of document access charge per quarter it will be waived)