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Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

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Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this posture also criminalize white-hat hackers, whose disclosures would protect you from the people who actually want to do damage?

(I don't know enough about the CFAA to know whether this is true so I'll assume it is.) To continue the garage door analogy, you wouldn't walk up to any random garage door and try code 12345 to help protect the owner's stuff, would you?

To stick with this analogy: I think a white hat equivalent would be more like driving down the street with a garage door remote set to a default code and then notifying anyone whose door opens in response that they should change their code. I don't think that should be illegal.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#334
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several years prior I had a coworker get arrested on CSAM charges because, you guessed it, he ran an Tor exit node. Of course there was no reporting on the Tor aspect, just “local man arrested for CSAM” in the local papers. He eventually had the charges dropped after years of court battles, but his name is forever tarnished as a result. This particular job we had a lot of idealist folks, two of whom ran relays - they…

If you run a Tor exit node, it is quite possible that you will end up downloading things on behalf of other people. CSAM carries strict liability charges.

Seems not to if you're working at an AI image generation company.

https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/investigation-finds-ai-i...

https://www.techpolicy.press/laion5b-stable-diffusion-and-th...

Someone somehow downloaded the images in LAION 5B to do the actual training, and we know that thousands of these images contained illegal content.

Where's the strict liability? Everyone who ever downloaded and ran Stable Diffusion 1.5, or even Lora's from it, could in some way be held "strictly liable" for the fact that you are simply one prompt away...

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#335
Hello everyone. This is Adrienne Rockenhaus (the "OP" from the Reddit post). I've been reading this discussion, and I want to provide some clarity and address the main points being raised, with links to the public record.

The discussion here has focused heavily on the original 2014 CFAA charge. But the current, life-threatening crisis is happening in Michigan, and it's based on a series of supervised release violations that were provably manufactured.

The warrant lists five violations. Here is the truth for each:

"Lost Contact/Absconder": This is a lie. My husband was hospitalized in a VA facility for a mental health crisis, and we have text messages proving the probation office knew his exact whereabouts.

"New Credit": This was identity theft, for which we filed a formal police report. The probation office tried to punish him for being the victim of a crime.

"Unauthorized iPhone": The phone was his authorized work device, issued by me, his formally approved employer (approved by his former PO in writing).

"Failed Restitution": He was paying the amount agreed upon with his first PO. We have the government's own receipts to prove it.

"Cannabis Use": A misleading omission. He has a legal prescription for Marinol for his combat-related PTSD, which the probation office knew would cause a positive test.

Regarding the Texas case, the real issue is not the details of the decade-old charge; it's the corrupt process the government used:

Pretext: The charge was revived just before the statute of limitations expired, and only after my husband refused to help the FBI decrypt traffic from his Tor exit node.

Perjury: His 3-year pretrial detention was secured by the perjured testimony of a U.S. Probation Officer who lied about what a "SPICE graphics driver" is. The FBI agent never corrected this lie on the record.

Collusion: The entire hearing was tainted. We have documented proof that his own defense attorney at the time was actively colluding with his ex-wife to sabotage the case.

This is not about whether you approve of his past actions. This is about whether the government should be allowed to use pretext, perjury, and conspiracy to jail a citizen. The core principle is that everyone is entitled to due process. He did not receive it.

Please do not take my word for it, and do not take the word of anonymous commenters.

Read the primary source documents for yourself. The fraudulent warrants, the court transcript proving the perjury, and the evidence of the conspiracy are all on the public record at rockenhaus.com.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound like a crime to me too. But was it a password or other credential that was guessed, or was it just some sequential primary key? The latter is not an authorization system, and I do not believe it a crime to do that unless you have specific knowledge that it is likely to cause damage and/or the intent to cause that damage. As far as I am concerned, I am allowed to send any traffic I wish to public-facing…

You are not allowed unauthorized access regardless of how the key works. > I am allowed to send any traffic I wish to public-facing hosts No you're not. Denial of service is a federal crime. > I have no responsibility to refrain Yes you do, and this is just beyond silly. The nuance of how you obtained it will be decided in a court. Stop making everything so reductionist and lazy. > The only traffic I am not permitted…

> You are not allowed unauthorized access regardless of how the key works.

You and I seem to both speak/write English, but there is a language barrier. For me, "authorization" means that they have given me credentials, and any content locked down under those credentials is off-limits.

For you, "authorization" is a magical term that has no real meaning. It means that they want me to have the content. But I am no telepath, and I do not know what they want me to have or do not want me to have. The only way, from my point of view, to know what they want me to have or not is to try to retrieve the content without credentials, and if it succeeds, it's legal.

Of course, there are a few corner cases. What if I discover some software defect that very clearly shows they intended to require credentials, and a test without credentials shows that it is indeed off-limits, but exploiting the defect produces that content? I wouldn't do that, that'd be illegal.

But your way of (non-)thinking is alien to me, and no reasonable judge or legislator could possibly mean what you claim that law states. Or at least what you seem to claim.

>No you're not. Denial of service is a federal crime.

Only with intent. If I send reasonable content that shouldn't be DoS, how was I to know? I intend no crime.

>Yes you do, and this is just beyond silly.

You're the one being silly. You can't even decide what you mean by "authorized".

>The nuance of how you obtained it will be decided in a court.

I'm never going to trial, I'm not even going to be noticed.

>Use of a vulnerability to cause

Use of a clear defect. The biggest and most dangerous vulnerabilities are the apathy and stupidity of their employees, their lack of a sane business model and attainable vision, and so on. Using those is just common sense. There is a popular magazine that is subscription only. But they have the pdf download links hidden with display: none CSS. These links require no authorization. Just knowledge. I retrieve those quite punctually.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#337
I'm seeing the topic of a deeply offensive “search term” from the 2020 court hearing being discussed, and I want to address it directly to provide the full context.

The search was for an article my husband was writing for Encyclopedia Dramatica, a well-known (and very controversial) satirical wiki that parodies offensive topics. He was researching the topic to make fun of it, similar to how shows like South Park handle such subjects.

The prosecution knew this search was irrelevant to the actual alleged violation, but they included it in the evidence they gave the judge anyway. This is a classic "poison the well" tactic, using something shocking and out-of-context to prejudice a judge against a defendant.

While the opposition wants to distract everyone with this, the real issues are the ones they cannot defend: the documented perjury by a federal officer, the fraudulent warrants in Michigan, the collusion by his former attorney, and the ongoing medical neglect.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#338
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I understand it --- I haven't read deeply enough to confirm this, it's what I've pieced together from the Reddit thing --- the Tor stuff came long before any of this. What I gather is: 1. Back in 2014 this person committed a pretty grave computer offense, which was not at the time prosecuted. 2. Some time after that, he became a high-profile Tor relay operator. 3. Some time after that, he was asked to subvert thos…

If this is true then it sounds like the FBI targeted him specifically because they figured his previous crimes made for good leverage.

It seems his mistake was not realizing that he was caught between a rock and a hard place. More colloquially he's in the FO stage after FA.

It doesn't seem like anyone is morally in the right, but it also seems like the defendant here was in a legal grey area to begin with.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not allowed unauthorized access regardless of how the key works. > I am allowed to send any traffic I wish to public-facing hosts No you're not. Denial of service is a federal crime. > I have no responsibility to refrain Yes you do, and this is just beyond silly. The nuance of how you obtained it will be decided in a court. Stop making everything so reductionist and lazy. > The only traffic I am not permitted…

> You are not allowed unauthorized access regardless of how the key works. You and I seem to both speak/write English, but there is a language barrier. For me, "authorization" means that they have given me credentials, and any content locked down under those credentials is off-limits. For you, "authorization" is a magical term that has no real meaning. It means that they want me to have the content. But I am no telep…

You're both veering out of CFAA jurisprudence in different ways. But you know you're in trouble when you start saying things like "I am no telepath", because in fact a big part of an ambiguous CFAA case will be determining what a reasonable person (ie: the jury) would think confronted with the computer system under discussion. There will in fact be mind reading involved; your intent would in fact be tried.

There's nothing at all CFAA-specific about this; this is really basic US criminal law and it comes up in all sorts of different criminal justice contexts. The terms you're both dancing around are mens rea and actus reus.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Totally valid. And I also didn't check into the warrants themselves.

I was responding to the implication I keep seeing here that it's OK that he got arrested because he did bad things, regardless of how the arrest came about.

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