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How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

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Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#41

Post by cookiecaper »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #6
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

Agreed. This appears to be the ordinary process. Can anyone point out what might be of interest here.

I think it serves as a good reminder that it's quite easy for law enforcement to access anything that you have stored in your cloud accounts. We tend to get casual and think of these as our personal backup pods that can't be accessed without our knowledge.

It's good to remember that Google holds the keys and that they are used according to legal procedure (as in this case), and at times, according to Google's fancy (as in PRISM and I'm sure many incidents of unauthorized employee spying).

Pay attention to what you upload, and pay attention to what you're using. It's very easy to cross-contaminate or leak information, and these things can have a very long tail. "The internet never forgets".

Dread Pirate Roberts aka Ross Ulbrecht was eventually tracked down because early on in the Silk Road's lifecycle, he made a post on a btc talk account linked to his personal email account asking if "[anyone had heard about this new marketplace called Silk Road]". Since that was the first mention found online, agents began to investigate Ulbrecht.

It may seem obvious in hindsight, but that was a single long-forgotten post made years before anyone had an inkling of what Silk Road would become. Strict opsec is very important.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#42

Post by Twirrim »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

Page 7 there are some DMs. "Spammed this at [Victim#1] lets see if he dies".

While his own DMs might be construed to be hyperbolic, he's done himself no favours there at all, and his defense attorney is going to have the fun task of trying to prove that.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#43

Post by JamilD »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

That was my first thought too. After reading the document, it's pretty clear he acted with intent. He visited websites to figure out how to make images that trigger seizures, clearly created the gif for maximum impact and chance of a seizure, which he knows could be fatal. It was planned and well thought out.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#44

Post by erik_seaberg »

Vendan wrote: post #22
tyingq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require insight we don't really have. Personally, I had no idea something like this would work. I assumed it would need something more powerful in intensity, like an actual strobe light. Maybe the suspect in this case knew it would work, maybe not.

Different screen size, but many games have a warning about epilepsy.

It might be like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(198... where the incentives are to mindlessly post a warning without any effort to confirm whether it's necessary. Result: warnings on everything until they're nearly unavoidable.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#45

Post by kylestlb »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

An 8 minute seizure is really, really bad. That was probably very close to fatal.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#46

Post by duskwuff »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

See page 7 of the affadavit. The perpetrator sent a series of direct messages to another Twitter user stating:

> I hope this sends him into a seizure

> Spammed this at [Mr. Eichenwald] let's see if he dies

> I know he has epilepsy

So, the intent to harm and/or kill is pretty damn clear.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#47

Post by just2n »

MBCook wrote: post #7
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This appears to be the ordinary process. Can anyone point out what might be of interest here.

The only thing I can point to us this is one of the few cases where some piece of atrocious online harassment actually ended up with someone being held accountable in anyway. There have been plenty of cases of death threats and bomb threats and other such things that didn't seem to trigger any kind of real response.

They typically don't qualify as criminal threats in those cases. The FBI does investigate quite a few of these and I've seen more than a few from FOIAs that don't result in arrests because they fall short of being criminal. I'm still surprised at just how often nothing is done about swatting.

I find this case interesting. While it's far beyond acceptable or fair play even in good fun and trolling to do something like sending someone who suffers from epilepsy a gif known to trigger a seizure, it's being classed as stalking in this case. I'm curious to see the evidence and what precedent this sets, because it seems like a stretch to call it stalking from what I understand of this case, which is admittedly not too much.

A good side effect of this is that hopefully it prompts companies to provide better protections against this, because it's rather unique in terms of medical conditions interacting with technology and has a lot of potential to cause harm.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#48

Post by yohoho22 »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

What the statute says[1] is "the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, OR place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person."

The affidavit in the complaint does say "AND" but maybe that's just a calculated legal ploy, where they can still fall back on the "OR" of the actual statute?

1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2261A

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#49

Post by megous »

defen wrote: post #19
danso wrote: post #8

Dumb question, but what is the meaning of AT&T "toll records" used to link the user to an iPhone 6? > "AT&T responded and a review of the subscriber information showed the telephone number was associated with a Tracfone prepaid account with no subscriber information. However, a review of the AT&T toll records showed an associated Apple iPhone 6A Model 1586" That is, if you are a Tracfone user and Tracfone uses AT&T t…

So the lesson is if you are trying to murder people over the internet, don't plug your anonymous sim card into your iphone which is tied to your identity?

Risk of death from seizure is not high. Though intentionally triggering people is disgusting and he should never do it again and pay some damages. Intention to cause harm seems clear.

Re: How police found Twitter user accused of sending seizure-triggering GIF

#50

Post by [deleted] »

imglorp wrote: post #24
robk wrote: post #2

That seems like a very reasonable process. Nothing unusual anyways.

The only part I take exception to is the hyperbolic kill portion of, "intent to kill, injure, harass..." of the complaint. Seizures are unpleasant, inconvenient, and you might get injured on the way to the ground but they are rarely fatal, and if the victim was known to be at risk of such, he would be in an ICU somewhere. Did the perpetrator intend to kill? That might be hard to prove.

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