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FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

justice.gov

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Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#41

Post by AmericanChopper »

daxorid wrote: post #33
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, its easier to buy a cheap VPS in a country that is at odds with the one you're in. Then, any intelligence the other country gets will likely not be sent to the country of residence. Ally countries usually have extradition treaties, and have a greater chance of sharing intel.

Correlation is still quite easy in that scenario, unless you're sharing that VPS with a thousand other people. NSA has your international traffic logged and timestamped. If you're doing nefarious activity from a non-MLAT country's IP, and you're the only one connecting to it from the US, it's a simple matter of parallel construction for domestic law enforcement to pop you.

>it's a simple matter of parallel construction for domestic law enforcement to pop you.

This is more just putting some circumstantial evidence together. Parallel construction refers to going out and getting evidence a second time, because you don’t want to reveal how you got it the first time. Usually because the first time it was collected was without a warrant, or collected from a sources or via a method you want to keep secret. So the evidence is reconstructed in parallel.

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#42

Post by gnode »

analyst74 wrote: post #23

Sometimes I feel the anonymity aspect of the Internet brings the worst out of people. If we didn't have anonymity to begin with, people would have not tried those kind of harassment. Or if they do, it'll be a routine case for the police as opposed to requiring substantial FBI involvement.

As far as anonymity and abuse goes, the Internet is not a revolutionary development. The postal system has existed for a very long time, and is capable of much worse. The Unabomber is a poignant example.

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#43

Post by analyst74 »

vokep wrote: post #34
analyst74 wrote: post #23

Sometimes I feel the anonymity aspect of the Internet brings the worst out of people. If we didn't have anonymity to begin with, people would have not tried those kind of harassment. Or if they do, it'll be a routine case for the police as opposed to requiring substantial FBI involvement.

Anonymity is required to maintain freedom of speech. It provides a route for any adult to be the child that calls out the emperors new clothes. The sad part is yes, it also enables bad people to do bad things without consequence, however, that is the bet that we make. That the bad people doing their bad shit, is a small price to pay to prevent bad people in power from doing very very bad shit

It's not anonymity that protected freedom of speech, but people who believe in free speech, represented by supreme court that is protecting it.

And when it comes to overthrowing corrupt ruling class, do people seriously believe anonymously complaining online is going to do anything?

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#44

Post by claudiawerner »

ALittleLight wrote: post #35
Nadya wrote: post #2

The relevant bit is on Page 22. >Further, records from Pure VPN show that the same email accounts Lin's gmail account and the teleportfx gmail account-were accessed from the same WANSecurity IP address. Significantly, Pure VPN was able to determine that their service was accessed by the same customer from two originating IP addresses: the RCN IP address from the home Lin was living in at the time, and the software co…

I opened the document expecting to sympathize with Lin. In my imagination this was some FBI surveillance state overreach, or "cyberharassment" thing getting overblown. Instead, reading through the allegations, Lin came off as abominable. Contrary to your conclusion that this shows the FBI takes cyber harassment seriously, it seems like law enforcement generally allowed Lin to publicly subject this poor woman to psych…

Why would you expect to sympathize with him? Is it usual (i.e more likely than not) that cases of cyberharassment are overblown, or based on faulty knowledge, or outright false? It's strange to me that someone would immediately be so skeptical, unless the rate of false accusations is higher than the rate of true accusations (at least insofar as determined by the imperfect legal system). Is that the case? I'd like to be corrected if it is.

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#45

Post by favorited »

ALittleLight wrote: post #35
Nadya wrote: post #2

The relevant bit is on Page 22. >Further, records from Pure VPN show that the same email accounts Lin's gmail account and the teleportfx gmail account-were accessed from the same WANSecurity IP address. Significantly, Pure VPN was able to determine that their service was accessed by the same customer from two originating IP addresses: the RCN IP address from the home Lin was living in at the time, and the software co…

I opened the document expecting to sympathize with Lin. In my imagination this was some FBI surveillance state overreach, or "cyberharassment" thing getting overblown. Instead, reading through the allegations, Lin came off as abominable. Contrary to your conclusion that this shows the FBI takes cyber harassment seriously, it seems like law enforcement generally allowed Lin to publicly subject this poor woman to psych…

> Provided the allegations are true, whatever sentence he gets will not be enough...

He has already been sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison (and federal time has no parole).

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/massachusetts-man-sentenced-m...

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#46

Post by vkou »

Shivetya wrote: post #29
analyst74 wrote: post #23

Sometimes I feel the anonymity aspect of the Internet brings the worst out of people. If we didn't have anonymity to begin with, people would have not tried those kind of harassment. Or if they do, it'll be a routine case for the police as opposed to requiring substantial FBI involvement.

don't fool yourself, people have been harassing and exploiting others without issue long before the internet. the difference is that while the internet can extend their reach the very nature of brings such occurrences to light more often than before. so while the internet broadens their reach it doesn't always give them more anonymity, if anything their trail is easier to follow by more people, especially law enforce…

> don't fool yourself, people have been harassing and exploiting others without issue long before the internet. the difference is that while the internet can extend their reach the very nature of brings such occurrences to light more often than before.

There's another key difference that you are completely ignoring.

The return on effort invested with internet harassment is much better then the ROI with harassment in the physical world.

Sometimes, an improvement in ROI produces a categorically new thing. An automobile is just a horse buggy with a better ROI - yet, for some reason, neither society, nor the law treats them like it did horse buggies.

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#47

Post by ukyrgf »

claudiawerner wrote: post #44
ALittleLight wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened the document expecting to sympathize with Lin. In my imagination this was some FBI surveillance state overreach, or "cyberharassment" thing getting overblown. Instead, reading through the allegations, Lin came off as abominable. Contrary to your conclusion that this shows the FBI takes cyber harassment seriously, it seems like law enforcement generally allowed Lin to publicly subject this poor woman to psych…

Why would you expect to sympathize with him? Is it usual (i.e more likely than not) that cases of cyberharassment are overblown, or based on faulty knowledge, or outright false? It's strange to me that someone would immediately be so skeptical, unless the rate of false accusations is higher than the rate of true accusations (at least insofar as determined by the imperfect legal system). Is that the case? I'd like to…

The title changed! I hate when Hacker News does this. Before, it was:

> FBI arrests PureVPN user with log data that was said to not exist (justice.gov)

Nothing about cyberstalking. I too figured it was going to be something stupid like piracy.

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#48

Post by joshstrange »

Started out wondering if Lin was going to be wrongly accused but this hit closer to home that I expected. First off Lin appears to be a POS but what hit me was this line:

> While each of these incidents in isolation may appear relatively harmless, the cumulative effect of this behavior is both harassing and indicative of a significant attachment, disproportionate to the amount of time they spent together.

Specifically the first part "While each of these incidents in isolation may appear relatively harmless". I've had friends harassed online and when you try to explain to law enforcement it sounds petty or minor but I've seen first hand it weigh on my friends who have experienced it.

Services like TextNow and Pinger and amazing tools for someone looking to make someones life a living hell. I've still got screenshots of PAGES of new text messages (from different numbers) all from some asshole who has nothing better to do than harass people.

In my situation I had finally had enough and thew up a webpage explaining how to block ALL TextNow/Pinger numbers and calling out the individual in question (trust me this was done tastefully and with tact) then ran Ads on FB to raise awareness in my community. Turns out way more people that just my immediate friends had been affected by this toxic individual (I had a number of people reach out to me). I spent $40 on ads for 67 clicks, 1,465 reach, and 37,454 impressions. It was worth every penny. I'm not going to say this will work for you OR that it worked for me (the harassment stopped but, you know causation/correlation and all that) but I know I would do it again in a heartbeat.

It's important to note the police were next to useless for this entire saga. I'm not sure what percentage was apathy vs a lack of skills but yeah...

Re: FBI affidavit against Ryan S. Lin in cyberstalking case (2017)

#49

Post by ALittleLight »

claudiawerner wrote: post #44
ALittleLight wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened the document expecting to sympathize with Lin. In my imagination this was some FBI surveillance state overreach, or "cyberharassment" thing getting overblown. Instead, reading through the allegations, Lin came off as abominable. Contrary to your conclusion that this shows the FBI takes cyber harassment seriously, it seems like law enforcement generally allowed Lin to publicly subject this poor woman to psych…

Why would you expect to sympathize with him? Is it usual (i.e more likely than not) that cases of cyberharassment are overblown, or based on faulty knowledge, or outright false? It's strange to me that someone would immediately be so skeptical, unless the rate of false accusations is higher than the rate of true accusations (at least insofar as determined by the imperfect legal system). Is that the case? I'd like to…

I don't know what the rate of false or overblown allegations is. I wrote above about my intuition and not my judgment after a considered study of the issues and evidence. It's just what I expected.

As for why my intuition went that way, I suspect it's because, from the title, I felt like Lin was wronged by the VPN company which misled him, I generally distrust the FBI, deanonymizing VPN traffic seems troubling to me, "cyberharassment" sounds more like being mean to people online than the things Lin did and I don't think sending rude words to people should be criminal, and I suppose that I personally am more likely to be (falsely) accused of cyberharassment than I am to be victimized by it which probably results in implicitly identifying more with the attacker than the victim.

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