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

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

#51
post #33

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.

> 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.

Couldn't that be countered by using two foreign IPs for your VPN, one for your inbound connection and another for your outbound traffic? It would make it more difficult to correlate your US IP with the outbound VPN traffic without extra information.

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

#53
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One could argue that anonymous complaining and accusations contributed to Trumps election.

How many of those 'anonymous americans' (who were concered about the emails, or spouting off about clinton having parkinsons, or bernie or busters, etc etc) were not americans, but non-americans or bots/sockpuppets created to amplify the signal of a vocal minority of americans or non-americans.

Because of platforms that are largely anonymous you can never know if an anonymous user is your next door neighbor or a bot tied to the marketing arm of some product you might be interested in or the agent of a foreign government.

An interesting concept might be a social network where all users are verified and their profile contains only general information about them, letting you know if their opinion matters or is misleading.

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

#54

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. Specificall…

That's amazing!

Last year I was desperate for extra work, and met a guy hiring programmers on Craigslist. I ran his name and found a website from a guy saying never do business with him, that he doctored financial documents and was a liar. It was kind-of a crazy site, so I met with the liar anyway, and he brought it up pretty quickly, saying it was an old neighbor and that he's crazy. I went to work for him, but he kept bringing it up, wondering how he could get the site taken down (queue me trying to explain slander and him saying "there's gotta be another way!"), until one day he was exploded with a "I could go over to his house and fucking kill him!".

I already had a new job lined up at that point, so I just left my key on the desk and never came back. I still wonder if I should email the guy that made the website just to let him know how much it gets under his enemy's skin.

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

#55

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…

> 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...

[deleted]

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

#58

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…

A certain segment of the tech community considers cyberstalking a crime made up by women and „sjw‘s“ to emasculate those they can‘t get at with fake allegations of rape.

(Edit: from a sibling comment: ““cyberharassment" sounds more like being mean to people online”)

More generally, there is a sense that anything happening online is by definition harmless, and/or constitutionally protected speech.

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

#59

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…

> 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...

> has no parole

Also, this is not going to be some "white collar resort" prison!

Anyway, it's worth noting how Lin's behavior was not just criminal to the point of outright sociopathy, but also - like most criminals' - incredibly lazy and complacent. That anyone knowledgeable in a CS-related field could target a vulnerable individual in such an extreme, sustained and long-lasting cyber-abuse campaign and expect to get away with it, is rather surprising to say the least.

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

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A certain segment of the tech community considers cyberstalking a crime made up by women and „sjw‘s“ to emasculate those they can‘t get at with fake allegations of rape. (Edit: from a sibling comment: ““cyberharassment" sounds more like being mean to people online”) More generally, there is a sense that anything happening online is by definition harmless, and/or constitutionally protected speech.

I think you're behaving inappropriately by implying I'm some sort of misogynist ("a certain segment of the tech community", implying I think "women and sjw's" are trying to "emasculate" men or create fake rape accusations). Your implications are not only inaccurate and unwelcome, they are unwarranted. No fair reading of what I wrote could reach the conclusion that I suspect women are faking cyberharassment or rape allegations.

Kindly remove or correct your comment. Thanks.

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