Okay I'll bite, so I did the research on the case. They posted nothing to prove he was arrested for refusing a deal with the FBI. What actually happened is he pleaded guilty to an offence in 2014 and violated the terms of his bond / probation. Unless they go forth and show more, it is horse shit. Here is the individual pleading guilty: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.1.1.pdf He was arrested for not paying his bond, using a computer when he was forbidden to, ignored communications with his probation officer and more. Here is the petition of warrant to see what violations of his Bond he used: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.3.0.pdf How could he have been operating Tor nodes past 2014 if he wasn't allowed to have computers? I hate cops, but he deliberately tried to set them up. He refused to show up so they went to his door and so they arrested him. There were warrants out for his arrest. Here is the arrest warrant: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.20.0.pdf
Dimi's avatar Dimi
“Big drama today in the Tor community. Conrad Rockenhaus, a Tor operator based out of Michigan, United States, was arrested in 2020 after refusing to cooperate with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation Rockenhaus, a disabled United States military veteran, ran the fastest Tor node in the United States. He was approached sometime in late 2019 when the FBI requested he allow them arbitrary access to his exit node and allow them to decrypt traffic. He denied their request. Subsequently, in February, 2020 his home was raided. He was arrested for violating the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). It was alleged that he was a disgruntled ex-employee causing problems at his former place of employment. Interestingly, to "help resolve the matter", law enforcement requested he decrypt his Tor exit node to prove his innocence (???). After he refused, he was held in a pre-trial detention cell for over 3 years. He was denied bail after law enforcement stated Mr. Rockenhaus used Linux to "access the dark web" and he was "not complying" and not allowing them access to this Tor exit node. After Mr. Rockenhaus' wife filed an official complaint, and Mr. Rockenhaus was miraculously released, he was raided by the United States Marshal Fugitive Task Force TWO TIMES(???). They took him out his home, threw him to the ground, beat him, smashed his windows, and threatened to murder his animals. They are still requesting Mr. Rockenhaus allow them to access his Tor exit node. Mr. Rockenhaus still has not granted them that privilege. All of this has been captured on home security camera footage. Additionally, his wife has released all court documents. See subsequent post for more information.” -vxunderground, on X https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/1ni5drm/the_fbi_couldnt_get_my_husband_to_decrypt_his_tor/
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If the FBI ever made such threatening communications, RELEASE THEM. You are ALREADY in the sights if what the posts claimed to be are true and you shouldn't be afraid to do it.
Dimi's avatar
Dimi 3 months ago
Any thoughts on anything his wife has said publicly? @adezero on x
You're talking like a lot like a non cop hater for someone who says they hate cops, but I can't really decide whether I think you're posting in good faith. Gonna follow this thread closely
Thanks for the @, I saw a comment that linked an HN thread talking about the same findings. They said he was arrested for using a stale VPN access to connect to a company he was fired from and then disrupted their systems... Let's say this isn't true because I don't believe comments... the violation of the CFAA, a cyber law, which obviously will restrict your computer usage - why even insist to continue operating, if you was? Why talk about him being a Tor operator when he shouldn't have been for over a decade? What happened today should be completely irrelevant. He couldn't have been targeted for running nodes because he would have been found out, just like he was found to be using a phone when not authorised.
Thanks for digging into this. Every story like this has two sides. As a non-American that has no idea about what "US Marshals" are even supposed to do, It still feels like an excessive show of force just to arrest someone that skipped probation for a sentence of a non-violent crime. But maybe I’m becoming too British for my own good. Time to spend a couple of months back in Brazil 🤣.
If you are that unsure then read documents for yourself / search his case on PACER if you don't want to trust my word for it. I only talk a lot like that because I am familiar with law enforcement and legislation. I am a digital forensic researcher in the private sector. Actually working with them would be the last thing I do. I've personally met many 'personnel' who talk about their disdain of work I find valuable and identify with... It's insulting to me. An organisation supposedly created to 'protect' not liking it when individuals seek to protect themselves. I have a lot of criticism about law enforcement from what everyone talks about and some from my own personal anecdotes, I just don't put out my views because I just don't like talking about myself. People will also just not like me regardless of whoever I work for. They may also not entirely reflect the projects I work with.
I distrust the entire courtroom system too much to read the documents; like, if I try to read the documents, it will be interrupted constantly by thought processes that don't make it easy to analyze the documents. I can only wonder what's going on with this story until certain external cues help me decide what to trust I'm only good at "don't trust, verify" when stuff can be boiled down to simple algebra or something
There could be an excess use of force, sure. It really depends how far he chose to not be compliant with requests. I just dislike how they took the approach of this incident. If they wanted to be genuine, talk about excess use of force, not how you ran a node over a decade ago. What kind of sentence is "he ran some of the fastest relays and exit nodes in the world" anyways? Why would an onion routing network user care about that? It feels so plastic.
Here is what he was guilty of, what the poster in the Reddit thread claims is trivial and unrelated: He had unauthorized access to a company's servers and then caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage by disrupting them. Obviously, being convicted of a cyber crime will restrict your access to computers or only be allowed to run monitored systems. See the conditions of the bond I posted above. Why would you be running Tor or anything like that when you know you're being monitored? How naive does someone need to be? Even if he's allowed to later on, how does Tor in any way relate to what he's being arrested for? He's got a plethora of violations on his bond. Also, the Reddit OP claimed he was targeted for using a 'Graphics driver' called SPICE. SPICE is a virtual machine remote access software. The transcript on their rockenhaus website literally mentions it's a remote management client.
SPICE Graphics driver is a good suspicion. You can circumvent monitoring through a virtual machine... It's so strange. Why do they omit these details?