[69mlgsniperdad]

What happens if some 10 year old in say Russia, for example (lol), used Bitcoin he made from a few minutes of mining in the very early days of Bitcoin, to purchase a black hat SEO campaign, spamming social networks like Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit with a click-baity title and purchased upvotes/likes/retweets, spreading a gif like this across US social networks. Would our law enforcement convince, or manually penetrate the networks of the black hat SEO service spending possibly millions of dollars to maybe track down this 10 year old, to find out they have no jurisdiction over him? What if someone had an unsecured hotspot on their phone and local LE accused the person who owned the phone of this?

Are local LE's capable of deciphering the possibly extremely technical misdirections one could easily employ? What if someone reads WikiLeaks, and used one of the exposed zero day exploits to frame a mobile phone user of this. What if someone's friend knows their WiFi password and does the same thing, spoofing the owners Mac address?

What prevents a 10 year old kid from sending anyone they dislike to court for who knows how long, requiring them to amass legal fees to defend themselves. What happens if one of the enormous number of people who have RAT's from malware on their computer from being set up in this manner?

What if someone creates their own image hosting server, and they swap all the images hosted, out for this gif? What happens if someone hacks said img hoster and does the same? What if it is a massive free, fast image hoster, and they are hacked and this happens? If the precident dictates that this could potentially kill people, what standards of security should image hosters be held to? Should they be required to pay for the same annual audits companies who handle credit card info do? Or should they be held to the standards of government contractors? Seems like they are effectively claiming the security of image hosters is an order of magnitude more vital than any other company. What if a kid uses the WikiLeaks zerodays which were purposely not exposed by the CIA, provided the entry for this 'prankster'? Can any potential victims sue the government.

Since we've established that feelings matter, how is a gif like this different then offending someone to an absurd degree? I've seen several articles from multiple news sources from different countries, detailing the enforcement of hate speech crimes; for example, Western countries making it illegal to speak out against islam? Are offenses of those nature subject to similar accountibility? Are law enforcement agencies equipped well enough to be certain that no misdirection or projection of the actions onto another was utilized?

Obviously one could go on for eternity like this. Making it simple for anyone with Google to lock someone up who they dislike. Seems to me that a person who is susceptible to these triggers, should find a solution on their end to somehow inhibit the effectiveness of such weapons. If all jurisdictions were to take this seriously, whether it's a 'meme' charge or attempted murder, one could backlog an entire countries legal system for years for a small sum of money. Tbh, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, and the few comments I read, are equally ignorant.

What if, the defendant in op's story denies the accusations. What if his friend did it from his phone while he was sleeping, and never told a soul? Good luck using the internet, everyone. Hide your kids, hide your wife.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13919250 and marked it off-topic.

[jacquesm]

It does not appear that anything you wrote in that wall of text has any application to the case in the linked article.

[69mlgsniperdad]

Convicting a person who allegedly posted an image on the internet, with intent to trigger a sizeure in another, sets the precident for every means of distribution of a similar image that I listed off to be treated as attempted murder or whatever charges come of this. Name one thing in my wall of text that is not an implication of this story; Unless you are implying this article is on hackernews, only to foster discussion of the technical aspects of a subpoena of personal information?

[jacquesm]

> Convicting a person who allegedly posted an image on the internet, with intent to trigger a sizeure in another, sets the precident for every means of distribution of a similar image that I listed off to be treated as attempted murder or whatever charges come of this.

You are apparently unfamiliar with the concept of 'intent' in criminal law. This was a message targeted at an individual with specific intent to cause seizures. All your hypotheticals have no basis in fact.

> Name one thing in my wall of text that is not an implication of this story;

Every one of them?

> Unless you are implying this article is on hackernews, only to foster discussion of the technical aspects of a subpoena of personal information?

No, it is on HN because enough people found it interesting to warrant discussion of this actual case. Fantasy need not enter the discussion unless it bears some connection to reality, making stuff up out of whole cloth is not going to further the discussion in a meaningful way, no matter how long you make your walls of text.

[synicalx]

> 10 year old

> mining in the very early days of Bitcoin

So junior was mining at what, age 3? Smart kid.

[PhantomGremlin]

If I were 10 years old and I had Bitcoins to spend, I sure as hell wouldn't use them "to purchase a black hat SEO campaign". What 10 year old kid would?

[synicalx]

A 10 year old these days would probably by a few years worth of Minecraft server hosting.

[alphabettsy]

This is a long rant of "what if's" that aren't relevant since the details are known.

The "what if the guy didn't do it" is what the justice system is for, attorneys and investigators sort it out.

[r0m4n0]

Sadly that's not how the justice system usually works. Investigators put together worst case scenario and find some facts that support their hypothesis (this document). Like everyone else he will settle and probably spend a few months in jail and pick up garbage on the freeway for 6 months, whether he did it or not. It's usually not worth the risk of losing in court

[alphabettsy]

That much I'm fully aware, it's up to the defense basically even if the accused can't afford a good one. I believe the system should focus more on justice rather than convictions, but that's a whole different matter.

[69mlgsniperdad]

I am implying that this is rediculous, and that spending any significant resources to pursue this should be criminal. I'm saying that unless they have a confession from the defendant that he was trying to kill this guy, or his diary dictating that, which they should include in the story were that the case, then this is just stupid. The presidence this case might set forth is terrifying. It provides a never before seen limitless weaponization of the justice system, which will be abused by those without morals, those who have a lot to lose, and those with more $ to attack anyone they like. Any halfway smart kid can use this image attack with zero risk of being caught, so clearly the safety mechanisms and protections need to be on the victims end.

[jacquesm]

> I'm saying that unless they have a confession from the defendant that he was trying to kill this guy, or his diary dictating that, which they should include in the story were that the case, then this is just stupid.

You must have missed the bit in the article where the defendant actually indicated he did just that, and in writing no less.

[twblalock]

> I'm saying that unless they have a confession from the defendant that he was trying to kill this guy, or his diary dictating that, which they should include in the story were that the case, then this is just stupid.

If that was the standard for a criminal prosecution, we'd rarely convict anyone.

> The presidence this case might set forth is terrifying. It provides a never before seen limitless weaponization of the justice system, which will be abused by those without morals, those who have a lot to lose, and those with more $ to attack anyone they like.

The fact that assault is a crime has been established many, many years ago.

[69mlgsniperdad]

Every response is karma suicide, however, I am obviously referring to this exact specific case.. One would traditionally assume that posting a gif is not a crime, no matter the gif (with a few exceptions in the law such as certain types of pornography), in THIS case, the person I am responding to claims it is a crime because of the intent. And the precedent I am discussing is apparently whether or not posting a 'gif' image is assault, regardless of intent, which you are implying this case would claim. Please see my other comment, the one(and the paragraph) talking about 'kittens'. Explain to me the difference between this specific case and that one? How about those gifs which tell you to stare at the optical illusion, and after an arbitrary amount of time, show a terrifying skeleton. Is it a crime to post that without sufficient warning?(assuming it hurts someone psychologically - please apply this assumption to all of the following hypotheticals) Those would never 'go viral' if they contained warnings, obviously, and could be extremely and permanently damaging to certain people with relevant psychological conditions. If it isn't a crime to share those images, is it a crime to post them on an anxiety subreddit? If not, is it a crime to post them on an anxiety subreddit, with intention to trigger panic attacks, or similar, in their users? Is it a crime to email those to a person who enjoys optical illusions, has severe panic disorder and ptsd, and several heart conditions? how about with the intent to kill them? Does intent dictate criminality here? If not, what makes it criminal? Number of people affected by a given condition? Please continue down-voting each of my replies(so I am discouraged from proving my argument) and assume whatever titles are associated with that sort of behavior. Edit: Also worth noting that getting convicted is mostly irrelevant to my argument. I am trying to bring attention to the burden this sort of thing could put on a legal system, especially if it was 'weaponized,' as well as the burden of legal fees, time, and negative publicity, false claims like these would have on the defendant.

[dang]

It looks to me like you're being downvoted because you're overposting and your comments are impossible to make sense of. Please stop.

[alphabettsy]

Criminal intent is one of the most important parts of law. If there is no criminal intent in many cases there is no crime.

If you want to have a discussion, take some time to clearly articulate your arguments because it's hard to read. I think that's what's getting voted down, not necessarily that everyone disagrees with you.

[jackvalentine]

> Does intent dictate criminality here?

Yes.

> Is it a crime to email those to a person who enjoys optical illusions, has severe panic disorder and ptsd, and several heart conditions?

Maybe, it depends. In any case if your intent was pure but you're just stupid the case brought against you in the event of a mishap would be one of negligence.