by zoeysmithe | 2025-09-16 14:10:15+00:00
I mean this is how the law enforcement part of the federal government uses its weight, Aaron Swartz's prosecutor-style to bully people.

Cannabis is harmless and a lot of people use it as medicine, even if they think of it as recreational. "Oh I need it to relax." Then its an anti-anxiety drug, not a 'party' drug. Limiting this is just cruelty and an easy 'win' for LE. Same with justifying the slaying of Philando Castile and others (he had pot, or pot in his system, thus a criminal undeserving of rights or due process).

Once the federal government is onto you with a case like this, all your money is gone. Either to lawyers or your bank accounts are frozen and things like that. Failing to make payments is a feature, not a bug, in this system. I'm not going to tell everyone here how to live, but its ideal to have money that's squirreled away in a place hard to be frozen because tomorrow this can be any of us. You host a vpn on a vpn somewhere? Use tor? Said the wrong opinion online? Heaven knows, but the hammer falls on a lot of people and there's no mercy to it.

Lines of credit, again, fits in with the above. People need to feed themselves, pay rent, pay lawyers, etc. I've never been accused of a crime but I've done a lot of legal stuff in my life with lawyers and such, and everything about this system is unbelievably slow and expensive. It isn't like Hollywood portrays it at all. The money needed here is more than more people can muster just to remotely get a fair trial or deal. Especially when a lot of charges against you are 'stacked' if not entirely dishonest on the assumption of 'well, we're going to court anyway or making a deal so better add some nonsense on top for negotiation.' I can't find the cite, but I've read that if you get a federal arrest, you're looking at $1m starting to begin. How many of us here have $1m they can access, and even if you do, is it accessible if the feds freeze your accounts on 'suspicion?'

Probation stuff, who knows, but he was already being sieged by LE, so who knows what is happening here. There's no shortage of probation horror stories like one's officer cancelling at the last minute or changing location, and other things to guarantee missing meetings. And eventually you can break a man entirely and he'll stop being functional, and he'll fail at a lot of basic things. The stress here can trigger extreme mental illness. I'm a fairly delicate person and if this happened to me, the stress would entirely break me. I'd fall into deep depression. So there's complexity with "he missed x appointment" and "he missed x payment," that's worth exploring.

The government telling you that you can't use a computer of any kind without a keylogger is insane and should be fought entirely. Computers are like paper nowadays. "Everything you write and do should be sent to LE" is unacceptable. Computers arent optional anymore. Everything we do is computer or app based. Also we dont know his motivation for making a private vm or using an iphone. Keeping valuable information about himself from LE for example or hiding a medical condition or heaven knows what else. This is why privacy and speech and rights between you and your counsel are so protected but "We get all your computers" sidesteps many of those protections.

Yes, he's a criminal but he doesn't deserve to be treated like this. These, and his past, are simple white-collar crimes, but he got the bully treatment.

Yes these are 'standard' because they maximally oppress working class people (note very wealthy people just buy themselves out of the above) with the thin veneer of legitimacy. The wealthy, capital owning class, etc if arrested like this just shrug this stuff off usually, and uses its connections and wealth to get ideal terms, but nobodies like this have no chance. The federal government conviction rate is over 90% not because of merit, but because of this kind of bullying and dishonesty and oppression. Imagine if we were discussing near any other nation with a 90+ percent conviction rate, you'd balk and know its corrupt, but we're the same in this regard.

I wish digital culture was more liberal-libertarian like it used to be, than the hard-right turn its made in the past 15+ years. LE does not need a 'devil's advocate.' The accused do. I dont care if liberalizing the above makes more criminals get away with. I'd rather this guy go free, even if he's super guilty, than accept the above as acceptable in our justice system. All this for what's essentially mostly-harmless white collar crime.

Not to mention the incredible violence here for a non-violent crime. Armed LE more or less besieged his home. I'm not sure why people knee-jerk to defending any of this. I hope a new liberal-libertarian movement emerges in tech because I feel like we've lost our way.