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posted by martyb on Thursday March 23 2017, @11:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the worse-than-HACF dept.

Previously: Alleged Epilepsy-Triggering Troll Arrested by the FBI.

The man accused of triggering an epileptic seizure by tweeting was caught when authorities obtained phone records and access to an iCloud account:

Court documents show that a search warrant to Twitter concerning the @jew_goldstein handle provided the authorities with information that the account was created on December 11 with a "PhoneDevice." Twitter also divulged the device's phone number and said that the carrier was AT&T. Some of the direct messages to other Twitter users on the account, according to the documents, said, "I know he has epilepsy," "I hope this sends him into a seizure," and "...let's see if he dies." The Dallas authorities next obtained information from AT&T that the telephone number used to start the Twitter account was a burner SIM card with a Tracfone prepaid account "with no subscriber information." "However, a review of the AT&T toll records showed an associated Apple iPhone 6A Model 1586 (Apple iPhone)," Nathan Hopp, an FBI agent in Dallas, wrote in the criminal complaint (PDF).

The police then sent a search warrant to Apple "for the iCloud account associated to the telephone number" used to open the Twitter account. Apple provided a wealth of information that ultimately doomed Rivello. Cupertino gave the Dallas Police Department his Apple ID e-mail address, his name, home address, and registration IP address when the account was created in 2012.

John Rayne Rivello has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon "enhanced as a hate crime". One of the images obtained from the iCloud account included an image of Rivello posing with his driver's license. The animated GIF that Rivello allegedly tweeted was a generic one that had already been posted on places such as 4chan for years.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:07AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:07AM (#483538)

    Let's just get this out of the way: I don't condone this jerks actions, but... I also don't think it's in our best interests if the legal system is able to set the precedent that sending a person who has epilepsy a flashy GIF image is a form of assault; regardless of the sender's intentions. It seems like this is one of those proverbial slippery slopes that will be abused... Thoughts?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:55AM (#483548)

    I don't mind as long as the precedent is they still have to be able to prove you already knew there's a high chance of causing harm to your specific target and that was why you sent that particular image to him.

    And all that seems to be the case. So I'm fine with such stuff as being classified as assault as long as that's the reasoning given.

    An epileptic fit could probably cause as much damage as someone slapping or even punching your face: http://www.epilepsy.com/article/2014/3/meeting-news-do-seizures-damage-brain [epilepsy.com]
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1783429/ [nih.gov]

    So yeah, assault. You could try to say the guy is weak so that's his problem, but if you know someone is severely allergic to something and you sent allergens to him so that he might get injured or even die, it's assault (and maybe murder). Whereas if you didn't know, and a reasonable person in your position wouldn't know, and you sent him stuff and he dies you're not normally convicted for murder or assault. You'd probably still be investigated first to see if maybe you actually knew and intentionally did it.

    Of course his family might still file a civil suit against you even if the State considers you innocent.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @01:01PM

    by sjames (2882) on Friday March 24 2017, @01:01PM (#483614) Journal

    Since the sender clearly considered it a form of assault (based on his comments surrounding his action) and we know it had the potential to act as one in this case, I see no reason why we shouldn't treat it as one. Also based on surrounding comments, we know there was malice.

    Had any of those elements been missing an assault charge might have been too much but in this case I think it's entirely appropriate.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @02:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @02:43PM (#483661)
    It’s like giving a peanut shake to someone with a peanut allergy. If I can show that I didn’t know the victim had a peanut allergy, or otherwise gave him the peanut shake in good faith without intention to cause harm, then there is no guilty mind (mens rea), they can’t establish a case. But then, if I bragged on the record (like Mr. Rivello did) that I knew of the victim’s peanut allergy and was going to give him a peanut shake in the hope of causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, then the prosecution can show I acted with malice aforethought and thus have mens rea, and I’m probably going to face prison. So unless I stupidly brag about it or otherwise gave signs to my malice, there’s no other way that the prosecution can establish mens rea in such a case. It’s like the distinction between murder and manslaughter. In the former case, I have acted with malice aforethought to kill someone, but in the latter case, I might have just killed someone by accident without intending to.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:17PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:17PM (#483776)

    What if I know someone has a severe anger problem and are likely to erupt if I say the right words to trigger them? Is posting a comment with the intention of evoking an excessive emotional responses now going to be considered assault? If so then which other mental/psychological conditions are we going to add to this new class? The guy didn't touch the victim. He didn't send him something physical that could trigger an allergic reaction (like the peanut example). He sent data. If there had been no seizure would we still be discussing this?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:33PM (#484088)

      What if I know someone has a severe anger problem and are likely to erupt if I say the right words to trigger them? Is posting a comment with the intention of evoking an excessive emotional responses now going to be considered assault?

      Depends, if such a condition is actually medically recognised, the way that fellow’s epilepsy is. Epilepsy is not a notional condition the way your anger problem is. The onus will then be on that person with the anger problem to prove that they have this condition and that you did exactly what was necessary to trigger it, causing them significant physical harm, with malice aforethought in doing so.

      If so then which other mental/psychological conditions are we going to add to this new class? The guy didn’t touch the victim. He didn’t send him something physical that could trigger an allergic reaction (like the peanut example). He sent data. If there had been no seizure would we still be discussing this?

      The only mental/psychological conditions we are going to add are those that are actually recognised by modern scientific medicine. Doesn’t matter if he didn’t touch the victim, and yes, he “only” sent data, but this data was interpreted by his physical computer to show him something that could demonstrably cause him harm. And yes, had there been no seizure, then we wouldn’t be discussing this at all. The whole point is that someone had intentionally, and with malice aforethought, did something that caused him to trigger a seizure.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:36PM (#484090)

      The guy didn’t touch the victim. He didn’t send him something physical that could trigger an allergic reaction (like the peanut example). He sent data.

      Yeah, so if you had one of those hackable pacemakers [soylentnews.org] that we’ve been hearing about and I hack your pacemaker and it kills you, under that same theory I’m not guilty of murder. I didn’t touch you. I didn’t send you anything physical. I sent you data.