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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:17PM (2 children)
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
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.
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
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.