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Three months after a journalist reported being attacked by a troll who posted a seizure-inducing image on Twitter, a suspect has been arrested:
A man accused of triggering an epileptic seizure of senior Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald through a tweet was arrested by the FBI on Friday morning. An FBI spokesman said the name of the suspect has not been released but confirmed that an arrest was made, Dallas News reported.
The arrest comes three months after Eichenwald said he suffered a seizure after someone sent him a video clip of a flashing strobe light in an intentional effort to trigger his epilepsy. A Twitter account called @jew_goldstein — which has since been suspended — responded to Eichenwald with a gif of flashing strobe lights and a message: "You deserve a seizure for that post." Shortly after, Eichenwald's account tweeted: "This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault."
From the Dallas News article:
The agency announced that John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Md., was arrested Friday morning in Maryland on a cyberstalking charge.
[...] Eichenwald's attorney, Steven Liberman, told Newsweek that "What Mr. Rivello did with his Twitter message was no different from someone sending a bomb in the mail or sending an envelope filled with anthrax spores."
[...] According to a criminal complaint, messages sent from Rivello's Twitter account mentioned Eichenwald, saying "I know he has epilepsy," "I hope this sends him into a seizure" and "let's see if he dies."
Authorities also found an screenshot of Eichenwald's Wikipedia page on Rivello's iCloud account, the criminal complaint said, altered to list his date of death as Dec. 16, 2016. Other files on the iCloud account include a list of things that trigger epileptic seizures and a screenshot of a Dallas Observer article about Eichenwald's attempts to find the person who tweeted at him.
[...] On Friday, Eichenwald said that more than 40 people sent him strobes once they found out that they could trigger seizures.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @04:58AM (15 children)
If sending flashing images to people who knowingly have epilepsy is a crime, then why isn't every spammer who uses those annoying strobe ads doing life in jail? They spam everybody, knowing that a certain percentage of the population has that condition.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:08AM (11 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @06:01AM
I got your "mens rea" right here!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @07:32AM (9 children)
If I walk into most stores, smoking a cigarette, I'm likely to get arrested, despite any lack of intent to harm anyone. The nanny state has decided that it must protect everyone from my smoke, no matter they want it or not.
If I'm speeding through a school zone, I can expect to be arrested, despite any lack of intent to harm anyone.
If I discharge a firearm within most city limits, I'm likely to be arrested, despite any intent to harm anyone.
If I'm posting, mailing, or otherwise sending images which can be reasonably expected to induce seizures in some portion of the population, then I should be arrested.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 20 2017, @08:12AM
Last time I sped though a school zone, they just mailed me a ticket.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @08:45AM (4 children)
Runaway has the whole thing bass ackwards yet again!
If I put a harmless chemical into a municipal water suppy thinking it is a deadly poison, I should be arrested.
If I pull the trigger whilst aiming at another human being with intent to kill, and the gun happens to be unloaded, still attempted murder.
If I push the button on the cell phone that the nice undercover FBI agent has told me will blow up a whole bunch of innocent people, I am probably going away for a long time.
To sum up, Runaway, we are talking about intent to cause harm, not unintentionally causing harm. Both are culpable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:12AM (2 children)
Poor idiot - Runaway has pointed out that you can be imprisoned for a variety of actions, despite the lack of any intent to harm anyone. That should apply to advertisers who induce seizures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @04:26PM
Poor idiot - Runaway
Yeah, but calling Runaway names is not likely to change his mind. It is more likely to trigger him, like the word "Hillary", or "abortion", or "constitution"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @09:32PM
Poor idiot - Runaway
But you repeat yourself. With apologies to Mark Twain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:36AM
Is it OK to kill the FBI agent in question on the spot? For suggesting such a horrible thing that is? As well as the FBI director who orchestrated the setup? No? Why not?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 20 2017, @04:22PM (2 children)
And here we have an excellent example of exactly why we need those laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @04:29PM (1 child)
thass racissss
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:49AM
We has us a Soylentil of the House of Slytherin! A parsel-tongue, no less?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 20 2017, @05:17AM (1 child)
Everybody who's ever had a Geocities site should be arrested too then.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @08:50AM
right, so what's the punchline?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @01:28PM
If sending flashing images to people who knowingly have epilepsy is a crime, then why isn't every spammer who uses those annoying strobe ads doing life in jail?
The guy posted that he was trying to kill the victim. Seriously, this dumbfuck bragged about it.
When a spammer starts bragging about trying to kill people they should go to jail too.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 20 2017, @05:22AM (2 children)
On Friday, Eichenwald said that more than 40 people sent him strobes once they found out that they could trigger seizures
Message to all my enemies:
I have a deadly disease: I might have a heart attack if I see videos of naked top models making out. Please try to kill me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:28AM
Would two girls one cup be enough?
If positive, a search on google is easy, please proceed asap.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday March 20 2017, @10:14PM
That's not how it works. You have to be incredibly obnoxious, and start suing people to activate the Eichenwald effect.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday March 20 2017, @05:55AM
BLIT [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday March 20 2017, @06:57AM
Flashing images in tweets?
sounds like the solution is a crappy old "feature phone", preferably with less than 280x480 resolution..
Or just don't use twitter (not sure this is realistic for a journalist)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Bot on Monday March 20 2017, @08:58AM (5 children)
what probably happened:
> troll sends seizure gif
> guy receives it, the gif makes for less then 10% of his FOV
> guy reads caption where troll openly admits malfeasance
> guy eyes are now like $.$
> "honey come here, we hit jackpot"
and they all lived happily ever after
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @02:40PM
Jackpot of what? A basement-dwelling twitter troll isn't all that likely to be flush with cash and real estate...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 20 2017, @04:24PM (3 children)
You don't get money from criminal proceedings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @08:25PM (2 children)
Criminal proceedings don't rule out civil action, and it can be easier to win a civil case (see OJ). The FBI already did the hard work of identifying a meatbag to sue.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday March 20 2017, @09:37PM
Criminal proceedings don't rule out civil action, and it can be easier to win a civil case (see OJ). The FBI already did the hard work of identifying a meatbag to sue.
civil vs. criminal burdens of proof [legalmatch.com].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:48PM
The FBI already did the hard work of identifying a meatbag to sue.
And then you try to squeeze blood from a stone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @12:29PM (3 children)
or even display drivers/codecs/image libraries/players? perhaps some quick alogirithm to checks successive frames in advance before displaying if something is quickly flashing, then posting a warning, before the user agrees to view the content, or just simply disabling the maliscious frames (if it were in a video). maybe it can even be pre-analyzed (and forbidden) during upload? a media standard for aired video/movies (it might already be there though, especially after that pikachu incident)? sure it might be a technical challenge to implement all over, but might be worth it anyway. and robots for detecting copyright infringement are also already there anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @12:32PM
on a similar note, something for audio would also be good. sudden jumps in loudness had always been an unpleasant experience when using youtube with headphones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @06:25PM
(This post is UK-centric because that's what's easily found on the web. The rules probably differ under, say, the US's FCC, or equivalent bodies elsewhere.)
There are appliances that do just that, known as "Harding boxes"; a list of them is in this PDF [amazonaws.com], and you're required to have a "pass" result from one of them before BBC will accept your program. Note that Professor Graham Harding's name is used to refer to a specific algorithm originally used for checking PSE safety, to a particular series of appliances and applications implementing that algorithm, and more loosely for any PSE checking device, whether it uses the original Harding algorithm or a different one.
The rules to be implemented by such a check are laid out in Annex 1 (from p.15 on) of this PDF [ofcom.org.uk].
There are essentially two concerns:
While specs are given in cd/m^s, which varies wildly by screen, they do give a curve for converting between cd/m^2 and video levels. This looks pretty straightforward to implement, subject to some questions about "saturated red". (I'm sure further reading would turn up the answers, just not sure why the OFCOM guidance isn't more clear.)
Since flashing is the preferred tactic of PSE griefers on the web, I'd be inclined to check only for flashing, and ignore stripes.
Note that any flashing that is less than 25% of screen area (e.g. 50% height by 50% width = 36% = no problem) is okay. That makes it even simpler -- block all animated gifs over 25% of screen size. For larger gifs, there's also the crude, though more invasive, expedient of enforcing a minimum delay of 167ms between gif frames; as a flash takes two frames, this enforces 3 flashes per second maximum. These are also usable, in conjunction with a classification algorithm, as mitigation strategies when playing back "bad" gifs; I see good gifs playing as normal, bad gifs less than 25% of screen are click-to-play, but then play normally, while large bad gifs are click-to-play with an enforced maximum framerate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @07:51PM
I've been using Discord [discordapp.com] more often since some friends started hanging out on a "server" there.
It does something that's really quite amazing. GIFs don't animate unless you mouse over them, and videos don't play unless you click the play button. As everybody here knows, there's nothing magickal about "mouseover" and could easily be changed to click as well for GIFs.
Discord has solved this problem. It is a technical one, and it can be solved. What's Twitter's problem besides being the drama center of the internet?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 20 2017, @04:29PM
Look at the hypocrites trying to defend this guy. These are the same people who scream censorship when Reddit doesn't want white supremacists on their site.
Actually trying to kill someone for an opinion you disagree with is perfectly fine though. WTF!!
(Score: 2) by termigator on Monday March 20 2017, @07:43PM
http://chuck-nbc.wikia.com/wiki/Human_Intersect [wikia.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @09:40PM
Battling Seizure Robots [youtube.com], FTW!