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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

Or even something way simpler, like the FBI secretly compromising the user's PC with malware prior to the arrest. Without more detail it's impossible to know whether this is even news.

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Perhaps, but the only references I saw to 2019 in the criminal complaint[1] were with respect to Tor and his phone. I don't know if he was actually under surveillance that early or if this is just stuff they later found. While there are plenty of ways this guy could have attracted the attention of California, Florida, or federal law enforcement, it's entirely possible that seeing a US residential IP address is what started this case. I can't really tell without seeing dated search warrant applications.

The latest PDF[2] states:

    In discovery, the Government has declined to provide any information related
    to its TOR operation. The Defense therefore researched and drafted a motion to
    compel such discovery. In the course of this research, the Defense discovered an
    exhibit filed on the public docket in at least two federal cases with similar issues
    (“Exhibit 2”). The document is partially redacted, purports to be the work of a U.S.
    government agency, and is marked “Top Secret.” Outside of these public docket
    filings, Exhibit 2 is widely available on public internet sources. A Google search for
    Exhibit 2’s title yields 102,000 results. All of the top results apparently provide the
    document itself, and most of these date back to 2013.

That would likely be a reference to something leaked by Edward Snowden given the year mentioned.

1. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1279441/downl...

2. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23569961-motion-to-r...

> Perhaps, but the only references I saw to 2019 in the criminal complaint[1] were with respect to Tor and his phone. I don't know if he was actually under surveillance that early or if this is just stuff they later found.

From a doc I found[0] he was under aerial surveillance (aka, the FBI Cesnas {related [1]}) since June 2018.

Also some of the facts in the case are...well this is from doc [0].

> Some of the surveillance footage is itself incriminating. (See Doc. 5, pp. 50-51) (asserting that Mr. Alazhari’s travel on certain days in May 2020 shows that he was “scouting targets fora potential mass shooting attack.”).

[0]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21052490-motion-to-s...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34109507

Out of curiosity, will we get more detail? Presumably the FBI would need to reveal to somebody how they obtained this information in order for it to be admissible as evidence ("he did this, trust us" probably won't fly in court), but is there a legal means by which they could do that without revealing their exact methods to the general public? (I don't actually know what the law says on this subject.)

Parallel construction. They use their real methods to identify the user, then once they know the user, specifically target them with simpler known methods to build evidence for the case. In the court filing, they present evidence that they've gained through known methods which don't work all that well unless you already have a suspect, but they actually caught the suspect using methods that are not public (and won't become so, unless there's an internal leak at the FBI).

But if they were using parallel construction, surely the criminal complaint wouldn't make claims they can't prove using the non-secret chain of evidence, right? Here the court filing alleges that the FBI knows what IP address the defendant used to visit a Tor hidden service. Don't they now have to prove that claim if they want the prosecution to succeed?

They also know what specific pages on the offending websites they accessed.

I'm wondering if the classified document wasn't about tor, but about the 'implants' aka malware that were leaked in the same set of Snowden documents.

I think as much as tor being broken in some fixable way, they'd like it known even less that the FBI installs malware on the devices of persons of interest who haven't been convicted of anything.

If they truly can't break Tor and they deem the person of interest important enough for "national security" then I don't think anyone who has studied history, American or otherwise, believes that they are going to throw their hands up and say "welp, that's it."

Or in the case of Ross Ulbricht, just makes up a story about how he was trying to kill someone by suggesting the idea to him. Then uses that to justify an investigation that just happens to be a dead-end but conveniently gathers a bunch of other evidence that is relevant to another case.

Is there proof of anything like this or is it just a conspiracy theory you’re peddling?

Parallel construction is very real and common

I think it's commonly known, maybe not proven, but also it's a case of can they? yes. Would they? yes. As long as you agree with those two premises it's pretty likely

Parallel construction is not a theory in any way in the US. It is a "decades old, a bedrock concept" according to the DEA.

Outside the US, I have no idea.

> Outside the US, I have no idea.

Genealogists use parallel construction to build out their families. Data from a large variety of sources gets used to indicate and corroborate individuals.

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans [2013]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R2013...

It's rather annoying that the initial knee jerk reaction to any negative take on authoritarian government action is labeled as a conspiracy theory to try to discredit it.

The CIA did a great job getting that word out there. It's sad it's used to dismiss credible and logical conclusions so readily.

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