Thanks for digging into this. Every story like this has two sides. As a non-American that has no idea about what "US Marshals" are even supposed to do, It still feels like an excessive show of force just to arrest someone that skipped probation for a sentence of a non-violent crime. But maybe I’m becoming too British for my own good. Time to spend a couple of months back in Brazil 🤣.
Okay I'll bite, so I did the research on the case.
They posted nothing to prove he was arrested for refusing a deal with the FBI. What actually happened is he pleaded guilty to an offence in 2014 and violated the terms of his bond / probation. Unless they go forth and show more, it is horse shit.
Here is the individual pleading guilty:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.1.1.pdf
He was arrested for not paying his bond, using a computer when he was forbidden to, ignored communications with his probation officer and more.
Here is the petition of warrant to see what violations of his Bond he used:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.3.0.pdf
How could he have been operating Tor nodes past 2014 if he wasn't allowed to have computers?
I hate cops, but he deliberately tried to set them up. He refused to show up so they went to his door and so they arrested him. There were warrants out for his arrest.
Here is the arrest warrant:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.374280/gov.uscourts.mied.374280.20.0.pdf
Discussion
There could be an excess use of force, sure. It really depends how far he chose to not be compliant with requests.
I just dislike how they took the approach of this incident. If they wanted to be genuine, talk about excess use of force, not how you ran a node over a decade ago.
What kind of sentence is "he ran some of the fastest relays and exit nodes in the world" anyways? Why would an onion routing network user care about that? It feels so plastic.