cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37530015
(Eastern District of Michigan - Detroit)
My husband, Conrad Rockenhaus, is wrongly incarcerated in a county jail. I’m posting this here because you are one of the few communities that will understand the full technical and political reality of how he ended up there.
My husband is a former Tor operator, and at one point, he ran some of the fastest relays and exit nodes in the world.
This nightmare began when he refused to help the FBI decrypt traffic from his exit nodes.
Months later, the government arrested him. Their official reason? A minor, non-violent CFAA charge from an old workplace dispute that had nothing to do with Tor.
In fact, the statute of limitations was just a couple of months from expiring. It was a clear pretext to target him.
That minor charge was all they needed to get him into the system. To deny him bail, a U.S. Probation Officer in Texas lied under oath, telling a judge that Conrad had installed a “Linux OS called Spice” to “knock out their monitoring software” and access the “dark web.”
Here is the technical reality of their lie: The software was a standard SPICE graphics driver needed for his Ph.D. program. As many of you know, this is a basic utility for displaying graphics from a virtual machine. It is not an OS, has no connection to the dark web, and was technically incapable of interfering with their monitoring software.
The claim is a technical absurdity, equivalent to saying a mouse pad can hack a server.
Based on that lie alone, he was held in pre-trial detention for three years.
Now, the retaliation has escalated in Michigan. After I filed a formal complaint against his US probation officers for harassment, they used fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again.
During this violent arrest by US Marshals (who smashed in our windows and nearly shot my dog) he sustained a severe head injury that caused him to have a grand mal seizure in court. The jail’s “medical attention” was to ask him what year it was (he said 2023) and then send him back to his cell. He is being denied real medical care.
See videos:
- Feds threatening to sick dogs on us
- Feds beating by husband in the head
- Feds smashing in our windows
- Feds threaten to shoot my dog
- More threats to shoot my dog
To make matters worse, U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy, III has created a procedural trap that has stripped my husband of his right to a lawyer to fight for his life, health, or innocence. He is trapped in a constitutional and medical crisis.
I am not asking for money. I am asking for your help to amplify this story. You understand the technical truth and why this fight is so important.
We have all the evidence: the court transcript of the false testimony, the fraudulent warrants, the proof of medical neglect. It’s documented on my website:
TL;DR: My husband, a former Tor operator, refused to help the FBI decrypt Tor traffic. They retaliated by using an old, unrelated CFAA offense to arrest him and then lied about him using a "graphics driver to access the dark web” to keep him in pre-trial detention for 3 years. Now he’s been jailed again in Michigan on fraudulent violations, is being denied care for a head injury, and has no lawyer.
I need help getting the word out🙏
Adrienne Rockenhaus
For updates:
You should put the tl;Dr at the top.
If you put it at the bottom, the only people who read it are the ones that did read it. Defeats the purpose
I am not OP; I only cross-posted.
Upvoting to keep this comment at top, but I advise you to add at the beginning
Seen on Reddit: "
And another " at the end.
Thanks for xposting it btw.
Feel as though few people in comments here are acknowledging OP’s claims, in a fundamental sense (please excuse cross-commenting, I’ve dropped an identical entry at https://lemmy.world/post/36001994).
TL;DR: My husband, a former Tor operator, refused to help the FBI decrypt Tor traffic. They retaliated by using an old, unrelated CFAA offense to arrest him and then lied about him using a "graphics driver to access the dark web” to keep him in pre-trial detention for 3 years. Now he’s been jailed again in Michigan on fraudulent violations, is being denied care for a head injury, and has no lawyer.
And from OP’s site
The Verifiable Lie: The software was, in reality, a pre-approved SPICE graphics driver for his Ph.D. program – not an operating system. It did not, nor could it, disable the monitoring software. Routh used this false claim to baselessly suggest Conrad might be accessing “dark web sites,” an inflammatory accusation she was forced to admit under oath she had no evidence to support.
This false testimony was fueled by a malicious campaign. We have documented proof that Conrad’s then-wife, Ashley Luster, was actively working to keep him incarcerated for her own financial gain. While he was imprisoned, she illegally made herself the representative payee for his Social Security disability benefits, directing the funds to her own account after divorce proceedings had begun. Financial records further document how she systematically drained his bank accounts, maxed out his credit cards, and spent his monthly pension and disability payments.
The Smoking Gun Confession: In a letter to her parents, Luster confessed, “I had some tricks up my sleeve to keep him in there”.
Documented Collusion: Emails reveal Luster colluding with Conrad’s own attorney, Walter Reaves, to secretly prolong his detention.
Based on this foundation of false testimony and conspiracy, Conrad was held for three years in horrific county jail conditions, where he was regularly beaten by guards and denied his life-sustaining seizure medication. The grueling ordeal ended only when he felt forced to accept a coerced guilty plea.
So to conclude, there’s a pretty broad spread of bizarre circumstances and claims according to other commenters here and at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163, as well as OP’s husband;
- Mr. Rockenhaus operated a Tor node, but has declined to assist the FBI in an investigation
- Mr. Rockenhaus’ ex-wife and lawyer were/are colluding to torpedo his case, and ability to remain free on bail pending trial, as well as committing SS fraud and robbing him blind
- The FBI has seized the property belonging to the (marijuana-based) business of his current wife (OP), and surety as retaliation to a formal complaint filed against his newest probation officer
- The prosecution team has either willfully misrepresented his use of Linux applications as violations of release conditions, or is incompetent and unable to reconcile the basic functions of Linux programs
- Mr. Rockenhaus plead to charges in connection to what’s alleged to be his sabotage of his former employer’s business, to the tune of about $500K in damages (see entries related to probation above)
- One of the prosecution’s exhibits at a previous hearing was a Google search for NAMBLA at 0200 - this one seems like an odd entry, as there doesn’t appear to be any accusation of access to CSAM material in either his former or current charges or legal cases
Damn that whole story is a roller coaster.
I don’t envy him the upcoming legal case against the Federal government and FBI, let alone the medical distress caused by existing TBI, head wound during his arrest, and deprivation of needed medication while in jail pending trial. This is one Hell of a doozie…
What is NAMBLA, dont care to google with your following comment.
They basically advocate for sexual relationships between boys and men.
America is the libertarian’s paradox. A government that’s often too small and too clumsy to effectively implement regulatory policy. But if officials do catch up with you, civil rights are a joke and the courts are a fig leaf justification for fascist violence.
He was arrested for violating his parole, not for running a Tor node. Post is misinformation
Yeah… https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/53421257/21419985
From tptacek on ycombinator:
OK, I think I found the original thing Rockenhaus was convicted of. Back in 2014, Rockenhaus worked for a travel booking company. He was fired. He used stale VPN access to connect back to the company’s infrastructure, and then detached a SCSI LUN from the server cluster, crashing it. The company, not knowing he was involved, retained him to help diagnose and fix the problem. During the investigation, the company figured out he caused the crash, and terminated him again. He then somehow gained access to their disaster recovery facility and physically fucked up a bunch of servers. They were down a total of about 30 days and incurred $500k in losses. (He plead this case out, so these are I guess uncontested claims).
There was a guy who helped indigenous people in I think Ecuador against chevron…
Ever since then chevron used us courts to harass him and essentially ruined his life.
These stories rarely make national news for a good reason.
They are supposed to be tell you what will happen if you you hurt the owners or their dogs.
Yup. Steven Donziger.
That kind of heartless betrayal by a spouse would be what finished me, I think.
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