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'G20 Geek' Byron Sonne Cleared of Explosives Charges
New submitter davegravy writes "Byron Sonne, the Toronto-based security consultant, chemistry hobbyist, and geek who was arrested leading up to the Toronto G-20 for alleged plans to bomb the event, has been found not guilty of all charges. Sonne was held in prison for 11 months without receiving bail, and the ruling comes two years after his arrest. Sonne is considered by many in the Toronto security community as a champion of civil rights and a sharp critic of security theatre."
Those who oppose security theater are often it's first victims.
An update to the story:
Sonne has already announced plans to sue the Crown and Toronto Police
Worse yet. They destroyed his life as he knew it. He lost his house, job, and wife on top of 2 years of unfounded persecution. Yes, persecution.
If you read the reports of the court proceedings (https://github.com/colah/ByronTrialNotes) it is very alarming how technologically inept the authorities were in this case and how they ignored Occam's Razor to nail this guy. And these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies. EXTREMELY worrying.
At least he got a trial.
Yeah. In Canada. Meanwhile, next door...
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The court found he was not trying to bomb the government. After 11 months in jail for no reason, he certainly has the motive to do it now.
He lost 11 months of freedom and overall two years of his life fighting bullshit charges. He had to move in with his parents, his girlfriend left him (she got arrested too), I presume he's no longer employed, and two years later he has nothing to show for it but a hollow victory in court. The government got what they wanted out of him: He's a warning to others of what they can do to you even if you've done nothing wrong.
bah.
The prosecutors weren't inept. They knew exactly what they were doing and have managed to pull it off brilliantly.
They wanted to make an example of him and scare anyone else from even thinking about talking against the government.
They didn't need to win, they just needed to drag things out and hurt the guy as much as possible. The more inept the acted the better off they could do that.
Oh, don't worry - even the guys in Gitmo get trials. If they're found guilty, they're either executed or locked up forever. If they're found not guilty, they go back into prison until the prosecution finds something else to charge them with. It's completely fair!
I am officially gone from
it is very alarming how technologically inept the authorities were in this case and how they ignored Occam's Razor to nail this guy.
Well, duh, Occam's Razor was banned along with nail clippers and shaving cream exceeding 100 ml.
And these are the people that judge and impose laws on us techies.
Hopefully those who impose laws and those who judge are two separate branches of government, even in Canada.
The Crown alleged he had all the necessary ingredients to build a homemade bomb
I don't know anyone that DOESN'T.
The first thing Sonna said after how happy he is to be free, is that he's going to keep doing the same sorts of things that got him in trouble. And he's also suing the government. It doesn't sound to me like the prosecutors were particularly brilliant in their making an example of him.
I'm afraid you do have an overly sunny impression of our approach here in England.
I was a witness in court a while back. It was a simple trial related to a motoring accident, which would take only a few hours. It had been aborted on one occasion a few months after the event in question, reasonably enough IMHO because there wasn't enough time left at the end of the day to be sure of hearing the case fully in one session. It was then tried on a different day, several months later still.
The defendant was found not guilty. In their summing up, the magistrates criticised the police report that was given as evidence, and noted that evidence by one of the prosecution's own witnesses was a major factor in the not guilty decision. In short, the magistrates did not seem to have a very high opinion at all of the case that had been made by the prosecution.
As a witness, I was entitled to some basic cost-of-living expenses for my trouble, and in practice my employer had paid me my normal wage despite missing the two days of work. However, I discovered later that the defendant (who, remember, was found not guilty, and had presumably already had about a year of stress since the accident with the case hanging over them) was entitled to nothing by way of compensation for either the lost time or the reduced quality of life.
It turns out that in England, you can have your day in court -- in fact, you might not get much choice about it, and it might be more than a day -- but only at your own expense. It's no wonder that so many people pay up the fixed penalty fines for traffic offences they cannot possibly have committed, if it would cost them more than the fine to take time off and travel to a faraway court near where the alleged incident took place in order to defend themselves.
It's a shame. I think rules that mean you can lose out even if you have done nothing wrong bring the entire justice system into disrepute. It's not as obvious as a couple of recent high profile cases when someone died after the police made a mistake, but in a way this sort of widespread, low-level abuse is just as insidious, and the kind of middle ground that we're talking about in TFA is the next logical step.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
it would certainly make railroading a lot less interesting for the prosecution
I think you would find just the opposite. If the prosecutor faced jail time for losing a case, he or she would probably go to more extreme lengths to insure a conviction.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Either they're civilians or they're POWs either way there are rules that we need to be following. This "they're enemy combatants" is basically a way of saying "they have no rights, not even the ones what we all got together and agreed that everyone has. We will do whatever we want with them; torture, endless imprisonment, sexual and religious humiliation, it doesn't matter because we have declared that the rules don't apply to them. It's bullshit. It's the kind of thing that America (home of the free) is supposed to be better than and it makes me personally ashamed of how my nation is treating human beings.
Prisoners of War (soldiers) get released at the end of the war, not these guys. Civilians get charged in a civilian court with civilian rules and lawyers, not these guys. If you want to criticize China and Iran for this sort of horror you should avoid doing it yourself.
Everyone has human rights. That's why they are called human rights, all humans have them.
You can call them "unlawful combatants" but they are either civilian criminals or POWs. Not giving them any rights, torturing and treating them as sub human just shames yourselves.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So what is he supposed to do?
Transform gitmo into something worthy of human habitation and at least stop treating those who would be released as prisoners.
It's funny how the US set up gitmo, breaking go knows how many laws, international treaties and human rights, but when it comes to dismantling the place, all of a sudden they can't because of the rules. Actually it's not funny at all.
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That's why the 11 months, that's why the easily refuted charges, the pointless lying by the security forces. They aren't punishing him as much as they are demonstrating what they can do to YOU or YOU or YOU, if you get lippy.
It's working. People are shutting up. You can't meter what ain't there, but public disagreement with the established police state is muted by these endless arrests. People don't want to go into debt for the rest of their lives, lose their jobs and their families, just to say "I disagree."
Stay tuned for Rahm Emmanuel's series of lessons in Chicago later this week. It's Tuesday, and already the security forces are running helicopters overhead. We have LDAPs! Let the schoolin' begin.
“Unlawful combatants” is political speak, an attempt to create a new category that does not exist, so that the government can say that these people have no rights.
The Geneva Conventions have many different categories: enemy soldiers, enemy civilians, enemy civilians who have taken up weapons, enemy spies, criminals. The categories may not be mutually exclusive, but they are exhaustive. And all of them have rights. Their treatment will vary depending upon their category. But none of them are to be tortured. None of them are to be starved. None of them are to be treated unfairly. All are to receive appropriate medical care. And once the war is over (remember “Mission Accomplished”?), they are not to be detained indefinitely.
Your own Declaration of Independence affirms that these people have rights, because all people have rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, ...
Emphasis mine. Your Declaration of Independence, and your Constitution, apply not just to US citizens, but to all people, everywhere. Go read your country’s founding documents. They are things of beauty. It is a shame that people like you do not understand the noble ideals that your country was founded upon, and that US citizens do not force their government to uphold those ideals.
No. In reality, lawful combatants who are captured become POWs and are entitled to one set of rights. Unlawful combatants (aka civilians with guns) who are captured are not entitled to the rights of a POW, but ARE entitled to the rights of a civilian. There is no category that is not entitled to any rights.
The fact that the U.S. government chooses to ignore those rights brings a mark of shame that will take quite a while to fade.