Federal authorities arrested a 58-year-old Colorado Springs man after unravelling the origin of a "Declaration Of War" that threatened harm or death to Elon Musk, owners of his Tesla vehicles, and members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.
Investigators were alerted to his accounts after finding an unusually high number of log-ins and failed log-ins from an unfamiliar devices, locations, or networks. That information is tracked by Google, per the affidavit. Other unusual activity was traced through Payne's VPN or network provider.
So, Google stopped him, and his VPN provider. I'd like to know who his VPN provider was.
Investigators were alerted to his accounts after finding an unusually high number of log-ins and failed log-ins from an unfamiliar devices, locations, or networks
I really don't get that part. How did they make the connection?
Feels a bit disingenuous after pardoning January 6 convictions for people who not only made the threats, but showed up to do the job. Is threatening politicians not cool anymore? Does he need to make a choir sing patriotic songs or what?
Messages from his burner phone, too, matched the number Payne had listed in his personal contact info while applying for unemployment benefits in February.
If you put your real name on it or associate that phone number with your name, then doesn't that stop meeting the definition of a burner phone?
EDIT: I re-read the wording of the article, and I don't think he used the burner phones number associated with his name as I posted before. The article says this:
"Messages from his burner phone, too, matched the number Payne had listed in his personal contact info while applying for unemployment benefits in February. "
It sounds like he used is REAL phone/number to apply for unemployment, but then at a later time he used is REAL phone to text a message to his burner phone. So the article is saying the "messages found on his burner phone" contained his REAL phone number. This would mean authorities would have had to have the burner phone in hand. So this wasn't the way he was found, simply a way that it was confirmed it was him.
Sure he’s dumb but his failure gives an interesting insight into how wide the US dragnet on its citizens is. A mail address used to apply for unemployment has been indexed somewhere « just in case ». Nice.
Storage and indexing is cheap. From a usability perspective indexing makes sense: call centre staff can tell someone why their unemployment application has been denied/delayed etc.
From a security perspective, Google, Proton, and friends want to track failed login IPs so they can assign (internal) reputation scores to incoming requests.
That's an unhinged stance. People that bought a car without knowing what Elon was or would become are not morally responsible for enabling him. Intent matters. Most of them, im sure, just wanted an electric vehicle... the end. They do not deserve to be punished for Musk and Trump's evils.
Killing people for how they vote is killing democracy. Those MAGA lunatics aren't your enemy, they're your fellow citizens who fell victim to radical propaganda. When the Trump regime finishes their coup, they're going to be suffering just like the rest of us.
The way to solve the problem is to win them over, and show that a dictatorship is not good for America. Attacking Tesla and Musk is how you prevent other billionaires from supporting the MAGA hate cult, but it's not how you win over MAGA voters. Taking it to the logical extreme by killing people isn't going to make it work either.
I don't know how to win all the MAGA people back, but I know violence won't do it. If anything, it'll cement their existing views.
Seems like this might be one of the first ones that actually was a bit of a leftist, considering the use of the term "Swasticar," which is a little interesting. Funny how the crazies on the far right seem to consistently get to the point where they're able to obtain a firearm.
Whats missing from the article is any kind of seized evidence that would show he had the means to actually carry out any of this threats. As in, could this just be a "talking tough" keyboard warrior? I'd expect they'd need to find lots of guns, poison, explosives, etc. There isn't any mention of that kind of thing in the article.
Yeah, it says they're charging him with something that has a max sentence of five years, seems like it would be a lot heavier if they could show he was planning to take action.
There's not enough info in here to know how Google was involved if he sent the emails from Proton. Proton absolutely does not cotton to illegal shit, and actionable threats would be up there with LEO compliance.
My guess is he was on a VPN and had logins from a Proton account, validated with a burner phone he kept, and was also logging on to a personal Gmail or using some Google service that identifies him while in the same VPN location. Proton and the VPN give up an IP address that corroborates to what Big G tracks to him.
Edit: even a no-log VPN would likely be compelled to confirm a user at an IP address at a certain time. That's not a a "log" per se...
Idiot should have known to change his VPN location between instances and/or use TOR like a big boy, but mental health issues seem to be there driving force, not rationality.