> Provided the allegations are true, whatever sentence he gets will not be enough...

He has already been sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison (and federal time has no parole).

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/massachusetts-man-sentenced-m...

> has no parole

Also, this is not going to be some "white collar resort" prison!

Anyway, it's worth noting how Lin's behavior was not just criminal to the point of outright sociopathy, but also - like most criminals' - incredibly lazy and complacent. That anyone knowledgeable in a CS-related field could target a vulnerable individual in such an extreme, sustained and long-lasting cyber-abuse campaign and expect to get away with it, is rather surprising to say the least.

Why would you expect to sympathize with him? Is it usual (i.e more likely than not) that cases of cyberharassment are overblown, or based on faulty knowledge, or outright false? It's strange to me that someone would immediately be so skeptical, unless the rate of false accusations is higher than the rate of true accusations (at least insofar as determined by the imperfect legal system). Is that the case? I'd like to be corrected if it is.

I don't know what the rate of false or overblown allegations is. I wrote above about my intuition and not my judgment after a considered study of the issues and evidence. It's just what I expected.

As for why my intuition went that way, I suspect it's because, from the title, I felt like Lin was wronged by the VPN company which misled him, I generally distrust the FBI, deanonymizing VPN traffic seems troubling to me, "cyberharassment" sounds more like being mean to people online than the things Lin did and I don't think sending rude words to people should be criminal, and I suppose that I personally am more likely to be (falsely) accused of cyberharassment than I am to be victimized by it which probably results in implicitly identifying more with the attacker than the victim.

I don't think "cyberharassment" sounds like being mean online at all, I think it's what most would consider harassment but conducted through the Internet to the extent that it is possible to do so, and it may even be more pernicious, since it is very easy to stalk people and submit anonymous comments via the Internet. In the same way, I'd also assume you personally more likely to be falsely accused of rape than you are to be victimized by it - simply because you're probably not a rapist. It does not have much to do with the fact that most rape allegations are true, at least to the extent we determine in legal courts.

Maybe we should think about how we act online if we feel that there is a significant risk of being accused of cyberharassment, even if such conduct should not be illegal (and I suspect we also disagree on where the line ought to be drawn here).

"Harassment" can refer to a variety of behaviors. I feel "harassed" by telemarketers insisting I apply for a loan or buy whatever they're selling. If someone were to repeatedly bother me at the mall trying to sell me something, I'd think of that as them "harassing" me to buy something etc. Harassing seems to me like repeatedly being a nuisance.

In the context of criminal behavior I'd expect harassment to be a campaign of intentionally bothering someone and invading their space. I'd assume someone like Lin might be guilty of criminal harassment if he waited outside this girl's house and lewdly propositioned her every day, bothered her at work, etc.

I think we should have a higher bar for what constitutes cyberharassment because it's so much less invasive and threatening than physical harassment and so much easier to ignore. It's also possible that it's easier to inadvertently participate in cyberharassment when you can't see how the other person is reacting to you or feel how inappropriate the behavior is.

What Lin did in this case is far beyond any of what I described above. I think of his behavior as transcending what I'd describe as cyberharassment - in my earlier comment I called it psychological torture and I think that's far more apt than cyberharassment which seems too milquetoast a phrase for what happened here.

The title changed! I hate when Hacker News does this. Before, it was:

> FBI arrests PureVPN user with log data that was said to not exist (justice.gov)

Nothing about cyberstalking. I too figured it was going to be something stupid like piracy.

I think you're behaving inappropriately by implying I'm some sort of misogynist ("a certain segment of the tech community", implying I think "women and sjw's" are trying to "emasculate" men or create fake rape accusations). Your implications are not only inaccurate and unwelcome, they are unwarranted. No fair reading of what I wrote could reach the conclusion that I suspect women are faking cyberharassment or rape allegations.

Kindly remove or correct your comment. Thanks.

>Provided the allegations are true, whatever sentence he gets will not be enough...

While Lin is undoubtedly a terrible person, I still think 17.5 years in federal prison is rather excessive unless you've actually killed someone.