SBF Hides his Online Activities: US Attorneys Share Concerns

• SBF has been using a virtual private network to access the internet.
• The US attorneys shared their concerns on the possibility of SBF hiding his online activities.
• The Manhattan judge stated that while he can be restricted from using the internet, he cannot be blocked from contacting others.

The disgraced former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly been using a virtual private network to access the internet during two recent situations. Consequently, the US attorneys shared their concerns regarding the possibility of SBF hiding his online activities.

The previous Monday, the prosecutor in the office of the US Attorney in Manhattan said in a letter to the judge that the government has been discussing with the defendant’s lawyers to create rules concerning SBF’s use of the internet feasible for both the parties.

Interestingly, the government probed into both the negatives and the positives of using VPN, the mechanism of encryption that hides online activities from third parties and disguises a user’s whereabouts.

After a detailed study, Danielle Sassoon, the Assistant US Attorney concluded that the use of VPN may raise several potential concerns:

As defense counsel has pointed out, and the government does not dispute, many individuals use a VPN for benign purposes. In the government’s view, however, the use of a VPN raises several potential concerns.”

Notably, Lewis Kaplan, the US District Judge rejected the agreement that allowed SBF to use Whatsapp with a monitoring technology called iMessage in addition to the use of Zoom and FaceTime.

Furthermore, the Manhattan judge who handles Bankman-Fried’s criminal fraud case told that even if SBF is restricted from using encrypted messaging apps like Signal, he couldn’t be blocked from contacting others. Corroborating his ideas, he cited the example of Queen Mary, the Queen of Scots, who wrote old-fashioned secret code letters, more than 400 years ago.

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