This is a genuine question.
I have a hard time with this. My righteous side wants him to face an appropriate sentence, but my pessimistic side thinks this might have set a great example for CEOs to always maintain a level of humanity or face unforseen consequences.
P.S. this topic is highly controversial and I want actual opinions so let’s be civil.
And if you’re a mod, delete this if the post is inappropriate or if it gets too heated.
As /u/comfy said, we already know enough. We know that cops can break encryption on your phone, get everything from your social media accounts with full cooperation of the site owners, they can track your phone even if it is off, they can track your payment methods for your ebike get away vehicle to the CVS you bought your prepaid card with cash at, they can track you with the thousands of cameras they have everywhere, they can use gait identification to ID you even if you have gloves on and a mask on, they can plaster your face all over the internet, use thermal vision drones to find you in some field.
The police are militarized and have their surveillance tentacles in every crack and crevices they can. We know this already, and there is no value that such a trial would provide for that.
Depends on the phone. Cops have not managed to break the latest iPhone encryption yet, and I believe that some of the more recent Android is also currently unbroken. Regardless - if you don’t use a smartphone for doing questionable shit, there’s nothing to break. This is why burner handsets exist.
Not if you don’t have one. And even if you do–a smart assassin isn’t going to post anything that’s remotely close to linking your real life to committing a murder.
Not if you steal it. Which is reportedly what happened. An even easier trick is to buy a used bicycle with cash off at your destination; you’ve already spent $1000 on a pistol with a threaded barrel, and about $2000 on the printer to print a silencer (because you sure as fuck aren’t buying a Dead Air Sandman and getting on an ATF list, right?, the printed silencer won’t last long, but it doesn’t have to), so what’s another $500 for a used bike, and $200 for a good lock and chain so that it doesn’t get ripped off while you’re whacking a CEO?
Pro-tip: .45ACP is always subsonic, although a silencer will never make a gunshot silent by any stretch of the imagination. Best case scenario for anything other than .22LR is that it’s going to be quiet enough that you won’t destroy your hearing if you pop off a shot in a small room.
…Which is 500 miles from where you live.
Easy to fool just by putting a rock in a shoe. Also an exceptionally questionable (e.g. psuedoscience) method of identification, much like bite analysis.
First, they have to know who and where you are in order to even be searching for you in that field. Second, thermal is not nearly as useful as you’d think. A piece of carboard, a mylar blanket, even a sheet of glass will entirely block it. It’s not even going to be able to see through moderately heavy brush or tree cover.
Not necessarily disagreeing with those stipulations, because sure, there is ways around those things.
However the point is that we know the ways they track down people fairly well, so there is no value to such a trial.