Ruse.
It’s such an innocuous word. Certainly much friendlier than “lie.”
This week, the Crown conceded that Toronto Police used a ruse in order to get Byron Sonne to hand over his ID on June 15, 2010. Sonne—otherwise known as the G20 Hacker, or the Anarchist of Forest Hill—had been filming the $9.4 million security fence that went up before the international summit. A security guard called the police, and three officers stopped Sonne as he walked along Temperance St.
One asked for his identification. Sonne refused, stating that he knew it was his right not to identify himself unless he was being detained for a specific crime. So, bicycle officer Michael Wong told Sonne that he was being investigated for jaywalking under the Highway Traffic Act. “This was simply a ruse employed to obtain the Applicant’s identification,” reads the statement of fact submitted by the Crown Attorney. “It worked.”
In Sonne’s preliminary trial last winter, all three officers agreed that none of them had actually seen him cross the street illegally. On November 10, Superior Court Justice Nancy Spies decided this ruse meant Sonne was unlawfully detained, and that his rights were violated under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Next week, Judge Spies will decide if the Toronto Police also violated his rights when searching his home, seizing his possessions, or questioning him for 12 hours without access to a lawyer. Then begins his trial for possessing explosive materials and “counseling the indictable offense of mischief not committed.” I’ll explain that one to you when the trial gets started.
A jaywalking ruse doesn’t seem like a big deal. But from this came the police department’s “open source” searches (the rest of us call it Googling), where they found the Twitter, Flickr and YouTube postings that led Toronto Police to believe Sonne was a criminal with nefarious intent for the summit. Egregrious tweets include a link to a Toronto Star map showing the locations of the G20 security cameras. Egregious photos include those of a compressed air cannon, or spudgun, which has now been ruled irrelevant (as any nerd will tell you, it's a science enthusiast's toy). His weapons charge has been dropped.
From this ruse also came days-long surveillance by multiple officers, which added to the G20’s $1 billion-plus price tag. Since the ruse breached the Charter, their observations are now inadmissible as evidence in Sonne’s trial.
It was also catalyst for the search warrant for Sonne’s home in Forest Hill. Crown attorney Stephen Byrne is arguing that officers learned of Sonne through other means than taking down his licence info on June 15. This becomes a complicated legal cipher—after speaking to the police on that day, Sonne went home and tweeted about it. Byrne says the tweet about being stopped and threatened with a jaywalking charge is enough to link Sonne’s Twitter account to his other online profiles, and ultimately his address. Sonne’s lawyer, Joe Di Luca, disagreed. “He never would have tweeted about being stopped if he hadn't been stopped,” Di Luca argued. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this complicated,” said Spies.
Days were spent arguing about the reliability of Chris French, the police officer who wrote the requests for warrants to search first Sonne’s home, then the cottages belonging to his parents and his parents-in-law. Byrne himself said in court that the police officer who wrote the request for the warrant, French, had a poor handle on writing and grammar. Di Luca, animatedly rolling up onto his toes, argued that French was purposefully reckless. Judge Spies said that, at the very least, French often presented his opinion in the warrant as fact—that the spudgun was a dangerous weapon from which Sonne was going to shoot drywall screws and bolts during the G20. “In French’s mind, there’s no lawful reason Sonne would do these things,” said Byrne, referring to Sonne’s observation of the G20 security apparatus.
In her measured judge’s tones, her hair in a perfect bob, Spies came out with a line that caused the geeks in the audience (mostly Hacklab members here to support Sonne) to sit up with glee. “He clearly hasn’t thought that there could be someone akin to a hacker testing the security system, which would be a lawful purpose,” said Spies.
A small victory, but not one that can erase the ruse, or the search and June 22 arrest of Sonne, the arrest of his now-estranged wife, Kristen Peterson, or his imprisonment without bail for 11 months. From this ruse came the loss of his livelihood as a computer security consultant and the draining of his parents’ retirement fund. From this ruse, his life unravelled.
If Sonne is found guilty of possessing explosives for the purpose of setting off a bomb in downtown Toronto during the G20 weekend of June 26 and 27 2010, the ruse might have been justifiable. Judge Spies will decide on that, too, soon enough.
