How Byron Sonne’s obsession with the G20 security apparatus cost him everything
The fence, as the notorious G20 barricade was known, was three metres high and 10 kilometres long. It was put up at a cost of $9.4 million to cordon off the public from two parts of the downtown core during the summit’s two days in Toronto last year. The most crucial area to protect was the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the world leaders were set to meet. A second barricade enclosed Bay Street to Blue Jays Way and Wellington to Lake Shore Boulevard—home to the hotels where the Internationally Protected Persons would sleep.
In the buildup to the summit, Byron Sonne, a slim, balding 37-year-old computer consultant, shot photos and videos of security measures and uploaded them to the Internet under the nickname Toronto Goat. Sonne was obsessed with finding flaws in the security apparatus. Some of his comments on Twitter and Flickr derided the fence’s integrity and strength; a couple of photos showed climbing tools called tree steps that he said could be used to scale the fence or tear it down. Other security measures came under his scrutiny, too. Sonne posted a link to a Toronto Star map of the 71 new CCTV cameras that had been installed for the summit, and took photos of loose wires behind one of them, implying that they could be rendered useless with one snip.
As the G20 drew closer and downtown emptied out, groups of uniformed police with loops of plastic handcuffs strung on their belts began to take position at seemingly every corner, and Sonne posted pictures of them, too. (He titled one shot of bicycle cops rolling down University Avenue “Bacon on Wheels.”) For the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be questioned, he posted a link to a pamphlet on protester rights put out by the Movement Defence Committee, a Toronto group of law students and lawyers.
By Tuesday, June 15, 11 days before the summit, he had uploaded five videos to YouTube—raw footage of the Convention Centre and various lengths of the fence, including parts of Simcoe Street and Bremner Boulevard. That day, as he walked around downtown with a camera, he attracted attention and was asked why he was filming the fence line. “Cops were polite enough,” he wrote on Twitter, “but they threatened me with a Highway Traffic Act violation for walking in the road to videotape. Beware of this trick.” He handed over his driver’s licence, but only after being threatened with a jaywalking ticket.
Four days before the summit began, just before lunch, Sonne walked out of his house on Elderwood Drive in Forest Hill and caught the Bathurst bus downtown. He heard sirens, and his bus pulled over. The sirens ceased, but the bus didn’t start moving again. After waiting a few minutes, he stood up to get off, grumbling to himself about the unreliability of the TTC, but he was stopped at the bus’s doors by a police officer who asked if he was Byron Sonne. “Yes,” he said. “Am I being arrested or detained?” The answer was yes.
Sonne was taken to 13 Division, at Eglinton and Allen Road. He says he sat through 14 hours of questioning, six of them before he was allowed to call a lawyer. He was asked if he knew anything about the Black Bloc and other political groups, and if he had any connections to protesters from the United States. The police had obtained search warrants for his home, his parents’ Midland cottage and his wife’s family cottage on Lake of Bays. At the end of his questioning, he was charged with six offences, carrying a maximum sentence of 58 years, including possession of a weapon and an explosive substance, mischief and intimidating the police. He was taken to the Maplehurst Correctional Centre in Milton.
The day after Sonne’s arrest, he appeared in a courthouse at Finch and Dufferin. I squeezed in on the lone viewer’s bench at the back of the courtroom with a dozen or so reporters, all of us eager to learn more about the first G20 criminal. This particular courthouse had been selected because the police were anticipating a large number of summit arrestees: its courtrooms are designed for gang trials, with a row of 12 phone booth–like prisoner’s boxes to accommodate multiple accused. On this day, however, there was just one accused. Sonne came into the room in an orange prison jumpsuit and winked at the journalists. He was represented by three lawyers: Joseph Di Luca, Peter Copeland and Kevin Tilley, who immediately requested a publication ban on court proceedings. Judges must grant these bans whenever asked, and many lawyers request them now as a matter of course. Sonne had no criminal record, but he was nevertheless denied bail. Two days after Sonne’s arrest, his wife of eight years, Kristen Peterson, was also arrested and charged with possessing an explosive material and a weapon.
Sonne’s friends and colleagues believe he wanted to get arrested, or at least wanted to see what it would take to get noticed. He had told them about his intention to challenge the G20 security apparatus in order to make a point about the violation of civil liberties. But he never imagined his friends and family would be dragged into it—and he never dreamed the consequences could be this severe. Standing up for constitutional freedoms is one thing; bringing the hammer of law enforcement down onto your own head is quite another.
A penetration test is an attempt to mimic a security breach in order to identify and eliminate weak spots in a boundary. It can be done on a physical building, on a military network or, in Sonne’s experience, on a computer system. As a freelance consultant, he was paid to do security analysis, specifically vulnerability research; he often tested whether websites could be coaxed into giving up products for free or companies were inadvertently breaking laws by disclosing their customers’ private information. He has worked for a company called FSC Internet (which is now part of Telus) and NCircle, a San Francisco–based computer security firm with an office in Toronto. In 2008, he started his own consultancy, Halvdan Solutions, out of his home. He charged clients $250 an hour.
Computer security is a lightning-fast field where the self-appointed good guys and bad guys duke it out in code as quickly as they can think of new ways to thwart each other. The ethical lines aren’t always clear. “Hacker” is a word that Sonne is happy to apply to himself, but the term is broad enough to include anyone with an independent streak who enjoys messing around with technology. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates used to call themselves hackers. A notorious American hacker, Albert Gonzalez, acted as a Secret Service informant against other computer criminals at the same time that he was leading the biggest credit and debit card thievery ring ever discovered.
Sonne is a long-time member of TASK (the Toronto Area Security Klatch), a group of 2,900 computer security professionals who organize monthly meetings to discuss developments in the minutiae of their trade. For three years, he has also been a member of Hacklab, a loose collective of 30 or so Toronto tech hobbyists who pay a $50 monthly fee to access a shared workshop in Kensington Market. The Lab, as members call it, launched in 2008. It’s a social place where people interested in quantum physics, higher mathematics or how to get an iPhone to run Flash programs can meet and share their schemes. Adhering to the law is a point of honour here, and attempts to broach illegal projects are met with derision.
In his house, sonne had acetone and hydrogen peroxide—common chemicals that can be used to make a bomb
At the Lab, Sonne was known as an outgoing guy who kept everything tidy and organized. He built wall units and stocked them with plastic bins, so that members could store works-in-progress on site. His personal tinkering included building motor control circuits, SIM card readers and the type of magnetic strip readers that are used on credit cards and security passes, just to see if he could. After the Polish immigrant Robert Dzieka´nski died from a police Tasering in the Vancouver airport in 2007, Sonne built an anti-Taser patch out of steel wool and denim. He says he never tested it, though, since owning a Taser is illegal.
In his Forest Hill garage, he experimented with building a waveguide, a set of custom-welded aluminum pipes meant to direct the electromagnetic waves emitted by a household microwave oven. The device requires precise mathematical calibration to work. Made properly, it can disrupt telecommunications signals. Sonne lined his garage with wet blankets so he didn’t disturb his neighbours’ Wi-Fi, but in the end his waveguide was a failure: all he was able to do was melt a tiny smear of chocolate, and that took a full minute.
Six years ago, Sonne ordered two air cannons off the Internet from a company called Spudtech. They’re PVC tubes about five feet long. To operate, they require an air compressor, which weighs about 30 pounds and must be plugged in to an electricity source. The compressor builds the air pressure in the tube to enable the object inside to shoot out. Sonne says it’s too loud, cumbersome and dangerous to use in the city, so he stored it at his parents’ cottage. On weekends, he and a group of friends would load up the cannon with potatoes or tennis balls, sometimes splattering watermelons. “It was nothing more than redneck fun,” he says.
About two years ago, Sonne and Fryderyk Supinski, a friend from Hacklab and TASK, devised a joint project. Both have been fascinated by rocketry since childhood, and they agreed to take up amateur rocket building together. Their ultimate goal was to make, from scratch, a rocket with a built-in camera to record the journey as it shot some 6,000 feet into the air. Supinski is an amiable 32-year-old who works in information security. He says it was all for fun, a pastime to share with his son. Sonne and Supinski began contacting Industry Canada and amateur rocketeering associations to investigate what licences and materials they would need to kick-start their pursuit. Sonne, true to his DIY streak, bought some of the chemicals he’d need to produce solid rocket fuel, but they put the project on hold when an executive from the Canadian Association of Rocketry warned them it was illegal to experiment with the chemicals before they acquired the proper licences. After Sonne was arrested, Supinski became nervous that his hobby would be seen as criminal and gave up on building rockets altogether. Still, in February, he went to Florida to see the launch of Discovery, the third-last mission NASA would send into space before contracting rocket building out to private companies. He bought an extra ticket to the launch and saved it until the last minute, hoping the charges would be dropped in time for Sonne to take the trip, but that didn’t happen.
Sonne had the time to indulge in his hobbies because of his wife’s family fortune, itself a product of security technology. Sonne and Peterson met in the mid-1990s, when he took his first job after graduating from Vaughan’s Radio College of Canada (now the RCC Institute of Technology) with a diploma in electronics engineering. He worked at Digital Security Controls, a company that Kristen’s father, John Peterson, had started in his basement in 1979. John Peterson and his collaborators held dozens of patents for keypads, wireless alarm monitors and other electronic equipment. By the time Sonne went to work for DSC, it was recognized worldwide as an industry leader.
Kristen Peterson, a brunette with blue-green eyes, earned her BA in English at McGill and joined the family company as a technical writer after Sonne was hired. She is taller than Sonne, and strikingly attractive. They began dating soon after they met. She had a strong sense of what kind of boyfriend she wanted: after a year of seeing each other, she told Sonne he had to move out of his parents’ Brampton home and spend some time living on his own, learning how to do his own shopping and paying his own bills. When she decided that his domestic skills were adequate, the two settled into an apartment in Forest Hill, the neighbourhood in which Peterson had grown up. An aspiring visual artist, she started a diploma course at the Toronto School of Art. Sonne grew bored with his work in systems administration and began to look for work in security.
In late 2001, John Peterson sold DSC Group to Massachusetts-based Tyco International for $90.2 million (U.S.). The next fall, Sonne and Peterson were married in an intimate 50-guest ceremony in her parents’ backyard, followed by dinner at Zucca near Yonge and Eglinton. After a week-long honeymoon on a houseboat in Amsterdam, the couple returned to Toronto and began looking for a home. In early 2003, Peterson’s parents bought them a Tudor house for $880,000. It has a charming yard full of gnarled trees and is 10 minutes away from Peterson’s parents’ home on Glencairn Avenue.
Sonne continued to take contract security jobs. He says that Peterson told him not to worry about finances—she wanted to use her share of her family’s new-found wealth to allow her husband the same freedom that she now had. Peterson volunteered as a docent at the Art Gallery of Ontario and enrolled in the Masters of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto. She began to create installation art projects that played with lines and dimensions, putting on solo and group exhibitions at Spadina House, Convenience Gallery and campus art spaces. She and Sonne shared an interest in good food, and Peterson leafed through cookbooks, went through a phase of wheat-free eating, and experimented with developing her own recipes, referring to their favourites as “Death Row” meals. Another pastime was travelling, including a trip with Sonne’s parents, Bue and Valerie, to Denmark. Paid computer security work became just one of the many things Sonne spent his time on.
Sonne’s list of hobbies is so long it’s almost absurd, and many of them happen to involve chemicals with potentially explosive properties. By the time he started thinking about building rockets, he was already growing deep blue crystals out of copper sulfate. He and his wife are both avid gardeners and in their garage stored urea, ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate, which he claims he used as fertilizers. He also had the ingredients to make triacetone triperoxide, an explosive compound commonly used by suicide bombers. The main ingredients of TATP are hydrogen peroxide (which he had for his rocket experiments) and acetone (a solvent he kept in his garage). Separately, they’re relatively harmless, but together they form an unstable concoction known to blow up from the slightest miscalculation. Sonne maintains that he never attempted to mix any explosive substances, and the quantities he owned were legal.
He has a restless energy, and one of his favourite pastimes is mountain biking. He spent many hours and thousands of dollars in the Don Valley, building and maintaining public trails—some of them part of the city plan, others that just seemed to him like a good idea. The G20 wasn’t the first time he had posted photos of tools on the Internet: years before, he was using the discussion forum section of the website mtbr.com to share his opinions on the best rakes, saws and screws for trail building with other mountain bikers, and to mull over the ethics of reshaping the Don Valley without government sanction. He used a camp stove fuelled with hexamine tablets (another ingredient that can be used to make explosives) to boil water for coffee on long rides.
Sonne traces his obsession with technology to a pivotal childhood experience. His dad worked at Northern Telecom for decades, and in the early 1980s, Bue Sonne decided to build a computer. Apple’s early home computers were gaining in popularity, but they were expensive for the average family. Using a homemade motherboard and makeshift components, Bue and a group of technicians and engineers from Nortel put together an unwieldy device that used tapes for memory and made constant beeping sounds. When Bue brought it home, Byron was entranced. He tried his hand at rudimentary programming, and he and his younger brother, Kristopher, insisted they needed the machine to learn their multiplication tables. Then, says Bue, “the boys burnt up the board on me,” so the family bought a Commodore.
In Sonne’s high school yearbook he’s labelled “most likely to become an international terrorist”
In elementary school, Sonne was pronounced gifted and skipped a grade. He was small in stature when he started Grade 9 at J. A. Turner Secondary School in Brampton and an easy target for bullies. In one incident, some older students zipped him into a duffle bag and hung it on a doorknob. He was a member of the audio-visual crew that operated lights and sound equipment for assemblies and plays. He was also a prankster. Once, at age 15, he tossed an artfully constructed combination of modelling clay, wires and a digital watch down the book return chute at the school library. Panicked school officials evacuated the building. Sonne approached the principal himself to explain that it was a joke and was nevertheless suspended. His classmates labelled him “Most Likely to Become an International Terrorist” in the yearbook.
A number of Sonne’s long-time friends showed up at his recent court appearances and bail hearings. “He’s the same guy he was in high school,” says Mark Allingham, a former roommate of Sonne’s brother, Kristopher, who considers them both among his closest friends. “He’s always liked to test people and rules. If you say, ‘You stay in that square,’ he’s the guy who’s going to have one toe out of it just to see if you notice.”
In the years after the 9/11 attacks, Sonne developed an interest in what skeptics call “security theatre,” a term used to describe expensive, large-scale measures that restrict individual freedom but have, in their view, a minimal effect on actual safety. He began to question the usefulness of CCTV cameras. Some research shows that CCTVs in the U.K. have reduced such crimes as parking lot break-ins but have little effect on crimes people really worry about, like violent assaults. Sonne also saw surveillance technology increasingly used for racial or class profiling—“paranoid Caucasians having to keep an eye on coloured folks or hobos in their precious lily-white urban enclaves, waiting for them to do something,” he told me. He was also disturbed by how security measures could be used to gather information about perceived enemies. This, he says, is when surveillance becomes a weapon. He engaged in debates with friends and colleagues about how the public was being observed and what exactly it would take to get “a visit from the men in black.” He decided he should find out. His plan: engage in borderline illegal activities, attract the attention of law enforcement and establish proof of the limits of Canadian freedom.
One of Sonne’s first steps was to join the Pirate Bay website under the nickname Goat Master. The site is used for posting and accessing torrents, which are large media files that are broken into smaller parts for ease of downloading. In 2009, Sonne began uploading controversial and hard-to-find books and videos onto Pirate Bay, compiling a collection that ranged from idealistic to outright disturbing. He thought that by exposing the lunacy (and poor writing) of many infamous extremist texts, his Pirate Bay collection would act as a “one-stop shop to debunk racist ideologies.” He also believes that defending the right to consume truly repulsive material is the real testing ground for free speech. Many of his selections are ideologically contradictory: Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is there, but so is Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. He uploaded Assassination Politics, an essay in which author Jim Bell argues that anonymously funding the murder of corrupt public officials would help strengthen democracy. Sonne posted a map to U.S. nuclear, biological and chemical sites, purportedly prepared by the organization Prudent Places, which helps Americans who are concerned about environmental pollutants decide where to live. In a note on the site, he described one uploaded video as depicting a “Russian Nazi” beheading Muslims. A supporter of WikiLeaks (Sonne has made donations), he posted leaked government documents on Pirate Bay, including a Transportation Security Administration guide to passenger screening. Also in the list of files that Goat Master provided were documents reputedly read by Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, including The Turner Diaries (a 1978 novel that imagines a race war that results in the elimination of blacks and Jews) and Ragnar’s Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives. Most recently, Sonne used this site, along with YouTube, to host his videos of the G20 fence.
Sonne’s friends expected he’d spend a weekend in jail. “we planned on having a ‘we told you so’ party”
Sonne’s postings reveal his own standards of right and wrong. The first file he put up, in January 2009, was a handbook on “Setting Fires With Electric Timers” by the self-described “eco-guerrilla” outfit Earth Liberation Front. After noting that the document was hard to find, Goat Master wrote, “Please, educational purposes only…don’t be one of these idiots that goes out and hurts people.” His comment following the post of the Muhammad cartoons in April 2010 was angrier: “You’re getting what you deserve for fucking with Danish cartoonists,” he wrote, referring to the protests and death threats that followed the controversial cartoons’ publication in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. “Your religion is a stupid piece of ignorant shit.” When I asked Sonne about these comments, he told me he has no time for fundamentalists of any stripe (including “paranoid white Christian idiots”) and that he adamantly detests racism.
There was another purpose to his Pirate Bay collection: he used it to track how controversial materials moved on the Internet. He noticed that the file encryption program TrueCrypt was popular in the Middle East and former Soviet Union countries, and saw an uptick in the downloading of anti-Semitic materials during unrest in Israel. He says he detected Canadian and American government IP addresses looking at his torrents, but he was never contacted by authorities.
When his Internet provocations failed to garner the desired result, Sonne upped the ante. He applied for a restricted firearms licence, which is administered by the RCMP and requires that two people attest to his character (his friend Mark Allingham agreed to do so, without hesitation) and that his spouse sign the form to indicate her consent. The restricted firearms licence application, he says, was just the latest step in his “notice me” project—the only firearm he owns is from Canadian Tire, and it shoots pellets. Around the same time, he applied for a private investigator’s licence through the provincial Ministry of Community and Correctional Services. It also requires a law enforcement background check. The private investigator’s licence was a legitimate interest, as he wanted to start applying to agencies and government ministries for work as a forensic computer investigator. Sonne was granted both licences early last year.
In the late fall of 2009, Sonne began to believe that the upcoming G20 summit would be the perfect venue for him to publicize his independent study of security theatre. He paid close attention to news reports of escalating security costs, especially after the federal government overruled the warnings of then-mayor David Miller and other Toronto officials that holding the event in the city’s downtown core would be expensive and difficult to police. Sonne already had a radio scanner that allowed him to listen legally to unencrypted emergency service communications, so he gave a TASK workshop on how to listen in on emergency services. He attended meetings of the Surveillance Club, a new group launched by U of T researchers that was open to anyone who wanted to discuss surveillance and security issues, especially those concerning the G20. There, he announced his intention to perform a security analysis of the summit, inviting people to follow his postings on Flickr and Twitter (he has a mere 134 followers). Sonne’s plans were also the topic of conversation on the Internet relay channel that Hacklab maintains for members to have instant messaging conversations. He warned his wife that he intended to take pictures and videos of law enforcement in order to study the G20. She asked him to avoid the downtown if the weekend’s protests began to heat up, and he promised he would stick to documenting the setup.
Sonne’s hacker friends weren’t surprised when he was eventually arrested. “We planned on having a ‘we told you so’ party when he got out,” says Hacklab member Madison Kelly. But they expected he’d spend a weekend in jail and come out with a mischief charge. Sonne, too: his expectation, during his years of flirting with the law, was that he’d get to have a meeting with CSIS that would form the basis for a TASK presentation. The weapons and explosives charges, followed by the denial of bail, shocked and frightened Sonne’s friends, especially those with their own pet scientific projects.
Last fall, I wrote Sonne a letter asking for an interview, and he wrote back that he would welcome a chance to talk. I visited him twice at Maplehurst, waiting for him at a bank of telephones divided from the prisoners’ quarters by a long Plexiglas wall, while other inmates energetically waved at me through a tiny window. Sonne would come in, always wearing a vibrant orange jumpsuit. He’d speak quickly, apologizing if he seemed over-caffeinated. After our first in-person meeting, he began to call me at home, but the prison phone system is unreliable: it works only when making collect calls to land lines, and any loud noise causes the connection to break. So he sent me letters carefully written with prison-issue three-inch golf pencils—his longest was 17 pages.
Maplehurst allows each prisoner two 20-minute visits from friends and family every week. Bue and Valerie Sonne, both in their 60s, use one of the weekly slots, while Sonne’s friends and some of the Lab members jockey to fill the other. A few times, Sonne’s parents have brought his 92-year-old grandmother, Elsie, who lives in a retirement home at the end of their street, and his brother has made some trips from Ohio, where he works as a mechanical technician.
Bue Sonne, like his son, is a light-hearted joker with a shiny pate. He retired last year from driving a school bus, which is what he did after taking early retirement from Nortel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sonnes believe steadfastly in their son’s innocence. They feel they’ve been dragged into a witch hunt; they are certain their phone was tapped in the weeks after Byron’s arrest. They never received any official notice that their cottage had been searched, but after a police officer mentioned it, Bue paid a visit. The garage door was left unlocked, and the back door had been busted down and later nailed back into place from the inside. “There goes $1,000 down the drain,” Bue says. “They left a number of lights on—they could have turned them off.”
Valerie, a retired hospital administrative assistant, grows teary more easily than her husband. She’s certain that their son will be acquitted. “He’s been very strong, and he’s keeping us strong,” she says. “We have faith in the system.” For Valerie, one of the worst parts about going to visit Byron is the waiting room—it usually takes an hour before they’re finally able to go through the metal detector and talk to him—but what really upsets her is interacting with other prisoners’ families, especially mothers with little children. “It’s the saddest thing,” she says. “And they’re not all guilty in there, either.”
Maplehurst, known to inmates as the Milton Hilton, is a superjail. It holds 1,184 male prisoners; Sonne shares a two-person cell in a 32-person unit reserved for those awaiting trial. Inmates are allowed 15 to 30 daily minutes of outdoor time in a fenced-in yard, which doesn’t provide him enough exercise time to keep his anxiety in check. Using a sheet of eight-and-a-half-by-11 paper, Sonne measured the hallway in front of his cell, calculating that 220 laps is four kilometres of cardio, which he runs each day, followed by 400 jumping jacks and 60 push-ups. Supporters have been sending him a lot of books: he read the Bible, the Quran and War and Peace in their entirety, and reread Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, a fantasy novel about an ancient kingdom woven into a rug, which he thinks should be made into a movie. He adopted a vegan diet because he finds the jail’s menu unpleasant.
At a preliminary hearing in February, most of Sonne’s charges were dropped. The mischief charge is gone, as are two counts of intimidating justice system officials, one of them “by watch and beset,” an extremely rare charge that refers to stalking and threatening. The weapons charge was also dismissed. (The potato guns at the Sonnes’ cottage aren’t illegal and, evidently, aren’t going to be counted against him.)
Sonne still faces the explosives charge, plus a new charge added at the end of the preliminary: counselling to commit mischief not committed. Simply put, it seems his Internet posts showed people how to disable security cameras and tear the fence down, although no one acted on that information. He had to return to jail when the hearing was over, and he anticipated being there at least another six weeks while his lawyers prepared his third bail application. His parents are burning through their retirement fund to pay for the legal costs. Sonne carries a lot of guilt about the stress his arrest is putting on his family and friends (some of whom have been cautioned by their employers not to associate with him). His certification as a security system professional was suspended pending an acquittal, and he suspects he’ll have trouble getting security work after this, even if he is vindicated. On top of all that, it looks like his marriage is over.
Peterson began pursuing legal separation three months after their home was searched and she was taken away in handcuffs. Unlike Sonne, she was granted bail the day after she was arrested, though she was forbidden from contacting her husband except through her attorney. The police seized her artwork and some of her possessions, and the AGO suspended her as a volunteer. Even after both of her charges were dropped in late January, Peterson didn’t soften toward her partner of 15 years—she hasn’t been to visit, and her parents didn’t return Valerie’s email about picking up some of her son’s clothes from the house on Elderwood.
“I hurt like hell with loneliness and ache with a loss of my life’s meaning at times,” Sonne wrote in one of his letters to me. “To go from a beautiful life, a beautiful wife and a beautiful house to this….I’d say it’s my crown of thorns if that didn’t make me sound like an egotistical asshole.” His mother, who calls the Petersons “lovely, lovely people,” says she flips sadly through Byron and Kristen’s wedding album almost every week. On the first day of his preliminary trial, as evidence from the search of his home was presented, Sonne broke down in the courtroom and cried.
This fall is probably the earliest that Sonne can have a full trial to hear his remaining two charges. He faces a maximum five-year sentence for the explosives charge and another 10 years for the counselling accusation. He didn’t expect to spend a birthday and Christmas in jail, or to be single, but on most days he still shows a sense of humour, like when I told him his story would be on Toronto Life’s cover. “I hope this doesn’t go to my head,” he wrote to me, “along with my stunning good looks and athletic prowess.”
Sonne was one of 1,115 people arrested during the G20. He’s the only one who has remained in jail since then. Two class action suits have been launched against the Toronto Police for wrongful arrest: one for $115 million, the other for $45 million. Sonne, too, plans to launch a civil suit if he’s acquitted, to make up for his lost earnings while in jail. He also expects to be in court again to argue that his arrest and incarceration violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Ministry of the Attorney General declined to make any comment to me on Sonne’s case.
Sonne’s friends from Hacklab say they always saw him as a crusader, but his parents never considered him to be politicized. I asked him if either depiction was accurate. “It’s hard to use the word ‘political’ satisfyingly, because you have to align yourself with a particular dogma,” he answered. He has occasionally described himself as an “anarchist” but thinks that it’s too easily misinterpreted (in his definition, the label means self-governance, working collectively without leaders). In the past, he cringed at the rhetoric of such groups as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and Anti-Racist Action, he says. “They often sound like they’re reading from some standard leftist playbook.” Then he ended up in jail, where he met Hells Angels (who couldn’t understand why he was there), as well as other G20 detainees, the classic social justice types that he once maligned. He now thinks he has more in common with them than he had assumed.
Sonne doesn’t plan to lead a quieter life when he gets out. “If I were to back off and shut up, that sort of negates any value of the time I’ve spent in here,” he says. After all, the results of his first national security analysis exceeded his expectations.
Bryon is a political prisoner, period. Anyone who doubts this need only come watch the hearings and the trial.
Arrogance. Maybe Sonne should have considered the consequences of endangering the lives of our political leaders. Innocent people don’t have explosive materials in their homes. Innocent people don’t give people tips on how to clip wires on securty cameras. He got what he deserved. I hope he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
“Engendering the lives of political leaders?” Did you read the article? Google for “security theater”… you will find that the real danger to our leaders is wasting millions of dollars on fake security rather than holding such events in easy to secure locales.
If he was so worried about his beautiful home and beautiful wife, maybe he should have chosen different hobbies?
He seems very arrogant and naive. What did he think was going to be the consequence of collecting chemicals for explosives and challenging a large security apparatus? Why on earth did he think his wife and her family were going to put up with that behaviour?
He’s gonna be smokin’ when he gets out of jail.
Here’s my take on this…
You have an extremely hot wife, who also happens to be extremely wealthy.
Instead of making love to her and rolling around in money all day, why on Earth would this freak waste his time building rockets and shite?
Dude… I really hope that your new boyfriend(s) in jail wake up that special lover in you. You should have been in bed with wifey and planning your next worldly vacation, instead of being a mischief.
Bad on you, dude.
Explosives? Camp Fuel, hydrogen peroxide, and acetone are something most people have in their home. I’m not arguing if he should go free or not but to suggest that those are enough for an explosives charge is ridiculous. Whats next, a water gun and a liter of gas magically become owning a flamethrower?
Post #3, it’s endangering the lives of political leaders, not engendering the lives of political leaders.
Completely agree with “What a Waste”. Wealthy and anti-establishment… an age old tale. This guy should focus on bettering the world instead of being a non contributing zero. He should put his skills to good use – maybe set up some cameras at one of his two summer homes so we can watch his wife take a swim.
the guy did nothing wrong… He was just in a position to prove that the billion dollars spent on security was wasted. And the old saying rings true here that “there is no worse position to be in than being right when your government is wrong.” Remember not one cop has been fired or punished in anyway for what happened at the G20 and the police also have yet to admit to a single mistake even after the ombudsman says it was the worst mass violation of civil liberties in Canadian history. Also remember tyrants will always find excuses to justify their tyranny. When he is found not guilty they will say it is his fault they arrested him and ruined his life… Always happens that way.
Welcome to Canada – where police assault citizens, even Taser them to death, with virtual impunity, and where a potato gun is considered a WMD.
It would appear his major tactical mistake was using a TTC bus as a get away vehicle…
he looks like Heath Ledger
Duh! there are consequences to ones’ actions. the maximum sentence in jail would still be too little for what this idiot could potentially have done, or incited others to do.
I cannot believe his Wife bailed on him like that. It’s not like he murdered someone … or by the looks of it, that he was even planning to hurt anyone. After 15 years, she abandons her husband in his time of need…. sounds like a marriage of convience to me.
He’s just an egotistical asshole (he even said it himself). Loser.
It’s one thing that this guy did some stupid and completely legal thing without thinking about the consequences, but it’s quite another thing for the government and the police to exercise their power and use our tax to try to put a stupid but innocent to jail just to prove a point. The way our police handled this entire G20 reminds me so much of the Chinese government.
The sad thing is this guy has learned nothing at ll from this experience. He intends to continue his “security experiments” after he gets out of prison.
For all that this guys seems smart, he sure is stupid.
Why is it hard to believe that his wife bailed on him? He got her thrown in prison, that would be a deal breaker for me.
Also he clearly has no respect for her feelings or else this article wouldn’t have included her wedding pictures and so many details about their relationship! I really doubt that she gave them to the reporter. He’s an asshole.
I get the Sonne in this story in that he is a part of human “normal” in that he is a big nerd. A real nerd. It’s very sad to me that the majority of kids and bullies still don’t accept nerds. Ok. a house arrest and banning of using a computer or technology until the courts have made a decision – I could see that being appropriate. But this, what they’ve done to Sonne lacks any sort of compassion. Yes, there are consequences; but it sounds like Sonne never got a first warning, let alone a clear “last chance” warning as would anyone in a Canadian workplace. It’s not right to punish based on the horrible potential reality that isn’t real and never happened and was not intended.
Sorry Sonne for the “lashings” you’ve taken from the adult bullies.
Look up the definition of embarrassment in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of this guy, and his wifes family with a tear down the middle. If he was married to my sister I’d be happy she left him too. What a waste of an obviously intelligent mind, but one that obviously he doesn’t know how to harness into things that would have been positive for his family. This whole story just creeps me out, period.
And that is tear as in torn paper. No sympathy tears for that guy.
Everyone on here seems to have extreme sympathy for Sonne’s* ex wife. I find it hard to believe that she had no idea about his passion to push the limits, especially his G20 escapades. His whole life he’s been working towards this point! If I felt strongly against my husbands past times, was aware of the consequences, I would have made an ultimatum a long time ago. Yeah getting arrest must have been the final straw, but i highly doubt things were peachy before and if they were, then she set herself up. None the less, seeing your wedding picture on every newsstand months after the story died in the news, certainly blows.
Youtube the film “into the fire film” — And you’ll see why this brave political prisoner felt the need to do what he did.
This guy is insane. Talk about uncontrolled obsession. Can anyone say “paranoid delusion” and “narcissist”? His family and friends are in denial. He must be very charming indeed.
At least his wife finally saw who he really is and headed for the hills. I guess sometimes it takes getting thrown in jail and having your life ripped apart to wake up and smell the nutbar.
Yes, it does begin to sound like China!
“This guy should focus on bettering the world instead of being a non contributing zero.”
?By sucking up to the un-elected rulers of the Planet?
?By passively allowing millions of dollars to be wasted on this event? By writing letters to the Editor?
Gee … in America UNIONS built a middle class, a 40 hour work week, and the end of child labor. Are you presuming that this was done without breaking a single law?
And in the end what was his crime against humanity?
JAYWALKING.
Bizarre how so many posters have judged Sonne on his personal life choices. I do not understand why, just because some might think he is a nerd, or an anarchist, or a “loser”, that means it is OK for the Government of Canada and Ontario to beat him up, send him to jail, and threaten to keep him there for 15 years … he did NOTHING … he had NO WEAPONS … and “citing mischief that did not occur” should be right up there with thinking about not paying your taxes …
It is embarrassing to live in a place where people think it is OK for the government to “destroy” its enemies, even if they are as young, harmless, and ineffectual as Sonne.
He wasn’t arrested because he’s a nerd and he’s 37, not a child being bullied by adults.
He was arrested because he was purposely collecting explosives and building weaponry with an expressed hatred of security forces.
What ever his reasons for doing so, I for one am glad that our justice system is investigating what he was doing.
I think that he just needed a skilled manager who would control him and direct him towards creation of something good. I would describe him as ”lost genius”.
Two points:
1. There seems to be a weird family dynamic going on here and one thing is crystal clear: Sonne married up. His mother’s pining for her son’s ‘perfect’ marriage is just plain creepy. If he was my kid I’d have a serious hate-on for the ex that walked out and abandoned him in his time of need, I wouldn’t be watching their wedding video over and over again.
That said I completely don’t blame the wife for walking out. She’d obviously been willing to put up with a fair amount over the years, but being arrested would be the last straw for me as well. Sometimes you just have to walk away from things that aren’t good for you.
2. To those calling Sonne a political prisoner who has done nothing wrong, I challenge you to answer this: if the police had let him go and he’d then blown himself up inside or near the security fence, killing world leaders, or if someone who’d read his postings had used that information to disable cameras, breach the security fence and assasinate world leaders, would you still think he had done nothing wrong?
A clear case of police intimidation of political opponents and malicious prosecution (these are simply not “explosives”) especially of his wife. He should sue for many millions and get it. Every police officer and prosecutor involved needs to lose their career over this. They are Dr. Charles Smith: stupidity is no excuse.
What this person did was document something and nothing more, from the facts given. That is not illegal in any democracy – where we have a right to know what is done to “secure” us and where obfuscation of that usually serves to sanction abuses.
This guy sounds like a total moron and he doesn’t deserve that poor woman I hope she dumps him pronto. Anyone who is that attention seeking needs to grow up. Putting your family at risk is a self serving SOB who deserves the jail time he gets and more. If his Mrs. is reading this all I can say is one word “Divorce Lawyer” and no access to her or the kids if they have any. This guy is obviously a psycho in the making if he has this kind of crap in his house endangering others he needs help.
Did the writer even bother to verify the facts of this story, or did she just transcribe this lunatic’s prison letters? Did she hunt down any of his “clients” for his security consulting business? Likely she would have found no one dumb enough to pay this guy $250/hr for his services. My guess is this guy was unemployable and invented a consulting company to give the illusion of usefulness. He clearly can’t follow direction and has a big beef with authority. So, an unemployed head case with an “anxiety” problem who stockpiles weapons and explosives and seeks to reveal vulnerabilities in our nation’s security structures is arrested and charged. Well thank God! I’m glad my taxes are being used for something proactive.
Police interrogations don’t last six hours (let alone 14) when all you have to say is “I can’t answer your questions and I want a lawyer.” Clearly this guy can’t shut up. He sounds too stupid to be a criminal mastermind. Crazy fits.
Seems like the only thing the wife did wrong was marry this loser in the first place.
It is really clear that this article misses the point from the comments that are written on this page. My brother was in no way a threat to anyone but was pinned as a scape goat by the government.
Wonder why billions of your tax money was spent on security for the G-8-20 summits? Wonder why not one charge has stuck so far? Byron has yet to have his day in court but most comments here convict him already.
This whole embarrassment (the way the security was handled, not Byron’s charges) has given me serious doubts about how much I trust police and the government. I was not a conspiracy theorist type person until this occurred to my brother. It all seems to be more from a bad novel than what I expected from the country I thought was just and was my home. The doubt that this has caused shaken the foundations of what I believed about Canada. Currently I live in the US and at least when rights are taken away it is well known (Patriot Act) as opposed to under the guise of the ‘Public Works Acts’ (that hasn’t been used since WWII) or the announced “10 foot rule” that was later rescinded as NONSENSE.
As for my Kristen, my whole family is saddened by my sister inlaw’s reaction. The Sonne family tends to stick together when the cards are down and this shows what she is made out of. I do hope for the best for her family because they are decent people but it is disappointing.
My my last comment is if everyone had the same moral standing as my brother, the world would be a better place. Don’t be quick to judge until this whole ordeal has gone through the system. Don’t be surprised if there is a settlement adding more $$$ from what you have already spent one the G20 boondoggle.
These are solely my opinions on this matter.
Kristopher B Sonne
What a horrific family she comes from. He is a victim of a classic case of abuse of power. By all rights not only should she have stood by him, but so should have his in-laws. With their 90 odd million it would not have hurt them to have helped with his defense fund, rather than breaking the retirement of his parents.
My guess is that Daddy’s little princess has control issues, as does quite likely her own father.
If this man were a criminal, I would understand it but I question the common sense of anyone who might think otherwise.
I sincerely hope the arts community takes into account her betrayal and shuns her accordingly!
Kristopher B Sonne:
I wish you and your family the best. All I would suggest is that I would be careful not to go as far as becoming a conspiracy theorist but the abuse and corruption amongst the police has been well documented for years.
In the end, your brother will end up with a woman much more deserving of him and I suspect less controlling.
In retrospect her offering your brother a lifestyle free of the problems most face might have been the root of her problems. I am yet to meet a financially secure woman who doesn’t end up resenting her less secure male partner for the very gift she offered him. And although in my own opinion he didn’t do anything remotely criminal and is only guilty of naivete, his type of mind is likely better suited to more structured lifestyle.
Good Luck and I do hope he is not only freed soon but successfully sues for his unjust incarceration!
Please show some compassion.
What did this guy do?
14 hours of questioning without a lawyer?
It is wrong. Police are acting as bullies, completely swollen with power.
You know, those who are calling Byron a terrorist should really have their heads examined for THEY would be terrorists as well if the law decided to do to them what they’ve done to Byron.
I’ve been very good friends with him since he was 15. He’s no where near into terrorism or blowing people up. Truth be known, he’s actually very much against these things & did what he did to show those who insult him just what a farce things have become. All of what he did was documented in the months leading up to the G20 for anyone to see.
Had something be planned, do you really think he’s have posted this info? No way. He was trying to inform the public of the false security that we’ve been lulled into. He was trying to show the government how utterly ridiculous some of their ‘security’ measures were. He shows no remorse due to none being needed. He did nothing wrong, certainly nothing illegal.
He’s a great guy & a great friend. I was at his & Kristen’s wedding. They were a great couple. They were both very happy when I saw them on the days leading up to Byron’s arrest. Her leaving him is their business, although I’m rather lost as to why myself. Once you know the info not allowed due to the publication ban, you’d know he’s innocent, as Kristen would have as well. Denise’s article touches on some, but not all these details. All in time I hope. Byron’s a great person. He’s nothing more than a political prisoner; A token to the ‘effectiveness’ of a 1 billion dollar rip-off.
“2. To those calling Sonne a political prisoner who has done nothing wrong, I challenge you to answer this: if the police had let him go and he’d then blown himself up inside or near the security fence, killing world leaders, or if someone who’d read his postings had used that information to disable cameras, breach the security fence and assasinate world leaders, would you still think he had done nothing wrong?”
Ok, here’s the thing. Yes, I can easily understand why he was looked into. The police were right to arrest & detain him over the G20 weekend. That’s just good precautions. However, with the “evidence” gathered, he should have been released (even with parole if they really thought they had a case) after the weekend was over. For what he had ‘explosives’ wise, there is no way, 11 months on, that he should still be in jail. Also, had someone else used the info, that’s THEIR problem. Otherwise, if you tell someone how to do something, it’s your fault if they do it? Nonsense. At that point they are the ones doing something illegal.
I’ve no doubt that investigation & detainment was the correct thing to do – initially. Even with the secret laws & the idiocy surrounding the jaywalking bit. However, at this point, 11 months in jail without parole, well, it’s just plain wrong.
“It is really clear that this article misses the point from the comments that are written on this page. My brother was in no way a threat to anyone but was pinned as a scape goat by the government.”
Indeed Kris. Although I don’t think it’s the article as much as stupid people not reading it, just skimming it.
Your brothers still a great guy in my books & I look forward to sitting down & chatting with him again soon. As I’ve said throughout this, the best wishes to your family. We’ve all been friends a long time & we all know the truth. Hang in there & all will work out I hope.
@Anon. ⇒ (May 3, 2011 at 11:03 am)
I think you need a reality check. As both a crime writer and a mother, I am well aware that Innocent people DO have explosive materials in their homes. And I’m willing to bet you have two of the simplest… baking soda and vinegar together.
Also as a mother, I know that keeping my family safe does not involve pretending danger doesn’t exist. When I deploy a smoke detector in my home, If someone points out that the smoke detector doesn’t work because I haven’t installed a battery, I don’t get angry, I fix the problem by putting in a battery.
Regardless, the presumption of innocence means that Byron Sonne is legally innocent unless or until he is proved guilty in a court of law.
Byron just got bail granted! :)
After reading this article I am 100% convinced that this man is a victim of malicious prosecution by the police and crown. He came to the attention of the police by uploading video’s of the convention centre to Youtube. A perfectly lawful act. That he was pointing out flaws in the security fence should have been seen as a service to the police instead they took offense and set out to destroy his life and the lives of his loved ones (imagine the suffering of the parents!). What we learn from this brilliantly researched and written article is that the “weapon” discovered in police raids – the Potato Cannon was purchased SIX YEARS BEFORE THE G20 and was used at his cottage as a “red-neck sport” Likewise the “bomb-making” chemicals were related to his rocketry hobby which again predated the G20 by years. This is the very definition of trumped up charges and Mr. Sonne is an example of a political prisoner. I hope that when this is over that Mr. Sonne will sue the police and crown for malicious prosecution. In Canada prosecutors have been successfully sued in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miazga_v._Kvello_Estate
I give him maybe a week before he violates the conditions of his bail…
Your all right !!!!…in a sense. Those for, Those against. but a very valid point he has. Why the millions on security and crap, isn’t TO’s infrastructure failing. SUBWAY this and roads that. They did breach our rights. They did treat us like terrorist’s…..so u treat people the way u want to be treated…golden rule growing up in a “diverse” Canada. How many people were arrested or detained just trying to get a glimpse of the hustle and bustle. Don’t put a candy in front of a child and expect him not to scream bout it. Let the man out see how he evoles….or hold him longer and strip more from him see what his potential actually is. He obviously has access to weapons has bomb making capabilities…..His own fault or not. The government needs to realize that its people are more important than the rest of the world….oh damn that’s right.They don’t care unless it effect’s SUSSEX drive.
All the very best to the Sonne family, particularly Byron himself. Finally bail has been granted – a long time coming. I was reading all of the posts here, and it is amazing to discover just how ignorant a lot of people seem to be. You’re reading Toronto Life magazine, so by default I assumed readers of this magazine were at least somewhat educated, or could at least think and critically analyze, independently without bias and without preconceived bullshit notions society tries to impose on us. I was surprised. Byron has not been given an opportunity to have his case heard in court. How is that people do not understand the significance of that, and yet convict him in their minds without necessary justice taking place? Shame. Also, as for his wife? It says she left him; however, one of the conditions of her bail is that she is not allowed to have any contact with him at all. At all. This was printed in all media sources after she was released!!! Sure, she started legal separation papers, as a symbol of the conditions imposed on her for her own freedom, but really, coming to conclusions on someone’s own private matters is just plain stupid. If you want to a part of a conversation then you have to be informed, otherwise your comments are just nonesensical bs that infuriates us the rest of us who actually read the piece.
This is their mastermind criminal to make an example of? Someone uploading torrents, and building potato guns?
If they thought he was that talented, they certainly put him in the right place, with bikers, atm scammers, and more. If he’s that much a threat, authorities have made sure everyone gets hands on training.
He’s basically pulling pranks like Woz & Jobs.
More waste of taxpayers money.
Thank-You Kent, I’m sure soon we all will be able to get together. You have been a great support for my family, it is difficult to be far away from my family. I think Wednesday he may be getting out.
Thanks Denise Balkisoon from the great well balanced article, it does put everything in perspective.
Laurel L Russworm: I have been following your Blog for some time. Great Work.
The court case in fall should be interesting.
Best Regards,
Kristopher B Sonne
Sad that the wife bailed. She wasn’t in love in the first place if she can leave so easy.
Sonne is a bit of a lugen though. You had a decent life man. Lots of us don’t have the breaks you have had, looks, health, money, career. A good looking lady and good family ?
I dont have any of those. Perfect example of how an intellectual and educated person can be a victim of self-inflicted arrogance and stupidity.
If one chooses civil disobedience and/or to poke the guard dog in the eye, one has to realize that there might be unanticipated reactions and consequences.
When one tests boundaries, one should expect that ones intentions and motivations may be challenged, and that one may have to demonstrate that ones’ intentions were not malicious.
If one isn’t prepared for the heat, one should stay out of the kitchen.
It was probably a bad idea to have dual purpose materials and substances lying around, if one intended to play games at the G20 security perimeter.
Sonne didn’t think about the potential blowback from his choices, and how his dual life could be shattered, and impact his family and friends.
The carelessness of an upper middle class “dissident” leading a dual life.
Whenever you have a big, massive, blind ‘security’ apparatus, it becomes incredibly dumb and crude.
There were countless false arrests at G20.
TTC guys getting grabbed, beaten and arrested for nothing.
Countless citizens arrested with zero evidence of anything.
Others grabbed as they had a black t-shirt on, while buying milk.
Meanwhile, the real vandals get away with everything, and not one of them was arrested as they broke windows for almost 2 hours.
So in that context, where totally innocent people were snatched and grabbed, its obvious that someone who was trying to provoke the system would get a massive over-reaction. And once it starts, they don’t back down.
So let this case go to trial, and see where it ends up, and publish all of the info openly.
But a full Public Inquiry into the G20 must occur.
I like Byron Sonne and his brother Chris especially. In high school at JA Turner Fenton in Brampton; 1991 He had the whole school evacuated, because of a fake plasticine bomb he left on the top shelf of the library. He was an anarchist back then, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last I would heard from him. Let the mounties do their job because they know more than you think.
It’s summertime. Both he and his wife are free of having to earn a living due to her rich parents. They’ve been given a $1 million dollar Forest Hill house paid for by her rich parents. They have not one, but two summer homes to enjoy. Yet there he is getting on a bus just to make some sort of point that will make him feel important. What if they had both actually needed to work for a living in order to pay the mortgage or rent? The ex wife still has the lifestyle that her parents can provide, but I guess he will be finding out what working for a living is like shortly – if he’s lucky enough to find employment now. Kind of like blowing all your lottery winnings.
It’s amusing that this article mentions how his now ex-wife insisted he move out of his parents’ home to prove himself to her, while she was being completely taken care of by her wealthy parents who then bought her a Forest Hill estate.
10izboy writes:
“the maximum sentence in jail would still be too little for what this idiot could potentially have done, or incited others to do.”
Wow, aren’t you the authoritarian boot-licker of the day. We don’t jail people in Canada for things they “might have done”, you weasel. Might you consider relocating to a more iron-fisted nation if that’s the kind of “justice” you’re after? Way to sell a fellow citizen up the river, pal.
Actually, during G20 many people were rounded up for what they “might do”.
Hundreds.
And they were all 100% innocent, as they were released without charges after being caged like animals.
That is why the Public Inquiry is being suppressed, as those were illegal detentions. The Charter was shredded.
And why pick on his wife? People get divorced everyday for leaving the toothpaste cap off, so its no one’s business that she left him.
Its not relevant to any of the issues.
What is needed is a Public Inquiry into the G20, to find out how over 1000 innocent citizens were illegally jailed in those G20 cages.
And why hundreds more innocent people were illegally detained in vans, to the point of urinating on themselves as there were no bathrooms…then released without charge in the boondocks.
That happened hundreds of times during G20, to totally innocent people, often young women, who were easy arrest targets.
The most shameful and illegal violation of the Charter in Canadian history.
And now its being covered-up by those who gave the orders.
So why do they fear having a Public Inquiry run by a judge, to determine the facts? Why do the authorities fear the facts? That is the real question.
Let a Public Inquiry figure out what happened, and who gave the orders.
Wow, a lot of authoritarian commenters here. If you’re slagging Byron because he didn’t sit down, shut up, and say ‘yes sir’, that says more about your cowardice and lack of curiosity than anything.
After the publication ban is lifted, and as the civil suits are underway, I expect we’ll find what many suspect all along: Byron was detained 11 months for threatening police and security agencies with… embarrassment.
Well, you reap what you sow. Apparently a fully-funded life of semi-retirement in his mid-30s wasn’t enough. The man wanted to see what would happen if he pushed it, and he did. Tough shit guy.
Just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s young adult book, Little Brother, yesterday and it’s amazing how relevant its themes are to what’s happening to Byron Sonne. I highly recommend reading the book and then coming back and rereading this article.
Wow, frightening how many people here commenting are just so damn eager to lick the boots of authority.
I always find the comments section a great light to illuminate the cowards, the selfish, and the toadies. These are the same people who allowed the countless atrocities of history to occur. Every dictator gets his power from the legions of such as those here that deride the brave and courageous, who fight against the constant threat of evil men.
What are we supposed be fighting for exactly? The freedom to own as many dangerous things as we want because we aren’t planning on using them to hurt anyone really (trust us!), it’s just that they are fun to have… Or the right to play with the police and security forces as childrens toys because that’s fun too??
Thanks, I’ll pass. There are far better things to fight for.
There’s a strange point buried in this article that no one else in the comments seems to have picked up on: “[his wife] was forbidden from contacting her husband except through her attorney”. The implication is that this was a bail condition. As far as I can find (as late as a Supreme Court finding in 2007) spousal testimony against the defendant is not even admissible in criminal proceedings (except where the alleged crime is committed against the spouse). How then can the court , legally, bar someone from contact with her spouse? The article doesn’t give any information regarding the current status of charges against her, so the refusal of her parents to reply to letters from his parents may be regarded as not wanting to cause a breach of her bail conditions.
As far as explosives go, anyone who owns a diesel generator and has a couple of bags of fertilizer around is in the same boat. Acetone and peroxide? Look in your medicine cabinet. If you have nail polish remover and a first-aid kit, watch out! This charge looks as spurious as the weapons charges (potato cannons).
The interesting charge is the newest one. Inciting mischief not committed. On the face of it, it looks akin to inciting violence or inciting murder. Even if no one takes you up on it, if you call for someone to be killed, it is a crime. In this case, it’ll hinge on how he worded his posts. If, as it seems is indicated here, he merely pointed out weaknesses in the security apparatus (such as “look at this mickey-mouse setup, anyone could cut those wires!”) it’s hard to call that incitement. If, on the other hand, he was recommending that people do cut the wires, that would be harder to countenance.
The number of people in these comments saying he’s getting what he deserves is appalling. We do have a system in this country whereby people are innocent until proven guilty. Nothing has been proven here.
Uhhh, almost any home you go into will have hydrogen peroxide and acetone.
Probably stupid of me to think the reporter will read this but here goes!
All the obvious points have already been made about the absurdity of the charges and all these pathetic mindless drones trying to rationalize the way Sonne is being nailed to the cross, nuff said. Plus its just predictable.
What’s much more disturbing is how a lighter version of the same is clearly internalized by Balkissoon. All the charges are completely ridiculous, every citizen of sound mind should be constantly challenging abuse of authority, and to write 5 pages without acknowledging any of this WOULD make her a sorry excuse for a journalist if I didn’t know this is exactly the editorial line she’s forced to toe to keep her job.
He wrote you 17 pages because he’s in jail with time on his hands you callous airhead
I don’t think Sonne is the result of some Frankinstein lab experiment with an expected behaviour protocol. Great real Aron and What a Waste and anyone who thinks that any of this investigation is right, or justified. Recognize the real issue here is the rights of the individual, including the right to expose the buffoonery that is the glorious war on terror/security of the masterminds behind it. I suppose an innocent person is someone like your self-afraid to fight for the bigger issues and more than willing to give over your rights for a video clip of another man’s wife swimming. I’d like to thank you for pointing out where your priorities lie. You need to understand that there is really no difference between your perspective and that of the people Sonne is fighting with for his rights. If you’re not the one at the top on there side your just another coward to corrupt authority willing to take it backwards just to avoid persecution. This is a war on individual dignity; the right to choose, the right to think, the right to ask, the right to act, the right to expose corruption, the right to be human. I’m incredibly grateful to Sonne for having the ability and the balls to challenge this. A future worth fighting for depends on people like him.
You can also make explosives out of fertilizer and sugar.
Or rust and aluminum.
Or just a good old propane tank. Hell, if you really want a bang, strap on a portable oxygen cylinder from your local hardware store for an extra $8.
And by the logic of this case, you should be arrested for having these things, and I should be arrested for telling you about them.
We don’t put people in prison because we think they’re stupid or crazy or yuppies or assholes or losers. We put people in prison for committing a crime.
From the information provided in the article, there is no case against Sonne. There are no weapons. There is zero evidence of any planning or preperation for an act of violence. Why was he held for so long without any solid evidence agaist him? Why did a potato gun lead to weapon changes that were later dropped. This whole story reeks of the Toronto police acting like keystone cops and a prosiction that is grasping at straws. I hope Byron sues their pants off.
From the information provided in the article, there is no case against Sonne. There are no weapons. There is zero evidence of any planning or preperation for an act of violence. Why was he held for so long without any solid evidence agaist him? Why did a potato gun lead to weapons changes (later dropped)? This whole story reeks of the Toronto police acting like keystone cops and a prosecution that is grasping at straws. I hope Byron sues their pants off.
Perhaps Office Bubbles is advising the prosecution?
As an Australian, and a long way away, I wonder what Canada is becoming?
Hope he makes bail, wins, sues for millions and gets it. It should not be a crime in a free society to be a gadfly.
What I find interesting about the comments is that everyone is assuming that this article accurately represents the facts of the case. All of this is from Sonnes perspective. Why has no one done a deeper investigation from outside of just his letters and his defense lawyers? I think a closer look at things would change some of the ideas people have about this.
@ Jamiya
You’re absolutely right. Anyone could hypothetically commit a crime while their not in prison. There is obviously only one solution. Lock everyone up! Which prison would you like to be sent to?
This whole planet is turning into an Orwellian nightmare one attrition of liberty at a time and all the good people of Canada can motivate themselves to do is lambast the scapegoats. Humanity is a bad joke on itself.
Let’s see. Make “advising and counseling” about child sexuality a crime of child pornography. Now it’s illegal to “counsel” disabling security systems.
Next: making it illegal to talk about exploits? There will be no computer security industry in Canada if he is convicted. The police, no doubt at the direction of their big friends down south, have trashed this man’s life, but in the end, it’ll be their own ass that gets pounded when security experts are unable to do their work.
Parliament will have to pass a law permitting the discussion of disabling security systems “for the purpose of the lawful protection of such systems.” And then we can all enjoy a long period of “lawfully defined discussions” while the cops crack down on any grey-areas of speech.
What’s next in the Great White North?
I think a lot of people commenting here ended up being confused about the explosives and weapons charges. Acetone is nail polish remover. Hydrogen peroxide is… hydrogen peroxide. Lawn fertilizer is… lawn fertilizer.
He was charged with building explosives for owning nail polish remover, hydrogen peroxide, and lawn fertilizer. I’m pretty sure most of the people who have derided him over this probably have the same things in their own possession.
As for the pellet gun, same idea. Many people own pellet guns. Same idea with a potato gun (and if you don’t know someone who’s made a potato gun, you’re probably over the age of 40).
It’s not to say that he wasn’t attempting to troll the security establishment in Canada. But that is certainly not a crime, and attempting to resolve your own cognitive dissonance about an annoying narcissist being in the right, and The Government being in the wrong, by lashing out against Sonne, is an indirect way of eroding the bank of rights that allows you yourself and your family to live their lives the way they choose.
It’s best not to cheer when the government starts chipping away at the rights of another even if you don’t like them… as you’re going to come up next eventually.
or we just lock you up and then get on with the real issues, the fight for our rights. The responses are sympathetic because a lot of people don’t see the world the way you do, (I’d say your views are neo conservative) -we are not afraid of the big old bad guy or each other for that matter, we are afraid of th people like you and the people who claim they are “protecting us”, hunting down the “terrorists”, “foiling terror plots”, arresting would be criminals. As we see here its all brainwashing! This is a clear example: the operators of the war on terror will go to any length to create terrorists, the bush admin did it in Gitmo-(90% of the inmates are just Afghan farmers rounded up and handed over to the U.S. soldiers at check points in return for services or goods, they use torture to create confessions, wake up!). Sonne’s arrest legitimizes there actions until he proves them wrong, which he will. You and everyone else who blindly believe in the virtues of “the war on terror”, (have you had a personal experience with these terrorist?) are sad human beings and fluffers of the real terrorists. The motives of the security force behind the G20 is to create terrorist where there are ZERO. They now need people to cover up for their crimes committed against society and they are targeting people like Sonne, who have the balls to show you the hypocrisy, corruption, and fallacy that is the war on terror. I don’t think anybody is trying to hurt world leaders, I’m sorry that is just pure fantasy, like the case against Sonne. Maybe stay off the video games for awhile and reconnect with nature. It will be a good thing for all of us.
He didn’t do anything illegal, and he just showed curiosity in trying to understand the weak points of the security apparatus.
This kind of fear-mongering is ridiculous and not Canada’s best moment.
Based on many of the fear-laced comments (‘…the maximum sentence in jail would still be too little for what this idiot could potentially have done…’), it seems that critical thinking is not being taught in Canadian schools anymore…
Re: “Arrogance. Maybe Sonne should have considered the consequences of endangering the lives of our political leaders. Innocent people don’t have explosive materials in their homes. Innocent people don’t give people tips on how to clip wires on securty cameras. He got what he deserved. I hope he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
It’s funny how “our political leaders” feel the need to protect themselves with high fences from the people they ostensibly govern.
>Innocent people don’t have explosive materials in their homes.
Yes they do. I am pretty sure you have in your house the same materials he has being arrested for.
They are common cleaning products, disinfectants and teeth whitening products, it’s just that uneducated people like you don’t know what they are and constantly say irrational things without knowing what they are talking about. Go read a book.
a guy here said that : Welcome to Canada – where police assault citizens, even Taser them to death, with virtual impunity, and where a potato gun is considered a WMD
dude , just go to any other fu”””ing country on earth, and you will see a police to shoot bullet in people everyday. you are stupid . i hope you will get a disease and have a lots of pain before you die.
I realize I’m an American and this happened in Canada, but I really have a hard time feeling sorry for this guy. Anyone as intelligent as this guy seems to be should be well aware that taking photos and nosing around and *especially* criticizing or questioning your government authority is a great way to get arrested, lost in the system, or even disappeared. That, during normal times. Triply so during summits where the world’s elite are coming to hammer out how to help the rich at the expense of the other 98% of society and the hosting country simply can’t afford to look bad to their friends.
And, as the article indicates, this guy actually knew this going in and expected it. So . . . congratulations, you proved the obvious and are being subjected to it.
He has clearly decided that proving a point is more important than having his physical freedom, so I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to feel sorry for him or anything. I would love to rally against all sorts of abuses and injustices, but the system is setup so that doing so is a great way to have your life ruined and I have people to care for, a job to worry about, and a home to pay for.
@10izboy – In Libya, Saudi Arabia and Burma there are consequences to ones actions. That alone does not make any worthwhile statement about the actions of the establishment. In Libya, scores of Gaddafi supporters quite legitimately fear violence and anarchy – and are ready to imprison and kill their fellow citizens to avoid it.
I am disheartened to see the tone of the majority of the statements here. It is as if we no longer respect dissent. Taking photos and speaking words – publicly and transparently – would never had been an issue 20 years ago. Freedom is being constantly redefined. I am afraid the U.S. seems to have successfully exported their brand of fear-driven autocracy. Perhaps Libyans will lend aid to freedom loving Canadians one day?
Sonne sounds like a totally awesome dude. A crazy smart guy who follows his passions no matter how much money he has.
I quote What a Waste: “Instead of making love to her and rolling around in money all day, why on Earth would this freak waste his time building rockets and shite?”
You call him a freak!? This is a guy who didn’t let money get to his head, who loves knowledge and learning, a typical renaissance man. Sonne seems like someone who lives life to its fullest, someone we should all try to emulate.
Well, after reading the whole article, I have to say, the guy had it coming – he literally wanted this to happen. Of course, people need the freedom to do a lot of things without anyone controlling them, but if you look at his actions from a law enforcer’s point of view, he’s a starting terrorist or enemy spy – surveillance, hacking, bomb making, firearms – this guy knows and can do it all and could be very dangerous if he decided to become an enemy. I’m actually surprised it took all of this for the “system” to finally notice him.
I mean, he can do whatever he wants as long as it doesn’t affect others, and yet one of the first things he did is share information on how to circumvent security measures, build bombs and published some dangerous books/materials known to have influenced many criminals in the past.
He didn’t think that someone will get angry, read his stuff, and go blow up a building of coworkers while thinking he’s justified. It’s the same as with suicides – the rates are higher in areas with easier access to firearms.
Besides, I see normal people having chemicals in their house, building rockets, applying for firearms, being interested in security and surveillance, publishing potentially infringing and/or dangerous materials online, applying for a PI license and filming officers at work – BUT doing ALL OF THAT AT ONCE is definitely a big red flag in any sane person’s eyes – if your neighbor did that, you’d most probably report him or at least be worried.
And now he says he’s finding more in common with other criminals – many of which are actually dangerous, despite saying they aren’t (don’t they all say that?). I see two paths for him – either he becomes a more public person who speaks for a cause, or he goes underground and helps criminals, because, you know, they’re not all bad…
I actually can’t believe I went from sympathizing with him to not caring at all in a couple of minutes…
For God’s sake people, the “bomb-making materials” that he had in his house were hydrogen peroxide (a common disinfectant), acetone (nail polish remover), and some fuel for camp cooking. Is that it? You can be labeled a terrorist and dragged through the courts for that? This whole case is completely crazy.
The next time I hear a Canadian freak out about the American legal process I’m going to go over some of the details of this story.
Insufficient evidence for the initial charges.
Unreasonable denial of bail. Arrestee had no criminal record, strong community ties, and was not a risk to abscond or harm others.
Media blackout of trial proceedings.
Time from arrest to trial greater than a year.
The guy is clearly clean, or would be clean in any truly free state. The government should have hired him, not seal him away.
I wanted to spit after reading this article. Sonne obviously thought that his white skin, impressive address and wife’s bank account made him special. Did he really believe that after his desperate bid for attention worked, that the RCMP would just say pat him on the head, and send him home to his comfortable life? Did he have dreams about being a hero to all those other grown men who spend their time drinking Red Bull and playing at being ‘anarchists’ online?
Only a child, or someone who lived in his own special world, didn’t know that Stephen Harper was very serious about turning Toronto into an armed camp. Harper was going to stick it to Canada’s most hated city and the hippies that lived there. Harper knew that Mayor David Miller, another pasty, soft boy, would not only stand up for his city, he would hold Toronto down while Harper raped us.
Has Sonne apologized to the people whose lives he’s hurt? It’s obvious that Kristen Petersen is being painted as the villaness her, the spoiled rich girl who won’t stand by her man, but did Sonne give a single thought to the woman he had vowed to love and honour? Or did he expect that Kristen, her family, and more importantly her family money, would be there to bail him out of his little scrape.
Like any good parisite, Sonne is now sucking his parents dry. When he gets out of prison, he will probably get a nice settlement from his soon-to-be former wife; hopefully he’ll be able to scrape up enough decency to repay his parents financially; Sonne will never be able to repay the emotional costs.
Sonne isn’t a political prisoner, he’s not an anarchist; Sonne is a tourist.
Why is Byron Sonne being painted as some kind of progressive hero? His interest in weapons and violence indicate a more right-wing lean and his reading list includes some of fascism’s greatest hits. The inclusion of the ‘Turner Diaries’ directly contradicts all those people who claim that he was interested in people’s freedom; the ‘Turner Diaries’ is about not only taking away the freedom, but also the lives,of Black people.
Byron’s very comfortable life was financed by the hard work of others. He had a lot of spare time on his hands but it doesn’t seem like he used any of that time working for social justice or helping others to enjoy just a fraction of the benefits he so obviously took for granted. I’m struck by how passive Sonne’s life was. He puttered around the house he was given, cooked with his wife, got together with other computer geeks regularly and visted cottages and took vactions that he never had to pay for. Other than this and his fake bomb in high school, Sonne doesn’t seem to have done much with all of the advantages he was given.
I don’t blame his wife for divorcing him one tiny bit. Some of the comments here have been vile, including the one from Byron’s brother who should be ashamed of himself for attacking his sister in law like that. None of the Sonnes seemed to have had any problem with the type of person she was when Kristen and her family were paying for all of the goodies. The woman doesn’t appear to have had any idea what her husband was up to and I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be arrested as a dangerous criminal. And then, to add insult to injury to have her wedding pictures handed over and plastered on newsstands all over the country for any and everybody to look at; she must feel like she’s being slapped in the face every time she leaves her house.
Like I said before, Byron seems to have taken a lot for granted. His free ride appears to be over and he has no one to blame but himself. Whenever he gets out of prison, hopefully he’ll spend some time trying to give back, since he’s already taken so much.
Not Canadian but if that is what they do to you for looking closely at what *your* government is up to then I do not envy Canadians.
I will never take any Canadian leader seriously when they get to lecture us “third worlders” on Democracy and justice.
I think what he did was brave – he was challenging the system. He may have gone a lil overboard on the weapons thing – taking another route might have been a better idea. But what he’s been doing all these years is more than what any of these dumb-founded bloggers have been doing. I respect what he’s been trying to prove and I honestly believe he had no intentions on hurting anyone.
The sad part about Sonne is not that he lost his wife and home (you can always replace those), but that he used his intelligence and skills for no other purpose than to test the boundaries to see what he could get away with. He could have used them for greatness, like building a company or helping law authorities catch terrorists. What a waste of talent!
I avoided the G20 circus of the absurd in Toronto, but watched in fascination from a safe distance. It was very frightening to watch the army of “Darth Vader” clad police forces readying themselves for a complete annihilation of the slightest perceived security infringement to protect the global elite at the cost of billions of tax dollars. How did it feel as a spectator/suspect, to be rounded up by these well paid specialists and to languish in a holding cell for doing nothing out of the ordinary? This does not include those agents of change who evaded the security squads as if by divine providence. Does this sound like we live in a democracy… really?? When people can’t question the decisions of government in a democracy, we have a problem. The class action lawsuit, although a sweet revenge is a double edged sword, and once again we the people will have to pay up with our taxes. Just keep sticking it to us! I suspect that Byron Sonne is someone who is seeing the trend of world to come and this is the most disturbing vision of all.
Some of the comments enrage me. Apparently most people are only concerned with how hot his wife is and how he should just be having sex with her all the time. Some people have more active and complex minds than that.
As for “he got what he deserved.” Are you kidding me? HE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!!!! This is absurd.
Well, having just been directed to here by the CBC Metro Morning podcast. I have to say I was far more interested in reading the comments than the article. People are disgusting, wives aren’t for the sexual gratification some religious fanatics seem to believe they are. This is just terrible, you all seem so convinced that it’s wrong to stop and ask “Why did this happen?” Well, it happened to him because his wife was likely egocentric about her importance to him. It happened because he pursued his profession into a personal interest, finding flaws in Security. Do you not remember that the downtown core became criminal territory over the G20. They could have held the G20 anywhere, do political leaders really all take pride in seeing the ‘lively core’ of toronto swarmed with police and footage of police firing on their own citizens with rubber bullets? Is that what political leaders want to see? The citizens of a nation under fire in their own homeland. For what? Disagreeing with expenses, with security measures, with fake laws and unnumbered officers yelling at people blowing bubbles?….. If that’s what our nation wants to display to the world than Byron Sonne did the one thing we should all be doing. He asked a questions and we see now, when you ask too many, you will be detained with a slew of charges and little explanation. Welcome to Canada, please obey and lower to your knees when your politicians ask you to spit shine their proverbial loins and stroke their long, hard ego.
Judging by the commentary, we seem to have become a nation of full-on fascists. The police broke the law and violated human and civil rights, attacking unresisting, ordinary people and journalists and beating and incarcerating them with no cause. Meanwhile, beefy guys in new black clothes trashed selected store fronts while police were directed away from the area. The policing of the G20 was state-sponsored terrorism. It was intimidation, the criminalization of political engagement or even daring to be on the street while a international conference is taking place.
People, what are you paying your taxes for? This guy did nothing illegal and is thrown into jail. That he was not acting “normal” may be, but he never was a danger to anyone. Also, the respect for “world leaders” here is disgusting. If these people weren’t so arrogant, they would hold their meetings in locations that are easier to secure than Metropolis. That “world leaders” in a democracy fear their people like that is very showing.
Dissent is criminalized. I’ll spare the nationalistic china comparison. People, please look at yourselves first.
This really points out that there are no effective checks on the police and court system when they deal with a perceived affront to their power and legitimacy. Anybody who challenges the natural order of things — as they narrowly see it — is a target for revenge. Byron’s big mistake was underestimating the forcefulness of the vengeance.
As for the haters out there commenting on this article, just be aware that if people like you could decide who was worthy and virtuous, and who wasn’t, you probably wouldn’t make the cut.
Yup, straight-up terrorist, this guy. Nail polish remover (acetone) and hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach, wound cleaner) are both clearly only usable to make bombs so why would any INNOCENT individual have them in their home? It’s not like you can walk down to your local Shopper’s Drug Mart and buy up a bunch!
And his wife’s paintings? Also obviously bomb-making material. Same for anything at Byron’s dad’s cottage; old guy was probably hiding Al Qaueda under his kitchen sink! Besides, cops don’t need a warrant to bust down doors. That’s their right, just like it’s your right to just the hell up and not ask any questions about how your tax money is being spent.
I’m personally glad this scumbag is off the streets — I know I feel WAY safer. Good job, government!
He is clearly suffering from grandiosity and is delusional. Yes I am a psychiatrist and no I have not treated him. It is quite apparent that he is a victim of his illnesses and the ego and pomposity of his lawyer combined with the system.
He needs help and it appears his lawyer placed his own needs above his clients. I congratulate his wife for leaving someone who refuses help.
I also have been told by those close to the case that it was his decision to remain in jail by his choices which were made AFTER his arrest. Was his lovely wife supposed to sit by him after he made statements knowing it would lead to her arrest and hoping her family would then finance the defence ? He seemed to put the well being of himself, Joseph Di Luca, Peter Copeland and Kevin Tilley far ahead of hers. She supported him financially and otherwise for a decade and a half. Let him rot ! I wonder if his lawyers will take him in..or have they already?
Folks, don’t feed the trolls. It’s clear the previous comment poster is not a psychiatrist; if they were, then I feel sorry that such a hateful person has control over other’s mental health states.
Sonne is a hero.
He didn’t consider how his activities might be interpreted. Lucky for him they didn’t do anything really dirty such as invoke the mental health act. The consequences would have been much worse than having a criminal record. He still has a chance.
Teasing the cops? What for? It’s simply idiotic.
hes a bro
What a knucklehead.
– Congratulations a million times over. I just love the partogohph of Byron and the bubbles always have, and always will. And I just love the photo you’ve posted of him as he is now. You should be so proud of yourself how fantastic!! Well done xx
In Canada it is legal to fondle the breasts of a transsexual without her permisioon, as she is not a real woman, as found in a 507.1 hearing in Kitchener, Ontario in 2009. In Canada the police will not stop people from putting burned out cars in front of a Transsexuals business or cutting her fuel lines. But all you have to do is make Stephen Harper look foolish and he will sic his goon squads on you. Me! I am hoping to find a safe country in Europe and get them to accept my asylum or something where I can stay there. Canada no longer believes in tolarance, justice, or fair treatment.
Take that you arrogant communist bastard…. Us morally correct conservatives loath people like him and how much they cost us tax payers needless dollars!! Let him rot in jail for eternity
Hey
He was offered a deal that was far better than the ended
Result
No explosives and keep peace for freedom
Sitting in jail and house arrest bail to say I won instead of
Charges withdrawn is a hell of a victory.
Either he had the worst lawyer or he’s insane or both.
I find the first few pages of comments, attacking Byron Sonne, to be quite fishy. It almost seems like they were written by the same person.
Byron had terrible legal advice who drew out a case to the total detriment of his client. Both liked to see their faces in the paper. One of Sonnes lawyers was so outraged by the handling of the defense that he quit never to speak to Diluca again. Byron and Diluca have one major difference and that is Diluca is supposed to have ethics and be professional for Byron there is no professional obligation to do anything . For Diluca it obviously at least in his overblown mind believes he too may act with impunity and a complete lack of duty towards his client.
Mr. Diluca shame on you !
The guy was offered release …but then he and his lawyers would lose all the wonderful publicity. All the crown wanted was a psych assessment and no bombs . If his wife didn’t leave the parasite she’d have to be mentally ill. He needed help but refused it. This should be known as the parasite case . Somes chose a fine lawyer a fellow parasite …..not many lawyers would let there clients rot in jail for a year to get their picture in the paper and not to many people are twisted enough to sit in jail for the same purpose. He just could not fit in with the moneyed class he so desperately wanted to be part of. Another thing he has in common with his lawyer. Class is not for sale for the likes of Somme and di Luca ( who has changed his name from Diluca ? Why …google and find out….no I’m not the one all the complaints are about I’m di Luca no Diluca ….