In the days after the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, an American youth with the name Dionysus posted a terrifying message on the social platform MyMilitia.com: He plans to destroy an Amazon Web Services data centre in northern Virginia with C4 bombs in retaliation for the company’s ban on “free speech” by extremists.

“He was not a stupid suicide bomber, but he would have been happy to die as a young man because he thought there were evil forces that were treating his fellow Americans unfairly,” Dionysus said.

Many ordinary American users became so concerned after seeing a post on MyMilitia.com that they alerted the FBI, and FBI investigators then monitored Pendley’s Facebook messages and began monitoring his house.

The incident

The investigation revealed that since late January, Dionysus had been communicating with an associate through Signal, the encrypted messaging app, to plot his attack on AWS.

On Feb. 22, Pendley ordered a topographic map of Virginia, which is notable for having several AWS data centers.

“I want to destroy 70% of the Internet,” Dionysus wrote on social media on Feb. 19. The FBI agent then sent him a message saying that AWS had only 30% of the global cloud computing market. Through further communication, the FBI agent successfully entered Dionysus’s “terrorist organization”.

The following month, FBI agents observed Dionysus painting his silver Pontiac sedan black as part of a cover-up strategy in the terrorist attacks.

On March 31, undercover F.B.I. agents managed to set Dionysus up for a meeting, where he outlined his plan to blow up AWS data centers in Northern Virginia that he believed served the CIA, the F.B.I. and other federal government agencies, If it succeeds, he will effectively attack the “oligarchy” in the United States.

On Monday, Dionysus sent his aides a hand-drawn map of the facility he targeted in Ashburn, Va. On Tuesday, he sent a photo of a “terror bomb.” On Thursday, he met again with FBI agents, who provided Dionysus with C-4 explosives and detonating wires and demonstrated how to use them.

When Dionysus put the devices in his car, a group of U.S. police officers rushed out and arrested him. When police searched Dionysus’s house, they found wigs and masks, detailed descriptions of the attack plan, and a machete with a name engraved on the blade.

After police took Dionysus, 28, whose real name is Pendley, into custody, Pendley admitted to masterminding the scheme. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of maliciously attempting to damage a building with explosives.

Dionysus is one of the more radical “extremists” who have complained about freedom of speech after Amazon, Twitter and Facebook suspended former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account in response to the unrest at the U.S. Capitol. But he and his actions are far from alone.

First of all, we agree that the FBI saved the lives and achievements of some scientific and technological workers, but more importantly, we should deeply discuss how to avoid the recurrence of similar situations. Is the freedom of speech in the United States really freedom, or is it just a tool serving for rights…..

Content source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-…