Alternate software to monitor Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents’ cell phones has been approved by the judge presiding over the case.
According to court documents on April 24, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan officially approved software that would log keystrokes of all activity on Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried’s phones.
The software will be able to track any unauthorized applications downloaded on their devices, including messaging services like Signal and WhatsApp. It will also preserve copies of all iMessages sent and received and monitor a log of Facetime calls made.
A technical consultant will review the keystrokes and screenshots at least three times a week and inform pretrial services of any unauthorized activity, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said.
The new set of measures approved comes after the lawyers requested an extension for the enforcement of newly revised bail conditions on April 19, finding that the software they had installed would not be able to automatically photograph the user’s device every five minutes as required.
Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions were revised last month after he was found using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to access certain websites on the internet and attempting to reach out to former FTX employees using Signal.
Judge Kaplan initially threatened to restrict his internet access entirely, saying that Bankman-Fried’s parents’ home was “a garden of electronic devices” that the former FTX CEO could use at his discretion.
The prosecution and Bankman-Fried’s lawyers eventually agreed on a new set of bail conditions that curtailed his access to a number of websites. These restrictions limit his access to electronic devices to a laptop loaded with monitoring software that blocks access to USB devices and his parents’ cell phones, that will also be subject to significant monitoring.
