I've seen this sentiment in several places, and for some reason people have a trouble understanding what it means for a piece of evidence to be "incriminating" in a criminal prosecution. It does not mean that the evidence is by itself a sign of anything bad or that anyone considers it to be bad.

Let's use a real world example. The feds might present evidence in a murder trial that the defendant checked into a hotel next to where the murder was committed. Nobody would say that there is anything inherently incriminating about checking into a hotel, or that it's terrible that "checking into a hotel can be used against you." It's just circumstantial evidence putting the defendant near the scene of the crime, even though it is otherwise totally innocuous.

Similarly, nobody is saying there is anything incriminating about using Stack Overflow. But posts you make on Stack Overflow can be a piece of evidence in a chain linking you to a crime, just like a whole host of otherwise innocuous things can serve as that kind of evidence.

If you think he was arrested for posting a question about Tor to Stack Overflow, then you really have a lot of catching up to do on this story.

I know he has been accused of doing very bad things. I just hate to see Tor and its users vilified like this. Bad people use Tor for bad things, but good people use it for good things too.

And making people feel that simply asking questions about Tor will put them in the same category as hardcore criminals is just wrong. We're not all heartless criminals. In fact, most just want a bit of privacy.

For the record, the reason why his slip up was significant is because:

1) They were able to find code identical to the SO question within the SilkRoad source code

2) They already had circumstantial evidence linking him to the site, this just strengthened it

3) "frosty" is the user/computer name used to generate the private ssh key on SilkRoad's server, further linking him to the site

That's not what is going on here.

It's circumstantial evidence, so it could not stand on its own but can add weight to other pieces of evidence.

if it makes you feel better on page 7 of the criminal complaint document:

"although Tor has known legitimage uses.."

Asking the question is not incriminating, but it can be used to prove that he is the guy who was running SR.

It really cannot. It can be used to make him a person of interest.

Are you sure? I think the complaint mentioned the code on the Silk Road server exactly matching code in the question.