If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest.
They did not identify the server by some advanced technical hacks against tor. They used simple basic police methods and arrested an administrator with the use of an undercover agent posing as a drug seller. The administrator purchased a kilo of cocaine, and by doing so, gave his home address to the undercover agent. After interrogation, they gained user credentials that even included DPR's private messages.
This could have easily been a episode script for the wire.
If simple, basic police methods sufficed here, then why the massive dragnet surveillance the rest of us are caught up in?
Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying.
And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia.
The differential factor of an conspiracy theory, and a plausible event is the matter of indicating clues. In this case, there is not a single indicating factor to point towards the conspiracy theory of parallel construction, so why should it be considered?
An other equally plausible would be that the silk road was a false flag operation, run by a undercover unit. Nothing points in that direction either, but hey, it "could be" right?
I think you're too quick to dismiss the possibility. The point of parallel construction is that the police construct a plausible (and, more importantly, legal) means of finding the evidence that they used in an investigation that masks its true, illegal origin. More importantly, unlike false flags -- where the only "evidence" for their use is the ravings of conspiracy theorists and some internal suggestions by government officials in the 60's -- parallel construction is a technique that we know the government uses by their own admission.
> The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. [...]
> After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
> The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
> A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.
> "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
Given how they talk about parallel construction, it certainly sounds like it's not an uncommon technique, so do you think it's so implausible? I'm not going to say they did or didn't use it, because the simple fact is that I don't know, but given that "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day" that is "decades old, a bedrock concept," it doesn't seem too implausible that they would use it in such a high profile and important case.
One should not quickly to dismiss the possibility. Especially, one should keep a eye out since the proof of parallel construction as a tool is indeed verifiable true.
But in the mean time, one should not jump to it directly when more simpler explanations are available. Using undercover cops to entrap drug sellers is even older, and even more common method than parallel construction. It also extremely simple and effective.
I would also suspect, that entrapping a first time offender, an 47 year old administrator who sells drugs anonymously on-line from his home, to not be very hard. Especially if the undercover cop could impersonate flawlessly established "trusted" drug sellers by taking over their accounts, as it seems to be in this case.
All points toward parallel construction as an something that might had been, but in this case, is less likely to actually have happened.
What's interesting is that the article itself noted the difficulty that the LE investigators perceived when running this case.
Normally they get a specific suspect or possible set of suspects in mind and then get specific warrants to find the evidence needed.
In this case the "proof" was right in front of them on the Silk Road front page but they had no suspects (or alternately, an infinite set). So even in this case "simple basic police methods" are insufficient to be mechanically applied; it was a probabilistic investigation, at best, in this case.
With a few less slip-ups by Silk Road users we may very well not be discussing these arrests at all, except perhaps for the Silk Road admin who accepted delivery. But that alone needn't have fingered DPR, he helped tighten the noose himself with his later actions.
At least legally, I agree. But the dividing line between "spy agency" and "law enforcement agency" has gotten very thin.
Beyond that, so what? The publicly stated goal of the dragnet surveillance is preventing the crime of terrorism. If "back to the basics" police work found out Dread Pirate Roberts, then why the "anti-terrorism" justification for dragnet surveillance? Dread Pirate Roberts and the Silk Road Web Site actually worked at hiding themselves in a technical, engineering, fact-based manner. From what we read, terrorists do not. At least some of them use "Islamic cyphers" and do other superstitious things in an attempt to conceal themselves.
Why not concentrate on basic police work rather than massive surveillance?
The purpose of the National Security Agency is to gather intelligence to protect National Security. Terrorism is but a small piece of it, though it's the one easiest to sell to the public. But even serious terrorism doesn't accomplish much without state support (you might consider the Taliban a "state" for this purpose) and it's well within the purview of intelligence to spy on other states.
But ultimately, the real reason of intelligence? Look at it this way: the US is sitting at a poker table with Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, and so on. Some of the other players might be our friends--Britain and the US have a deal that we'll share each other's winnings and cover each other's losses. But nonetheless, everyone at the table is playing to win. And everyone at the table is trying to sneak a peek at everyone else's cards. This is why the distinction between spying on Americans and spying on foreigners is such a big deal--if you spy on a Japanese industrialist, you get to see some of Japan's cards, and that helps in the game. But there's no reason to spy on your own country because you already can see your own cards. If you're spying on your own people, maybe your intentions are not what you purport them to be.
>If you're spying on your own people, maybe your intentions are not what you purport them to be.
Considering that a non insignificant portion of SIGINT is contracted to companies owned by a handful of private equity firms, I would say that the poker table has more participants who are not nation states who are all vying for their own interests as you say.
It's not clear why the SR admin would be buying cocaine in the first place, though. Wasn't the whole point to just be a marketplace and make money by transaction fees? Did the SR admin decide to also become a vendor? If so that's just... really poor form.
And some of the other arrests, like the vendor "NOD" included some rather fortuitous circumstances. Like random inspections over a day or two just happening to pick up multiple packages with the same handwriting.
If Tor was compromised, you can bet they'd take ever measure possible to prevent leaking that information. That'd include making sure they have very solid, plausible, cover stories. But yes, it does look reassuring that all the arrests seem to based off of basic police work and simple mistakes.
> It's not clear why the SR admin would be buying cocaine in the first place, though.
Probably for one of the same reasons that anybody buys cocaine. Either because they like cocaine, or (judging by the amount), because they want to make lots of money selling cocaine. Making money on transaction fees doesn't mean you don't want more money.
That'd be a great explanation if accurate. It just shows that pure incompetence/greed on behalf of the admin brought him down, not any special government capabilities.
> If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest.
A year ago I would have said that DEA using "parallel construction" to hide the origin of intelligence was just a paranoid conspiracy. Today I'm not sure I'm being paranoid enough.
Investigators staged the torture and killing — which included mock waterboarding according to officials — and sent Dread Pirate Roberts about half a dozen pictures, including photos depicting what they said was his corpse.
So much for the absolutely inane "it was all a face-saving ruse" theory of the murder-for-hire scheme.
I think that "face-saving ruse" was in relation to the second "hit", which sounded incredibly implausible. Someone says they need $500K and blackmails DPR, then the creditor shows up and is willing to kill the blackmailer for 20% of that? Yeah, OK.
The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they?
And it still doesn't invalidate the logic behind it some people were proposing: Given the prior that the USG will do harm to SR users and dealers, is it less harm to kill one person that is going to give information to the USG? (Again, that logic only works if you take the assumption that the USG is acting immorally and will impose a large amount of suffering onto many others.)
Murder is justified for all sorts of reasons. IIRC, the US was founded on a base of murdering people over disputes on taxes and government. Treason was (or is?) punishable by death. I'm not sure why message board political bullshit is intrinsically less valid than "official" government or LE reasons.
Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense.
"Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense. It's not a huge jump of logic to view these hits as defense."
uh, wat?
The dude was a drug dealer protecting his criminal empire. If I'm robbing a bank and shoot a cop who is going to shoot me, is that also defense? So I should be charged for the original crime but not for killing the cop? Because that's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me.
I'm not saying he's right and not criminally liable for his actions. I'm just questioning why people are so confused as to why this is justifiable, in some peoples' opinions.
As to the specific example: If someone is trying to shoot you, no one would wonder why you shoot back. The bank robber would be held responsible because it's his action of robbing the bank that started the whole mess.
If you were sitting peacefully in your home, and someone broke down the door and started firing, you'd be quite justified in returning fire. (Even legally, depending on state, AFAIK.)
Folks sympathetic to DPR are more likely to view him in the second category. He was peacefully minding his own business running a marketplace when someone threatened him, his buyers, and his vendors. These folks are likely to view access to medicines as a moral action, and thus DPR and people involved with SR to be people doing the right thing, despite an oppressive government
> Additionally, most people believe lethal force is justified in cases of defense.
Defense against risk of death or grievous bodily harm. Which is not at all what's being discussed here, even if we agree to slant the scenario completely from the POV of DPR. But yet you still manage to find that murder might be acceptable here.
Remember that the pure libertarian utopia is supposed to make things better by permitting individual liberty against the oppression of the state. It's not supposed to make things worse (i.e. to easily permit murder-for-convenience), nor to keep things the same (as otherwise why change at all).
So lethal force isn't justified, say, if someone is coming to take your family into indefinite detention or slavery? So long the attacker isn't going to kill or seriously hurt them physically, then you've got to just try to talk them out of it?
Well of course you should try to protect your family, just know that the law will want you after. Morally right and legally right don't always align unfortunately in most cases where that's true.
Don't be obtuse by trying to act like that since I didn't specifically enumerate every case in which deadly force is applicable, that means I don't believe any other case allows for it.
And don't be idiotic by trying to equate "kidnapping of my family to be put into slavery" with "oh no this guy might give an accurate statement about myself to someone important!".
Only when you are directly attacked and use reasonable force ie some one pulls a knife or gun on you you are legitimately able to claim self defense if you end up killing them but not if they bump into accidentally on the tube.
Oh and if the state does it legally its not murder.
> The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they?
It was known from the day that DPR was arrested that there were two "hits" that had been arranged, including many of the details (not all the details described here, but including that a Baltimore-area LE was the undercover agent for one of them).
I don't know about any "face-saving ruse", whatever that means. But couldn't he have known he was just purchasing "good fakes", for future usage as threats, should he need them?
How did DPR find the hitman? Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that once the feds had apprehended the admin, that the feds might be impersonating a hitman for said admin? It is after all widely insinuated, among certain crowds, that any hitman you hire on the internet is always a fed.
Federal agents say the use of Tor and Bitcoin were major obstacles for them and that investigating the site was “uncharted territory” that involved a reversal of their usual investigative methods. Instead of starting with probable cause against a specific suspect who is already identified and then obtaining a search warrant to collect more evidence, the investigation of Silk Road involved collecting evidence from the site first and then trying to identify individuals.
Sure it is "uncharted territory" in terms of the technology for maintaining anonymous identities, but shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? Maybe I am naive, but sounds like dodgy criminal investigation methodology to me...
The real concern would be if they used parallel construction and actually used the NSA's warrantless surveillance. The core of parallel construction is to use fruit of the poisonous tree to identify the dots you need to connect, then do your sleuthing purely to figure out how to connect those dots.
However, given the story told so far, it's actually pretty straightforward to identify the founder of the Silk Road based on a few of his missteps.
The real concern would be if they used parallel construction and actually used the NSA's warrantless surveillance. The core of parallel construction is to use fruit of the poisonous tree to identify the dots you need to connect, then do your sleuthing purely to figure out how to connect those dots.
> shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime?
This might surprise you, but there are very often situations where the police and the public are remarkably aware of the facts of the crimes being committed, but unable to do anything about it. Drugs fall into this category. Everyone knows that "that's where the deals go down" and "that's where they count the money", but that's only because we're not completely stupid. Proving direct culpability, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, as is proving the culpability of people who matter. (Street level dealers, for instance, are pretty interchangeable: one gets shot, you get someone else to do his job. Ain't no thing.)
If you find a druggie on a corner, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to recognize he's probably guilty of possession. It's also sort of pointless to prosecute him, since the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation. You want evidence of that crime? That's also the druggie on the corner. Half of whom can tell you exactly who it is who manages the city-wide operation. None of which are willing to take the witness stand to accuse him in a court of law. Because he knows that he goes right back to that corner the next day and not only does he no longer have someone bringing him drugs, but he's also get a bullet in his head for the trouble.
the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation
That is a complete non sequitur.
Actually, if you really want people to stop using drugs, arresting and imprisoning users is the single most effective technique yet known. It's especially effective against the middle class white population that consumes most drugs in the USA, but it works against poor minorities and addicts, also.
And if you want to stop dealers, arresting and imprisoning retail dealers is the most effective technique. It clears the ones that work in public or sell to strangers out quite quickly.
Arresting the kingpins or traffickers is totally ineffective at reducing drug use or reducing drug availability. If reducing public harm were a priority, the kingpins and traffickers could be ignored. Once the users and retailers are imprisoned, the bosses are out of business, anyway.
And if you do catch the kingpins and traffickers, your efforts are completely ineffectual. There are always more kingpins in line to get rich quickly and easily. Decades of police targeting kingpins has only seen increases in drug availability. In fact, the faster you turn them over, the more violent the whole business becomes.
The reason police agencies target kingpins and traffickers is because the purpose of the war on drugs, from the point of view of police administration, is to seize cash to fund police operations. There is no law enforcement justification for such a policy, merely an agency budgeting justification.
Agreed. I'm not remotely a fan of the war on drugs or its consequences for the prison-industrial complex or the militarization of the police.
The real root is really shitty legislation based on shitty moralizations based on shitty philosophical grounds, the absurd nature of how the police are funded, and the ridiculous political reality of law enforcement offices. It's such a multifaceted problem that I'm unwilling to try to tackle it myself.
But all of this was just a handy example for why wishing for an "empirical investigation" is not necessarily the right way to go about things.
It's not so strange. Conspiracy to ____ is often shown before the individuals participating in the conspiracy. In this case there was evidence galore of illegal drug trade, so it became a matter of finding the individuals responsible.
You are ignoring the 'already identified' in the text you quote.
I'm sure there is occasional abuse, but I'm also sure that most investigations start with an examination of the available evidence to look for leads about who committed the crime.
This is how the government found MrSlippery in the opening pages of Vernor Vinge's
True Names, that is they went through a list of likely suspects until they hit paydirt.
Amazingly prescient for something written in 1979.
How exactly would parallel construction have helped here? To effect a search, with or without "parallel construction", you have to have probable cause.
the entire point of parallel construction is to construct a legal explanation for the presence of data needed for the conviction.
ie, I would use illegal means to obtain proof that you have convicted a crime, then I would use parallel construction to provide a legal explanation for how I obtained the proof.
iee, parallel construction is what they use when they did not have probable cause.
I am having trouble believing that you do not understand that? what am I missing?
You're having trouble because you are incorrect about how parallel construction works. Parallel construction is not the Orwellian term for simply "coming up with a bullshit story about where you got your evidence when it in fact came from NSA". Instead, it is the Orwellian term for "coming up with the complicated story of what precise piece of unrelated probable cause enabled you to effect a search that was motivated by evidence that came from NSA". Notice that the latter definition includes some notion of some kind of probable cause. The NSA is not PC in a "parallel construction" scenario.
ok, I do understand the distinction you are making.
I am not sure how you are so confident that the NSA was not at all involved in this capture, and that parallel construction was therefore entirely unnecessary.
When reading that article, and various other sources, one thing that stands out is that even after arresting an administrator - which did lead to various other arrests - they still had no direct link or identification for Ulbricht.
Ulbricht was careful enough that although the police were apparently communicating directly with him, and arresting a number of others that were more directly involved, there was no way for them to locate or identify him.
Note, that this remains true even after he believes that one of his contacts has murdered someone on his behalf.
He maintains the firewall between himself and that contact.
Frankly, that is fairly impressive, he must have been a careful man.
Suddenly they find a link buried in the forever webs between a nickname he uses and his actual name and bingo, they have him.
Now, it entirely could have gone down like that. It is completely plausible. Most likely the link was there all along, just waiting for someone to stumble on it.
BUT, that is rather the point of parallel construction, isn't it? to bridge the gap between the information they have and the information that they can present in court, in a totally plausible way.
I am not claiming the truth to be one way or the other, who knows (hell, who cares in this case), but I am claiming that to disregard the possibility and maintain that it is absurd is to ignore the fact of parallel construction and the fact of its frequent use.
Well for instance, if you know that a certain person is mailing or receiving drugs, then it's easier to make sure particular packages are "randomly" inspected and get probable cause for a warrant.
I don't care to engage with HN about my politics. I'm just annoyed that people can't keep the concepts straight. Parallel construction is the process of using surveillance data to escalate unrelated probable cause.
Well, for starters you stated that you "have to have" probable cause to "effect a search". Do you seriously believe that to be true?
Its much less about your politics than it is your credulous insinuation that illegal search and seizure is not taking place because searches "need" probable cause to be effected.
Probable cause is not necessary for a search. It's necessary for evidence from the search to be admitted. If the lawyer does not require a proof of probable cause for any searches that were permitted, he's not doing his job.
> "Probable cause is not necessary for a search. It's necessary for evidence from the search to be admitted."
The purpose of parallel construction is to create an artificial heritage for evidence collected without probable cause. This is done by finding probable cause for a search that you will then claim uncovered evidence that was in fact previously discovered during the course of an illegal search.
The lawyer, doing his job, will ask where the evidence came from and what the probable cause was for that search. He will be lied to, and told that the evidence was discovered during the course of the second 'investigation' (the existence of the first investigation, the real investigation, will be kept a secret.)
For a simple example of how this would work, imagine a naive police officer acting on his own: The police officer, spurred on by prejudice, breaks into several homes in a neighborhood looking for evidence of a grow op. He finds one such operation, but since his search was illegal nothing he found can be used in court. He then gets the bright idea to leave the police station an 'anonymous' tip. That tip is then used to justify a search warrant, which is then used to reveal the presence of a grow op.
That situation is trivial and the "anonymous tip" is immediately cause for suspicion. Things get much hairier when you add more participants, and make them reasonably intelligent.
TL;DR: The entire point of parallel construction is that the defenses lawyer can do his job, but it won't matter.
If I'm reading you correctly that's not parallel construction, that's planting evidence.
Now, I haven't followed the US law or police news closely, since my interest is at most academic, but my picture of parallel construction is that you first use unreliable/inadmissible sources to construct a picture of the situation, then using that general knowledge to locate actual admissible evidence.
So the cop might use inadmissible sources to know there's an person of interest somewhere. But he still needs admissible evidence to demonstrate probable cause if he wants to enter and use results of this second search to be useful. Otherwise he's exactly in the situation of the 'naive' cop from your example, where he can only say 'anonymous tip', doesn't have a record for that, and his 'real' investigation gets dismissed.
What you seem to be describing is taking inadmissible evidence and then somehow inserting it into results of a legal search - i.e. planting evidence. That's not a new idea, I guess, but is it really so common, and how is that caused by parallel construction?
You are, I believe, correct about parallel construction. It is notably easy for police to find probable cause to effect a search, which is half of what makes parallel construction disquieting. But they do have to actually find some cause to conduct the search. They can't just go with the intel they get from inadmissible evidence; if they do, the new evidence from the unwarranted search is "fruit of the poisonous tree", and can be excluded from trial.
This is 4 paragraphs saying exactly the same thing I said upthread, just more emphatically.
Meanwhile, we're no closer to understanding how "parallel construction" could have been helpful in this case, which is the question the thread purports to answer.
Sounds like a police thriller novel. That said, and BitCoin hitting an all time high, is it even possible to convert BitCoin into dollars any more? I note that the article says the agents seized over two million dollars from the Mt GOX founder [1]. So given how many btc to dollar exchanges have been targeted how does that work now? Western Union or something?
[1] "The seizures included $2.9 million from a Dwolla account that was controlled by a U.S. subsidiary of Mt. Gox and $2.1 million seized from two Wells Fargo accounts, one controlled by the same subsidiary, the other by Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles."
They did not identify the server by some advanced technical hacks against tor. They used simple basic police methods and arrested an administrator with the use of an undercover agent posing as a drug seller. The administrator purchased a kilo of cocaine, and by doing so, gave his home address to the undercover agent. After interrogation, they gained user credentials that even included DPR's private messages.
This could have easily been a episode script for the wire.