I love it when non-legal people report on the legal system, get a ton of shit wrong and then point at the system and say how broken it is.
First of all, Federal indictments are almost always granted to the prosecutor. This lead to the now famous quote from the story about a ham sandwich. This is the because of the Supreme Court case United States v. R Enterprises, Inc:
"federal grand jury subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable and the burden of showing unreasonableness is on the recipient. A motion to quash a federal grand jury subpoena on relevancy grounds must be denied unless, “there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the grand jury's investigation.”
All a grand jury does is determine if there is enough compelling evidence to try a person for a crime, that's it. To say those charges have been dropped is misleading. All the prosecutor has to do is reinstate the indictments and they can proceed with those charges. They didn't "fall off the table" like the article states, the government hasn't formally charged Albrecht yet - something which could happen if he walks in his other case. Just because the government is dragging its feet on these charges doesn't mean they don't intend to charge him.
Like I've said before, the murder charge is essentially an ace in the hole for the prosecutors. If he walks on the Silk Road charges, they can pursue their murder charges against him and reinstate all the murder indictments and formally charge him with those - it's pretty simple. The article makes it seem like the government has dropped all the charges and thus, he's innocent of what he's been accused of. On the contrary, the writer simply is misinformed about how the legal system works.
If you're going to present yourself as more knowledgeable than the rest of us as far as the law goes then it would be prudent to read the article and get the defendant's name correct.
Given that the information that would implicate him in Silk Road might very well be from the same area as the alleged murders then one can reasonably assume if he walks on the SR charges then he could also potentially walk on those charges.
In response to your comment about the indictments, is it not also possible that the jurisdictions that obtained the indictments (because they're so easy to get as you say) doesn't actually have sufficient evidence to present even a prima facie case or perhaps the information they did obtain was obtained illegally and thus they don't want to lose on those counts so to save face they drop the counts? Perhaps it is as the author states where the indictments were used to obtain a no-bail status so Ulbricht doesn't flee (assuming he has other funds hidden elsewhere).
All of what I said is what some folks (myself included) in the non-legal world would consider to be "reasonable doubt."
This whole case hinges on the fact that Ross Ulbricht = Dread Pirate Roberts. All of the government's evidence claims Ulbricht ran Silk Road and he's the person who ordered several assassinations. All they know is the person "known as" Dread Pirate Roberts did these things, so they need to tie DPR directly to Ulbricht.
Therefore, if the servers were searched illegally, then whatever was on those servers is important to Ulbricht, which means they're important to DPR, which then the government can tie the two together and make the direct relationship between them. This means even if he wins the Silk Road case, the government have established him as DPR and then can formally charge him under the several indictments they have for the murder for hire scheme.
If he doesn't challenge the search of the servers, and maintains since he's not DPR, then he has no stake in the evidence on those servers, then all the evidence (fairly strong circumstantial evidence) would stand and the government will most likely get a conviction since even though they haven't tied him directly to the DPR persona, all the evidence from the servers and other circumstantial evidence points directly to him. I say "most likely" but you never know for sure in these cases.
Contrary to what you believe, getting evidence thrown out in one case, actually solidifies the evidence in the other case. Also, it's likely the government is preparing their case to be ready to charge Ulbrict depending on what happens in the SR trial. Since Grand Jury's are a closed affair (defendants and their attorneys are not present) it's a dry run for the prosecution to see how strong their case is. They could be sitting on additional information, or still in the process of collecting more evidence against Ulbricht, you never know. There's a LOT we the general public won't know about their case until they actual charge him and have to start providing the evidence they have.
“Justice” in the U.S. has always been a bad joke. The best you can hope for is a completely random outcome (“a jury of your peers“, what a laugh), or, as in this case, a politically motivated campaign that ignores truth, decency, all due process, and the principles why we have something like laws in the first place. In the Silk Road case the pure unadulterated power of corruption would have been completely sufficient to reach the outcome; bothering the law with that is nothing but an embellishment and a fig leaf. I feel reminded of Iraq's WMDs and the embarrassing spectacle around Kim Dotcom. Seems like the U.S. gov't will spread publicly any lies that seem convenient at the time, never mind the consequences.
Thank you for linking to your own opinion on a different website.
Your liberal viewpoint is deeply misinformed. The fear of WMDs was also shared by Bill Clinton when still in power, Hosni Mubarak, the French Intelligence services, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
The WMDs found may not be on a scale with what, say, Russia could produce or even on a scale with what was expected, but they were there.
> The fear of WMDs was also shared by Bill Clinton when still in power, Hosni Mubarak, the French Intelligence services, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Based on misinformation, paranoia, and earlier perspectives.
> The WMDs found
The 'WMDs' were only found when you equivocate on the term 'WMDs' to equate the terrifying prospects specifically laid out by Bush & Cheney, the details of which I quoted in my link (nukes, mobile bio-labs, etc), with the tiny supply of chemical weapons already known about and dealt with by the UN. By your logic, white is black, and 0 is 1. After all, they're very similar, it's just a matter of scale...
> or even on a scale with what was expected.
Bingo. You even understand the point. It's like claiming to be a millionaire when one is actually unemployed and has just a few dollars left in one's bank account. 'Yes, maybe my wealth was not on a scale with what you expected, but it was there!' They're only equivalent if you're blind.
So here's the thing - even if the chemical weapons found were not as massive as you expected, there is still enough evidence there to believe that the invasion was undertaken in good faith.
But, no? I don't understand how you could possibly draw that conclusion. The "WMD" ISIS have discovered were decommissioned WMD from the 90s. They aren't capable of being deployed.
> even if the chemical weapons found were not as massive as you expected
'Even if the promises were only comparable to the reality by exaggerating by many orders of magnitude'
> there is still enough evidence there to believe that the invasion was undertaken in good faith.
No there's not. Did you miss all the research into how Cheney's people spun the evidence and used unreliable defectors to make up a narrative and bully dissenters? Also, is this really what you're reduced to arguing: 'yes, maybe they were completely wrong and I'm desperately equivocating on the term 'WMD' - but at least Bush invaded in good faith!'?
You seem to think that intelligence gathered in a foreign repressive country can be taken as "promises". This is deeply naive.
> No there's not.
Yes there is. Even if what you claim about Cheney is true, how is he supposed to have convinced Clinton of the threat? And what about all the other nations that believed in it?
I am arguing that there was enough evidence of WMDs that several other people, other than Bush, believed they were there.
You seem to argue that all intelligence has to be 100% perfect, which shows a flawed understanding of reality. Even so, the Iraqi people were demonstrably better off (until the premature withdrawal) after the invasion and a vile dictator who gassed kurds (whilst not having WMDs apparently) and killed at random (certainly his children did) was removed. It was a net-win for the world.
> You seem to think that intelligence gathered in a foreign repressive country can be taken as "promises". This is deeply naive.
When you have put your credibility on the line, making certain claims, justifying enormous expenditures with open-ended commitments - well, choose a word you please if you don't like 'promises'.
> Yes there is. Even if what you claim about Cheney is true, how is he supposed to have convinced Clinton of the threat? And what about all the other nations that believed in it?
The other nations which had to be bullied into it or just stayed out of the 'coalition of the willing'?
> Even so, the Iraqi people were demonstrably better off (until the premature withdrawal) after the invasion and a vile dictator who gassed kurds (whilst not having WMDs apparently) and killed at random (certainly his children did) was removed.
Ah yes, it's all good until it isn't. The WMDs were there, and so it was justified! (Unless they weren't.) The invasion was a good thing! (Until it wasn't.) It was worth it! (Until we tote up the million of refugees, the hundreds of thousand of excess deaths, the trillions spent and to be spent.) Some other leaders made the same mistake! (Unless they didn't make the same mistake). It was a net-win for the world! (Well, unless we look at all the embarrassing bits.)
Sad and pitiable. You can't back up your initial claims about WMDs except in the most desperate and misleading way possible, so you immediately spin to other issues like saying some other people agreed with Bush or his intentions were good or maybe some selected post-invasion period was an improvement. I'm not fooled.
The pretext for the war was Iraq having an active WMD program. What ISIS has are stockpiles from before Iraq dismantled their WMD program (which was prior to the invasion).
I was under the impression that the shelf life on most of these WMDs (chemical nerve agents) is only 5 years or so. So we had a pretty good idea about what Saddam was holding, but they were almost certainly unusable at the time of the invasion.
Iraq was sort of bluffing about having chemical weapons after the Gulf War and before the second invasion. It wasn't crazy to think they had an active program.
The Bush administration didn't think they could just make up WMD. They assumed the WMD was there. Their real failure was that they pressured the intelligence community into giving a fast confirmation that WMD existed. It's sort of like when a cop lies on the stand by bolstering his evidence. The cop usually isn't trying to rail road an innocent person but insuring (in his mind) the conviction of a guilty person. That is what Bush's administration thought.
Turns out the program was finished after the Gulf War and never restarted. And a real hard intelligence look should have shown that. But dissenters were quieted.
The "WMD" that was found was lost, pre Gulf War munitions that were degraded to uselessness. They were for most purposes, useless. It was shitty, old as fuck mustard gas. So yes, really no need to worry.
It's more of a semantics issue from bad intel and some FUDdy massaging of the definitions along the way, but I see how you got there. Iraq had chemical weapons, and, if you've seen the news, we found them in 2006, although it wasn't publicly confirmed until recently. The use of the label "WMD" is the matter in contention.
Some chemical weapons can be WMDs, but these weren't. They also weren't active, and they weren't the type or scale that could be used in modern warfare. The situation was closer to cleaning out an old chemical factory than a race against time to find and disarm fleets of intercontinental missiles primed for launch from secret subterranean silos across the country.
If Ulbricht is guilty for providing a safe place to buy illegal drugs then aren't San Francisco and other cities complicit since they hand out clean needles freely for addicts to use? Sure the idea behind it is noble but aren't both still technically illegal whether you supply the paraphernalia and you absolutely know what will be done with it or whether you provide a safe environment where people can trade $ for drugs?
The problem becomes when the laws are structured to favor certain entities or when the laws purposely aren't changed because they're a very useful financial tool for 3-letter agencies.
Noone is being favored here. Silk road would not have been shut down had it been selling needles.
Likewise, whoever sells illegal drugs, delivers drugs, or knowingly fascilitates either of those things is held accountable.
Two disclaimers:
1. Not all favoring is inherently evil. Eg. favoring based on objective criteria.
2. Not all things that are legal are morally justified. Eg. abortion.
You seem to like the word "facilitate" as you used it in both your replies to my post. If I were to ask you if it is easier to mail vacuum-sealed drugs across the U.S. or to drive them there yourself then what would you say? Mailing is obviously easier. Therefore I could say that UPS/FedEx/USPS facilitate the sale of drugs. They most certainly know they do it as well as it is common knowledge and drugs have been successfully mailed for years. They also take actions to try to prevent it though. Is that where the difference lies?
Silk Road doesn't engage in drug trafficking as it does NOT: cultivate, manufacture, transport, deliver, distribute or sell drugs. Those actions are solely up to the sellers.
SR is a marketplace.
The postal services are excused by the same logic that manufacturers of knives are from their misuse.
On SR, however, the contents of each advertized item are public knowledge. SR is therefore accountable.
If the postal service knew any particular package carried contraband, they too would be obliged not to deliver it, and to report it.
Let's clear up a very often perpetuated and very disingenuous misconception. Silk Road did NOT sell a damn thing. Silk Road (the website and very much the same as the actual location) was a conduit for sellers to do their business. SR merely provided a safe environment and safe alternative for people who are going to get their drugs one way or another. Arguably a much safer alternative as well since the purity and accuracy of content could be better verified than what you get off the street.
Therefore, Ulbricht is no more a drug trafficker than John Donahoe (CEO of eBay) sells iphone screen protectors and decorative beads for art projects.
I'm going to strongly disagree with your last point. How many sellers were on Silk Road? How many of them sold drugs? Take this percentage and compare it to the number of eBay auctions that are for iphone screen protectors or dedocrate beads. These numbers will differ by more than a few orders of magnitude. It's not reasonable to compare them.
If you know your service is being used for drug trafficking to a significant degree and you don't try to stop it then yes, you do hold some responsibility and can be held accountable. Morally, ethically, and legally.
The great thing is that none of what you said applies to a drug trafficking charge because DPR and SR didn't engage in drug trafficking. The environment was created as a marketplace for illicit drug sales but SR didn't produce/manufacture/distribute/store/sell any drugs.
My comparison to eBay is valid because just like ebay, there are sellers that sell in the market. EBay doesn't sell product. People might say "I bought it off eBay" but they aren't actually buying product FROM eBay. This differs from Amazon where the shipments are labeled (fulfillment by Amazon).
I also doubt he could be charge under the RICO statute except the prosecution may be able to pull that one off if they can somehow twist the murder charges to resemble something covered under RICO.
Legal problems are obvious, so I'll focus on the ethical/moral side.
I think it is wrong to equate drug trafficking, in any sense, to a moral or ethical argument. Those questions do not yet have concrete, society-accepted answers, so by imposing the ethical and moral objects on drugs, we are in danger of simply following the status quo without question, I think.
There are also cases where the most moral or ethical thing to do would be allow a patient to use a state-controlled/restricted drug, if it would save their lives. If we were to follow this argument to its conclusion, there may be a moral or ethical argument that it would be wrong for him to attempt to shutdown the ability of a patient to acquire life-improving drugs.
tl;dr: Equating legal wrong to moral/ethical wrong is not always the right way.
My intent was for all three to be considered separately. I didn't specify whether it was immoral/moral, ethical/unethical, or legal/illegal.
However my real point is that the Silk Road creator and maintainer is responsible and accountable along all three axes. If it is moral, ethical, and legal then that's great! If it's moral, ethical, but illegal then that kinda sucks but that's the risk you take. Morals and ethics are an endless debate which is beside the point here. My opinion is that the initial comparison vs eBay is unreasonble and that the creator is responsible in all three ways.
While I agree that legality and morality are not equivalent (in practice or theory), strictly the parent comment didn't assert that they were. You can have moral responsibility for an act without appreciable moral weight, it just doesn't matter much that you do.
But if the US Government decided to tax sales of iphone screen protectors Ebay would not be responsible for direct payment of the tax. Ebay could facilitate the collection of the tax, but in the end it is up to the seller to to take responsibility.
The murder charges appeared to be a bullshit charade that both DPR and the "victim" knew. The transcripts are available online somewhere.
Some guy anonymously messages DPR, telling DPR that he found an exploit in the Silk Road, stole some information on a lot of big-time sellers, and was going to release it if DPR didn't pay him some large amount of money. DPR flat-out rejects the other. The guy then said he owed money to a dealer that he re-sold drugs to, explains that if DPR could settle his debts with the dealer then he'd be happy, and then he gave DPR that dealer's (anonymous) contact info.
If you're anonymously trying to blackmail someone, why on earth would you tell your target the contact information of a third party who knows where you live AND who shares a motive against you? The story as-is is barely believable.
The "dealer" then offers to solve the problem of the blackmailer for DPR, and asks for an amount of money, suspiciously a little lower than the amount the blackmailer wanted. DPR pays him, and no longer worries about his customer data seller being leaked.
There's no evidence that the "dealer"/assassin was a real person, or that any murder ever occurred. The dealer and the blackmailer only ever anonymously communicated with DPR, and no one else. The blackmailer introduced the dealer/assassin to DPR unprompted. No one besides each other knew who they were. It seems likely they're the same person. The whole thing appears to be a weird charade for the blackmailer to barter with DPR down a price to not leak the data.
I'm going to go flat-out conspiracy theorist and say that DPR/alleged dealer/blackmailer are all the same person and he concocted this story and leaked it to let everyone know how seriously he takes privacy.
Unfortunately, the prosecution will probably say it had to do with intent and use that as a reason for why the public should be protected from DPR.
Either way I agree with the points you made. Also very bad opsec for DPR to not smell something fishy with the story if it is in fact a different person and even worse to act on it if that is in fact what happened.
> I'm going to go flat-out conspiracy theorist and say that DPR/alleged dealer/blackmailer are all the same person and he concocted this story and leaked it to let everyone know how seriously he takes privacy.
That incident was not known publicly before Ulbricht was arrested and the complaints released.
I just wish the prosecutors and investigators didn't rely on so many questionable and in some cases possibly illegal tactics to bring him down. It really just makes him look more innocent.
As notorious as he was ( and as bad as he was at online security) the us government shouldn't be having so much trouble to prove their case (assuming their allegations are correct)
Guilty of breaking non-sense, victim-less laws. Laws that restrict usage of non-addictive mind-altering substances that are much less harmful than other, legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, medical drugs). Laws that shouldn't even be on the books! Laws that cause millions of dollars of damage and thousands of deaths each year. Laws that power organized crime.
The drug laws.
I totally support him, and I hope he comes out a free man, albeit his business will probably be ruined.
I agree with your general point, but SR was being used for all kinds of things including selling Cocaine and Heroin (and also for not selling drugs but services). Those are very addictive drugs by almost any definition. Fine if you want to argue they are less harmful than, say, alcohol, but they are definitely addictive. Do not allow your point to be weakened by stating something that is clearly incorrect.
Not that I necessarily doubt the veracity of this claim but you should probably point to a better looking graphic than that. Where did you even find it?
As the comic says, he can't see the difference between using cocaine, and taking everything you own to the back yard and burning it then giving your house away.
Addiction isn't that simple. Would you argue that nicotine is not addictive? I've tried several tobacco products and am not addicted but that does not prove that nicotine does not have addictive properties. I drink alcohol and when it's not available I don't miss it. Is it more or less addictive than tobacco?
There is a nice description of the risk of cocaine dependence on Wikipedia.
Drugs aren't addictive. People are either more or less prone to forming habits around activities depending on their own brain structure and chemistry.
No drug is addictive. Addiction is a weasel word to try and shift the blame of habit forming away from the person and onto the activity.
Is the beach fun? Some people find it fun, they go as much as possible. I don't find it fun. Can we then say "well, fun is not that simple. would you argue hiking is not fun? I've tried hiking and I don't hike all the time but that does not prove hiking does not have fun properties. I go to the beach and when it's not available I don't miss it. Is the beach more or less fun than hiking?"?
No drug is addictive just as no activity is fun. A person will feel fun or will form a habit around an activity depending on their predisposition to do so, based on brain chemistry.
Cocaine only manages to convert 4% of the people that try it. That means only 4% of people are prone to forming habits around Cocaine. What percentage of people are prone to forming habits around watching sports? Should watching sports be considered addictive and become illegal, if more than 4% of people form habits around it?
Fair enough, I always go back to something a high school teacher mentioned when these types of arguments come up. Martin Luther King Jr. broke the law to make a point, to fight injustice, to "stick it to the man." But MLK unequivocally and publicly broke those laws; he made the statement 'these are unjust laws and they need to be changed' and suffered the punishment for breaking those laws, as determined by a court of law, mitigated by public outcry. Illegally copying and selling movies because you think copyright law is bullshit, as an example, is not living up to MLK's method, it's having your cake and eating it too. You think a law is unjust, fight the law, don't break it and try to get away with it. That makes you, at best, little better than those in organized crime. And, at the end of the day, if you've made tons of money off of the crime, and you stand to make more if the law is repealed, it really waters down your moral/ethical argument.
> "In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
You claim:
> You think a law is unjust, fight the law, don't break it and try to get away with it.
So you and MLK are claiming that a non-Jew in Nazi Germany who violates legislation by helping a Jew is morally culpable unless they do it publicly?
Seems pretty questionable, and I even agree with the strict Kantian maxim of not lying to the murderer at the door!
Perhaps you and MLK are confusing a strategy with morality. Perhaps it is strategically valuable to violate unjust legislation openly and suffer the consequences. That shouldn't mean that it is morally wrong to violate them in secret.
To me, it seems like there are two claims that are being tied together unnecessarily. 1) one has no obligation to obey unjust legislation 2) one has an obligation to disobey it openly to bring public awareness of the unjustness and increase likelihood of reform.
To me, you're just as culpable for not doing #2 whether or not you do #1. In other words, if you're morally culpable for not violating unjust legislation in public, then you bear that culpability whether or not you violate the legislation in private or not, and violating unjust legislation in private entails no culpability on its own.
[edit: I completely rewrote when I realized MLK really did say that]
When he'll be charged of that and proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and when the only money taken from him will be what he earned with the above activities, I'll completely support the charges/convictions.
Really? You're willing to post publicly that you don't mind him having attempted to kill people to keep his kingpin status? That you still support him?
I don't know where you get that from. They don't have proof that anyone died, and perhaps no one did. That doesn't mean attempting a hit is any less heinous.
Compared with the crimes of the entity actually mounting the prosecution, everything he was alleged to have done is at worst a misdemeanor.
But you will never get a sociopathic state worshiping authoritarian to admit they don't have the moral high ground. Letalone that their treasured institutions are practically identical to the terrorist organisations that they say they exist to protect the innocent from.
> Religious zealots always get mad when facts ruin their ideological narratives.
Couldn't have said it better myself. You would do well to consider your own criticism. I will not be holding my breath waiting for the penny to drop for you, though. You have that self assured idiocy I instantly recognise from hackneyed talking heads spinning nonsense about topics they don't grasp purely to make those more questioning abandon their pesky skepticism and critical analysis about all things conventional.
Keep it up, your attacks serve merely to convince me I'm on the right path.
Silk Road had sections for items whose sole and explicit purpose was to harm others for profit.
I understand that you are unwilling to admit this (instead trying to make this an argument about something other than SR), but he did.
I find it completely unsurprising that you are incapable of admitting this.
p.s. there is a lot of research indicating that extremists become more strident when presented with facts that undermine their ideology. As such, your final sentence is completely predictable.
I admitted it in my first response. I said it was a misdemeanor if he were guilty of everything he had allegedly done relative to the actions of the prosecuting entity. If you were right and I were claiming SR was some pure bastion of light and holiness I would instead have said he was completely innocent.
My point was the relative culpability of the two actors in question. You're not presenting any new facts, you're just sounding off on the righteousness of the state without consideration to the crimes on that rap sheet to which I have taken exception. It is you who are doubling down on your idiocy absent understanding of the actual point being made.
> you will never get a sociopathic state worshiping authoritarian to admit they don't have the moral high ground
If you're willing to post this level of stupidity then just come out with "OBAMA IS HITLER" without mincing words so we can tell you're deluded and ignore your posts.
Which is presumably the intention of the fanfare around the smears - pollute the jury pool as much as possible to avoid the inconvenience of people making a decision based on the facts or evidence presented in court; get out the jury deliberations quickly, just go for whatever knee-jerk guilty feeling you got when you read the headlines about how evil the defendant is; don't bother reading any detail or anything that might hurt your brain and destroy your prejudices !
Despite my reservations, the US would be better served if it had contempt of court laws like England which specifically prohibit discussion of any details of court cases prior to them being heard precisely in order to stop this sort of situation happening.
Pollute the jury pool? If they bring in 100 potential jurors maybe one might have some basic knowledge about Bitcoin if they're lucky. A few might recall hearing about it on the nightly news once. Chances are none will have heard anything about "the Dread Pirate Roberts".
Guilty... interesting word. Guilty of what? Under which jurisdiction? By whose measure? The media's? Yours? I assume you'd like a tarring and feathering? Shouldn't you also be talking about the state's guilt for using "possibly illegal" tactics, as I'd say that sticking false charges on someone for murder is a damn sight worse than being an intermediary in an illicit marketplace.
Hell, why aren't they going after banks for providing cash, which is an anonymous "currency" used on the illegal drug marketplaces known as "the park" and "behind the nursery school"?
I think the man deserves respect for sticking his neck out and doing something that's sparked fundamental discourse on drug policy.
Guilty of violating the USC Drug Kingping Act amongst others. Guilty of running an $80 million narcotics ring. Guilty of murder for hire. Guilty under the law as written.
You may believe him innocent by appeal to natural law, or un-prosecutable due to the Fourth Amendment, and on the latter you may be right. But from a moral standpoint, "guilty" is definitely the right word.
People are well within their right to believe he is guilty without waiting for a trial. People are well within their right to continue to believe he is guilty even if he is found not guilty - the standards of evidence and requirements to find someone guilty in a court of law are on purpose stringent on the basis that it is worse to imprison someone unjustly than let some criminals go free.
There's a vast gap from believing someone is guilty without waiting for a trial, to advocating the repeal of the rule of law.
As for your statement unless someone has presented evidence and accusations founded in something more than thin air, your example is not in any way equivalent.
But the evidence and accusations are founded on nothing more than thin air until they are proven in a court of law. If we presume guilt until innocence - why even bother with a criminal justice system? Should we just revert to stoning people on the presumption of guilt?
While, yes, folks are free to assume guilt of others, it's an abominable thing to do, as all it does is play straight into the hands of those who would control criminal justice through their media mouthpieces.
No, they're based upon a detailed explanation of the evidence of the state, given to a Grand Jury, who determines whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. That document is available publicly as an indictment.
Some indictments are bogus, some are solid. This one is solid. Also, since we're not lynching anybody that makes us at least slightly better than a lynch mob.
(P.S. we need a law like Godwin's for lynch mob references.)
> If we presume guilt until innocence - why even bother with a criminal justice system?
Someone believing he is guilty outside a court of law does not cause him to get thrown in prison. That is why we bother with a criminal justice system, with specific standards.
> it's an abominable thing to do
It's the human thing to do. We all do it. You too, no matter how much you may want to pretend you don't judge. It is a fine thing to try to withhold judgement, but we are not even capable of fully preventing it.
In fact, you are expressing a great deal of judgement about people on the basis of lack of evidence in this very thread:
> It makes you no better than a lynch mob.
If you seriously don't see the difference between holding a belief, without making any statement about how certain you are that it is correct, and going out with the intent of subjecting someone to violence on the basis of that belief, then you seriously need to think through your thought process.
An indictment is handed down by a grand jury of ordinary people based on the presentation of facts. It's not just an accusation lobbed on the internet. Court systems should presume innocent until guilt is proven, but bystanders on the internet are totally allowed to speculate based on their gut feelings.
In most jurisdictions the prosecutor entirely controls whether someone is indicted. The prosecutor has the sole ability to present fact and evidence to the grand jury. There is no defense attorney allowed to speak. Thus the common saying amoung prosecutors that they could "indict a ham sandwich for the murder of a pig."
But while the act of being indicted means very little the evidence it forces the prosecution to produce is essential to the defendant.
The documentation produced by the indictment contains testimony, evidence, and large portions of the investigation. It's almost always the defense's first target of attack. However, in this case, it appears very solid for the prosecution.
If I were Ulbricht, I would hammer at the potential Fourth Amendment violation. It is still unclear how the FBI located and imaged Silk Road's servers.
He's put filed motions, but his lawyers never did the investigatory legwork needed to win. Winning such a motion requires a very tight focus on the particularities of the case, and so one can see the smallest of violations, like tiny pinpricks of sun through a brick wall. Then you take one of these pinpricks, and you turn it into a defense.
I would ask, in no particular order:
How exactly did the the FBI get the images of the Silk Road servers?
What is the timeline of the various events in the investigation leading up to Ubricht's arrest?
Did the gmail screen name lead them to the Stack Overflow post which led to the MLAT, which led to the server?
Or did this, as they said later, somehow "expose" the Silk Road IP, and back track the rest of the evidence.
Were any other intelligence agencies involved?
Was any form of backbone collection use to reveal the SR IP?
Mainly I would do this, because if he doesn't win a Fourth Amendment motion to dismiss he's going to jail for a very very long time.
How do you know what a child molester looks like? Have you seen many of them? Are you friends with them? Your comment is highly suspicious, I think we better take you in for questioning.
"But from a moral standpoint, "guilty" is definitely the right word."
Morals are subjective, I realize that you've claimed to be speaking for yourself only; but with a comment such as that I have a hard time believing it.
>There's a field of study called Ethics that would disagree with you.
And the field called Metaethics with which I am referring to.
Before we go any further I would warn you against assuming anything that I am not saying; I admit to (drastically) simplifying my position in the form of a three word statement - in response to a statement of equal simplicity - but the way in which you are issuing a blanket (and hostile) denial of all of the implications not addressed does not imply that you are reading with the sort of charitable mindset required to update your opinion. With that said;
If you would actually like a source for my claim I would encourage you to read the metaethics sequence on lesswrong(1); many articles of which summarize the discussion (which I am actively avoiding by linking to it instead) presented by both sides regarding this topic.
I believe it would also be worthwhile for you to read the sequence on the difference between belief, and belief in belief (or the map and territory, respectively); for you appear to have an issue understanding that just because you have never heard of this viewpoint that it is novel, when rather it has been covered to a great extent - an extent to which you are clearly ignorant.
Also if you are attempting to conjure an argument around the definition of subjectivity please leave it at the door, it adds nothing to the discussion that couldn't be addressed with simple charitable reading.
That's a lot to read, so I'll take my time, but I'm always suspicious of arguments that can't be presented succinctly, for I have my own biases.
Would you care to at least elucidate on what you mean by "Morals are subjective" so I know if I even disagree with you?
I don't believe morals come from somewhere or that they can be made universally acceptable. I just think that between two humans, if one does something to the other, then the other will think they're justified in doing that same thing to the one. And when that happens, a third person watching the incident will adapt their behavior (or stay the same) according to the outcome of the interaction. Based on that, and using reason, we can find some core behavioral preferences that we can call morals, that passes the tests of doing and being done to, and of watching others do and reacting by changing one's behavior.
I'm not asking you to summarize the discussion, just give me the meat of the main point in one sentence, if you will. There are no morals because...? Or there can be no morals because...? Or people will never agree because...?
I'm saying he's guilty, not a court. It's one man's opinion, not a finding of fact or law.
The fact pattern isn't really in dispute here. Do you really deny he performed the acts of which he is accused?
EDIT due to reply limit: Fine, its your opinion that I'm a child molester, but since you can't enforce it, I have little reason to care.
In the instant case, I am perfectly capable of examining an indictment and concluding as to its likely veracity. It doesn't make the person legally guilty, but in my personal unbinding and most modest opinion, morally so.
Fortunately for us, you're not a judge/prosecutor and fortunately for the accused, "guilty until proven innocent" isn't law but merely a song by Jay-Z.
The options aren't "innocent until proven guilty" or "guilty until proven innocent" - there's also "what is the evidence that I've seen telling me is most likely so far?" Actions based on this should be heavily checked by recognition of your uncertainty, but if you are wanting to come to the correct answer most often, you'll use something closer to that. The purpose of the justice system is not "to come to the correct answer most often", but to determine action (typically severe action) and so needs that check.
Accused of violating the USC Drug Kingping Act amongst others. Accused of running an $80 million narcotics ring. Accused of murder for hire. Accused under the law as written. You may believe him innocent by appeal to actual law/logic (merely accusations at this point), or un-prosecutable due to the Fourth Amendment (see: United States Constitution), and you would be right. But from a moral/legal standpoint, "accused" is definitely the right word.
I personally think that I should be skeptical of information released by entities that have a vested interest in influencing public opinion.
I think it highly likely that the prosecution is going over the evidence that it intends to use with a fine-toothed comb to avoid potential embarrassments during discovery. As this is a somewhat newsworthy case, they are going to be particularly cautious about making sure all the keystone facts are supported by admissible evidence. On top of that, they have to conceal some of their tactics so that they can continue to use them successfully in the future.
If Ulbricht did solicit murder for hire, I'm not entirely certain that he would have even thought of trying that if government agents were not already investigating him, due to his involvement in the drug trade. It might have been entrapment, just as a means of putting him into police custody, making him unable to interfere with further investigations by erasing trails that had not yet been followed, and also providing a means to seize his Bitcoins.
By that hypothesis, the state suspects he is Dread Pirate Roberts, but lacks the evidence to prove it. People in custody are less able to shield themselves from investigations. So they set him up with an illegal entrapment that would not necessarily support a conviction, but is plenty good enough for an indictment and arrest. Then they grab him and execute warrants based on the "I gotcha, sucka" charges that will end up supporting the drug kingpin case. With that access, they make seizures and file civil forfeiture cases against the assets, because the legal standards for those are woefully skewed in the state's favor. The prosecutor declines to pursue the murder for hire charges because he always knew they were bogus, and instead dumps all the gathered evidence into the drug trafficking and racketeering charges, as it is now sanitized by warrants under the previous indictment.
If that is indeed what has happened here, and it results in a conviction, I don't care how guilty Ulbricht is, because the state should not be able to corrupt our legal system in that fashion. He should go free, and the prosecutors and police that were involved should fill that cell in his place.
> It might have been entrapment, just as a means of putting him into police custody, making him unable to interfere with further investigations by erasing trails that had not yet been followed, and also providing a means to seize his Bitcoins.
It's only entrapment if government agents persuaded him to commit a crime he wasn't otherwise inclined to commit. For it to be a defense he'd have to show that the government actively talked him into hiring someone -- just offering to do it and seeing if he takes them up on it isn't enough. (The analogy I've seen used is that an undercover cop saying "hey, want to buy some cocaine?" isn't entrapment.)
My personal standard is that it is unacceptable to break one law to enforce another. At best, evidence gathered by an undercover cop posing as a criminal can refute a character-based defense in a pre-existing case.
Since having and selling cocaine is (currently) illegal, any evidence gathered by that illegal act is tainted. You can't reasonably prosecute the person buying unless you also prosecute the person selling. And that person is effectively immune.
The current lower standard in the courts--whereby the police can set up any situation, no matter how ridiculous, and entice a person to commit a crime that he might never have committed without that prompting--is an open invitation to police misconduct that may be more damaging than the crimes they are claiming to combat.
"Hey, want some coke?" is entrapment. The state agent is encouraging people to commit new crimes for the express purpose of arresting and convicting them for it. That isn't fighting crime. That's manufacturing crime to pad your own job performance metrics. You may be showing that people in the area have motive and method to commit certain types of crimes, opportunity is still a significant barrier. Traditional crime-fighting seeks to deny those opportunities rather that providing them.
This is why I find tactics like "bait cars" to be sleazy and indicative of lazy police work.
If you have mice, you can set out baited traps and be certain to catch some. But it will not eradicate the infestation. You have to clean your house, removing accessible food sources. You have to eliminate places where the mice can hide and breed. And you have to seal up any means of ingress and egress. Traps just temporarily alleviate the symptoms. The real solution takes much more effort.
I am not, however, part of the current justice system, so my opinion on these matters is not taken into consideration directly. But the prosecution relying upon traps has cause to worry, if I am on their jury.
I love it. They used to say "The only way to know what the Times is free to print anything it wishes is for the Enquirer to be able to do so too."
Ubricht proved we're not dealing with supervillians. Just security experts with lots of funding. Ordinary humans that can be set back using tech just like us.
Their difficulty in proving their case gives me hope that there's still time to make technology a force for good, both within and without government.
It seems the murder for hire charges were dropped because no murders can be shown to have taken place. But isn't it still a crime to pay for murder, even if it does not actually take place? The logs in the indictment documents sure made it sound like Ulbricht thought he was ordering real murders.
18 U.S. Code § 1958 - Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire
(a) Whoever travels in or causes another (including the intended victim) to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes another (including the intended victim) to use the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of any State or the United States as consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a promise or agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value, or who conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and if personal injury results, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than twenty years, or both; and if death results, shall be punished by death or life imprisonment, or shall be fined not more than $250,000, or both.
(b) As used in this section and section 1959—
(1) “anything of pecuniary value” means anything of value in the form of money, a negotiable instrument, a commercial interest, or anything else the primary significance of which is economic advantage;
(2) “facility of interstate or foreign commerce” includes means of transportation and communication; and
(3) “State” includes a State of the United States, the District of Columbia, and any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States.
Fortunately, from what we know about the case, that information is on the same servers that are alleged to have been hacked illegally by the FBI which would make their contents inadmissible and thus, a boom for DPR.
The Silk Road server in question, after all, was located not in the United States but in a data center near Reykjavik, Iceland. And though Ulbricht is an American citizen, the prosecutors argue that the server’s location abroad made it fair game for remote intrusion. “Because the SR Server was located outside the United States, the Fourth Amendment would not have required a warrant to search the server, whether for its IP address or otherwise,” the prosecution’s filing reads.
In a footnote, the memo adds another strike against Ulbricht’s Fourth Amendment protections: The Silk Road was not only hosted in a foreign data center, but also rented from a third-party web hosting service. And because Ulbricht allegedly violated the company’s terms of service by using its computers to deal in narcotics and other contraband, that company was exempted from any obligation to protect his privacy.
Finally, prosecutors argue that for the 30-year-old Texan to claim privacy protections for Silk Road’s server, he would have to declare that it belonged to him—a tricky Catch-22. Ulbricht hasn’t claimed personal possession of that computer’s data, as doing so would almost certainly incriminate him. But because he hasn’t he can’t claim that his privacy was violated when it was searched, according to the prosecutor’s reasoning. “Because Ulbricht has not submitted any affidavit alleging that he had any possessory interest in the SR Server—let alone one that would give him a reasonable expectation of privacy—his motion should be denied,” reads the prosecutors’ filing.
Or maybe the decision by a US Magistrate Court which said private information is fair game, even if its located on servers in other countries, given a valid search warrant. Considering federal agencies tend to get a lot of leeway in such cases in regards to what exactly is contained in the warrant, and what they're searching for. So even if they had or needed a valid warrant, it's still within the governments authority to seize the data:
In a detailed ruling on Friday, US Magistrate Judge James Francis said that US companies, including Microsoft and Google, must turn over private information when served with a valid search warrant from US law enforcement agencies.
"Even when applied to information that is stored in servers abroad, an SCA warrant does not violate the presumption against extraterritorial application of American law," he concluded.
I don't think this matter has been settled enough to call it "debunked." From Wired: "Whether Judge Forrest, who’s presiding over Ulbricht’s case, takes a similar view will only become clear in the coming weeks."
> Or maybe the decision by a US Magistrate Court which said private information is fair game, even if its located on servers in other countries, given a valid search warrant.
Sounds irrelevant to me -- isn't it part of the argument here, that the agents did not have a warrant to search the Icelandic server?
Ulbricht publicly used an email address containing his first and last name when he first talked about Silk Road around its start, and before its start, he talked about wanting to make some type of Bitcoin marketplace.
The idea that he's not the first DPR is a joke about the name or obfuscation tactic he used in an interview.
There's a bit of a joke here. Obviously the first guy to call himself "Dread Pirate Roberts" couldn't have chosen that name because he wasn't the first, right? But it's perfectly plausible that he chose the name because he didn't intend to be the last.
First of all, Federal indictments are almost always granted to the prosecutor. This lead to the now famous quote from the story about a ham sandwich. This is the because of the Supreme Court case United States v. R Enterprises, Inc:
"federal grand jury subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable and the burden of showing unreasonableness is on the recipient. A motion to quash a federal grand jury subpoena on relevancy grounds must be denied unless, “there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the grand jury's investigation.”
source: http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/federal-gra...
All a grand jury does is determine if there is enough compelling evidence to try a person for a crime, that's it. To say those charges have been dropped is misleading. All the prosecutor has to do is reinstate the indictments and they can proceed with those charges. They didn't "fall off the table" like the article states, the government hasn't formally charged Albrecht yet - something which could happen if he walks in his other case. Just because the government is dragging its feet on these charges doesn't mean they don't intend to charge him.
Like I've said before, the murder charge is essentially an ace in the hole for the prosecutors. If he walks on the Silk Road charges, they can pursue their murder charges against him and reinstate all the murder indictments and formally charge him with those - it's pretty simple. The article makes it seem like the government has dropped all the charges and thus, he's innocent of what he's been accused of. On the contrary, the writer simply is misinformed about how the legal system works.