For those not reading the article, please note this isn't just a claim made by the defense. This came out of cross examination of a DHS agent.
"You thought you had probable cause that Mark Karpeles
was intimately involved, as the head of Silk
Road, correct?" Dratel asked Homeland Security agent
Jared Der-Yeghiayan.
"By the contents of that affidavit—yes," he answered.
Why would the judge do that? It's up to the jury to determine - to the best of their ability - whether the "DPR" moniker is really a reference to the multi-headed nature of the group, or whether it's irrelevant. But either way, they should know the context for the name.
Would that also mean the defense would be barred from mentioning it? If they're approach is to prove that DPR was multiple people over time it would probably help them to talk about nature of the name in the context of the movie
So in layman's terms, would I be right in saying that the defense is effectively saying that the prosecution is taking a "shotgun approach?" In a more obvious claim, they are said to be pulling random people off the street?
If that's the case it's a fascinating defense, I'd love to be able to watch it live.
I don't think that's accurate. The defense has only identified one other person investigated by the police, which doesn't make for much of a "shotgun". I think the defense is probably doing one of or both of the following:
(1) The defense is trying to impeach the testimony of the aforementioned DHS agent. The unstated implication is that if the agent changes his opinion about the identity of DPR, then his opinions aren't very reliable and shouldn't be taken seriously by the jury.
(2) If the underlying reasons for this DHS agent's belief that Karpeles was DPR are still valid, then the defense could use those reasons to show reasonable doubt as to the true identity of DPR. Basically, "if the DHS agent doubted that DPR was Ulbricht, then it's reasonable you doubt that too!"
No, in layman's terms: they're bullshitting in a desperate , last-ditch attempt, because any sane defense has a snowball's chance in hell (even less than this insane Scooby Doo-style 'revelation') and (apparently) the prosecutor didn't agree to any plea bargain (because let's face it, anything less than the 20 years this guy is looking at would be an awesome deal for him). Is there really anyone who seriously thinks this guy is not going to convicted?
You honestly think he didn't do it? Look, I don't know the guy, and all I have to go on is what I read online, but I would have believed Hans Reiser over this guy.
It mentions how an undercover agent was able to correlate the the times DPR was logged in to times that Ross Ulbricht was on his laptop in public places immediately prior to his arrest.
Its certainly not 100% conclusive or anything but is it corroborating evidence that the prosecution is using to suggest he is guilty. Personally, I'm waiting to make up my mind on the matter of his innocence until the trial brings forward more evidence.
That is precisely the point of the court. To determine the truth so that the rest of us can know. In another more recent case (Oscar Pistorius) I was completely horrified that practically everyone had concluded that he was guilty before the court had come to a conclusion. I've come to realise that the majority of the human race wants answers so desperately, that they will accept the wrong ones and defend them: be it science or a court case.
"That is precisely the point of the court. To determine the truth so that the rest of us can know."
Uh, no, of course courts don't determine 'the truth', they decide what should be taken as the truth in the context of a legal question, and how the law applies to that. There is a widespread misconception about 'assumption of innocence', and it's that it applied any further than 'the judge should let himself be convinced that a defendant is guilty, not that that defendant is not guilty'. The rest of the public has nothing to do with that. For example, let's say you and I are in an elevator with nobody around and no cameras. Then I punch you in the face. Do we need a judge to tell us whether or not I punched you? Of course not, we both know what happened, and that is the truth. If you stumble out of the elevator with a bloody face and the impression of 4 knuckles on your cheek bone, should everybody who sees you stumble out then say I didn't do it until some judge rules I didn't? Of course not, it's blindingly obvious I did it, nothing to do with 'presumption of innocence', and nothing to do with 'wanting answers so desperately'.
Absolutely; this isn't really a defence in so much as it is attempting to nullify the prosecution evidence. They can get away with the argument it's introducing reasonable doubt that Ulbricht is the only candidate for being DPR, whilst the ulterior motive is really to establish the DHS agent as an unreliable witness.
So there is an investigation, and during the course of the investigation, there are several theories about what went down and who is who, and in the end it turns out that most of them were incorrect and only one is correct? What a shocking revelation! Who would have thought that!
I'm glad to see someone else thinking along those same lines. Unlikely, but the possibilities in this case are hilariously endless.
The odd thing is that it does raise some suspicions with Mt. Gox, the bitcoin theft, Silk Road, etc. As moyix points out below[1], Karpeles apparently registered silkroadmarket.org.
It's signed by "-Silk Road staff" at the bottom. If this site was really owned by Karpeles, then he definitely had something to do with Silk Road, whether or not he was DPR.
Browsing through other dates it was cached reveals that it was regularly updated with details about the SR registration being closed and server outages.
As far as I can tell, the downtime message [1] originated on silkroadmarket.org [2-6]. It doesn't look like Karpeles could have reposted it from somewhere else--he has to have been involved in the Silk Road's operations if he was behind the site.
It's also worth noting that DPR linked to silkroadmarket.org in his signature as the official way to get to site [7].
It's possible that Karpeles knew that a mainstream dark market that used bitcoin would increase the adoption of bitcoin. He may have tried to make that happen by registering the domain and promoting it.
true. this is like indicting twitter because someone posted criminal sites downtime notes.
remember that SR was probably 90% of the transactions, so they had lots of interest in "working" with it. maybe a more apt analogy would be PayPal posting notices about ebay having troubles (before one acquired the other) since it was the source of all transactions
> true. this is like indicting twitter because someone posted criminal sites downtime notes.
Defense attorneys specialize in shedding just enough doubt over the defendant's involvement that the jury won't reach a conviction. It doesn't always work (hence why trials sometimes seem so unpredictable to those of us watching from the outside), but when the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt," any substantial doubt may be enough to convince the jury to acquit.
This trial could go either way. So it's fascinating to watch.
Kalyhost was one of the first (the first?) VPS provider to accept Bitcoins. If Ulbricht didn't want to pay for his server with a credit card, he probably would have ended up being a customer of Kalyhost and MtGox together.
Did he register silkroadmarket after the known existence of silk road? If so it could just be a domain squatting attempt for marketing purposes (e.g. "thinking of using silkroad? come first to mtgox, the best place to convert your $ to Btc".)
silkroadmarket.org was registered on February 28, 2011 [1]. According to a forum post [2], Silk Road was launched around three weeks before March 1, 2011.
And I guess that's the point; if you can create that doubt, even if it's ridiculous, in the minds of the people who are deciding Ulbricht's guilt or innocence then you've won.
The jury selection process is so skewed... hell, the juror creation process (growing up in the United States, watching hundreds or thousands of hours of cop/courtroom shows), that you can't make any reasonable predictions about what will happen.
There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
> The jury selection process is so skewed... hell, the juror creation process (growing up in the United States, watching hundreds or thousands of hours of cop/courtroom shows), that you can't make any reasonable predictions about what will happen.
There's so much truth in this. If you're a US citizen reading this and have never served on a jury, I'd highly recommend not getting out of it. It'll shed a lot of light on the process, and you might be surprised.
> There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
> There could be no doubt, but they'll acquit.
This reminds me of a trial I sat on. During deliberations, a couple of the women discussed how they didn't like the way the defendant would occasionally turn and look at them. They described him as "creepy." Given the circumstances, we were all convinced he was guilty, but we go caught up in a discussion about appearances for a while.
Yet we voted to acquit.
There were a number of reasons why we came to this conclusion, but the executive summary was essentially: Law enforcement mishandled evidence (without gloves!), key witnesses couldn't remember specific details of the defendant's involvement (3 years after the fact...), and 3 of the 4 expert witnesses were called by the defense--that should tell you something. Key pieces of evidence hadn't been admitted in the trial, either, and all we were left with was a couple of boxes of paraphernalia and a stack of photographs. The entire trial was messy.
I remember from the opening arguments thinking "Oh, this will be easy. Open-and-shut case, he'll probably be found guilty, and that's final." My mind completely changed in the first 30 minutes.
Aren't you really just saying that sometimes the juries get results that you wouldn't agree with? If you think something is "real doubt" and they don't, that's not an objective fact.
So far, they seem to be claiming that US law enforcement thought someone else was a viable suspect -- and they've got internal LE memos to back that up.
Wikipedia doesn't cite any examples or references for the claim that it's illegal to blame somebody else. In the US, you have pretty wide latitude to say what you want in court.
The closest example I can think of is Amanda Knox, who was prosecuted for slander for suggesting that the police investigators didn't do their job properly as part of her defense. That happened in Italy, however.
> Edit: Seriously? It's an informative post, why the downvote hate?
This is getting to be a rather annoying issue with HN for the past six months or so. You will often get 2 or 3 downvotes very soon after posting, for no apparent reason, and seldom will anyone actually take the time to make a post explaining their objection to your post and why they downvoted it (and, FYI and FWIW, those of you who downvote posts solely to express disagreement, are dumb assholes and you don't belong here - GTFO).
For what it's worth, if I see grey text now I reflexively give it an upvote regardless of content. The voting system here is so dysfunctional now, that all text should at least be black.
Edit: And, yes, 'ironic' downvotes for talking about the downvoting brigade in the first place, are the best kind of downvotes. They do not stop me from posting about it - I take downvotes on HN as an indicator that I'm on the right track, so vote away.
>This is getting to be a rather annoying issue with HN for the past six months or so.
Yeah, I agree, but I think it's been more like a year now. The immediate downvotes are so striking in their regularity that I suspected they may be automated (now I think it's unlikely).
So to the GP: I wouldn't worry about quick downvotes. Unless your post is obviously trolling or a low-content Reddit-like comment (which yours was not), it's highly likely it will be upvoted back into the black (and indeed, yours is in the black now).
This headline seems unbelievable, but if all the evidence in the article it is actually real, it does cast some reasonable doubt.
An alternative which hasn't been discussed yet is that maybe Karpeles was the Dread Pirate Roberts and then Ulbricht was. It has long been theorized that, like the original name from The Princess Bride, the title "Dread Pirate Roberts" was passed from person to person. DerYeghiayan seems to have had some reason to believe that Karpeles was DPR, while the prosecution seems to have reason to believe that Ulbricht is DPR. Why not both?
are immunity deals really that stupidly phrased? I'd guess the standard boilerplate would protect against that? Then again I remember this exact scenario in an episode of The Practice ... so maybe not :)
That's the same information. That the DHS agent believed they had probable cause is not a stupendously high bar. They also apparently never actually arrested Karpeles in relation to Silk Road (so perhaps said agent backed off that belief...).
He also claims they passed it back to him immediately before the bust. Only slightly more effective than the "I was holding it for a friend" legal defense.
Only if you're prosecuting. If you're defending yourself, all you have to do is make it sound believable given the circumstances. A jury can find you not guilty just because they don't like the law. To defend yourself in a U.S. court you technically wouldn't need any evidence to substantiate any of your claims just so long as the jury buys it.
"A jury can find you not guilty just because they don't like the law."
This is not really the case. It would be tough to find all jurors didn't LIKE the law. The people sitting on the jury were asked questions during the selection process to make sure they are neutral. The question is, do they understand the law and the issues at hand.
The prosecuting team bears the burden of proof (obviously). The prosecutors are required to prove their version of the actual events. This means that the proposition that is being presented before the judge / jury by the prosecution must be proven to the extent that there could be no reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. The defense needs to convince the criminal jury so they are unable to find beyond a reasonable doubt, that this guy is guilty.
The defense seems to be casting doubt for the jury to consider from the get-go. Well played.
Do you honestly think that 12 random people are going to understand the law better than say a 3 judge panel?
There are a few benefits as for example Juries are harder to bribe and sequestered juries are harder to tamper with. But, the core issue and why they were considered so important is there a check on unjust laws or even just laws unjustly applied.
We have to assume not until/unless a lawyer shows up and says otherwise.
Rumors to the contrary, we do have a right to free speech, so you can say anything you want in a courtroom without being arrested, unless it causes immeidate danger (e.g. yelling "FIRE!").
When jury selection happens, I have heard that you can be rejected from being on the jury if you say (essentially) that you don't agree with the law. Not agreeing with the law is precisely what leads to jury nullification.
Good point. And I'm sure if the court is in session, talking out of turn about anything (including jury nullification) would get you held in contempt of court.
So, saying you'll be arrested for talking about jury nullification in court doesn't really give an accurate picture. Though it is probably technically true.
Are you claiming that jury members select a verdict at random? That there is no thought process happening in each of the individuals on the jury? Regardless of whether the juror's beliefs correspond to the actual reality of the case, that individual will still require some reason (evidence) for believing a particular thing. If you are trying to convince a juror of something, you will need to interact with that individual on such a level that you provide them with sufficient evidence for them to believe the claim you want them to believe.
This is separate from the rule of law in the US where a prosecution must prove its allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. It is true that a defense is not required to make any claims or present any evidence. However, depending on the jurors selected, in order to instill or preserve a reasonable doubt, some claims may need to be made. In order for a juror to believe a claim, that individual juror will need to find or receive some evidence sufficient for them to believe the claim.
Out of the millions of trials that have happened I would not be surprised if at least one jury that was undecided simply went with a coin flip or other random means.
Historically this may even have been a unusual, but not that uncommon practice. aka trusting in 'the gods' or some such.
Burden of proof in U.S. criminal cases often seems to be more of a suggestion than an actual mandate. With the way the legal system is structured, it's effectively guilty until proven innocent.
I may have misunderstood the defense, but how does that make any sense as a defense? You don't stop being guilty of running an illegal drug marketplace just because you pass the running of the illegal drug marketplace on to someone else.
He sure did it awful quickly, the site also credited "- Silk Road Staff" at the bottom of the message. Then there's downtime messages from time to time, it seems rather unlikely that MK is DPR but there very well might be something behind this. The domain wasn't registered to John Smith, it was registered in the name of a company that Mark Karpeles owns and pointing to Mark Karpeles name servers.
But their argument is that Ulbricht founded Silk Road of his own accord, then handed it to the "real DPR" months later. (Only to have it handed back to him just in time to be arrested!)
That's really bad reasoning on the part of the investigators. Registering a .org domain name similar to the name of your secret underground site is a stupid and completely pointless thing to do.
Both Ulbricht and Karpales are known for doing stupid and pointless things, though (hiring fake hitmen with hilarious emails, and writing ssh servers in php, respectively).
I wonder if this play will hold up? When they busted Ulbricht at a public library, didn't they catch him in the act of talking to agent DerYeghiayan via Pidgin who told Ross to check out a support ticket? I thought they had screenshots of the chat as well as Ulbricht being logged into the site itself. They have conclusively linked Ulbricht to the site, however, they have failed to conclusively prove that he is the mastermind of the site itself and that there weren't others involved.
So my limited understanding here and what this case is actually about is that it is not so much trying to prove that Ulbricht had anything to do with the site (because the association was proven), but rather who actually was the mastermind behind the site (and pocketing large sums of cash from transactions). Seems association with such a site would carry a lesser charge than being the one who was profiting off of the marketplace and behind its original conception (this is my limited understanding and it could be wrong).
This story is absolutely insane, it will be interesting to see where this case heads. From what I gather, the bust in the library, screenshots of the chat and admin panel of the site and supposedly a few scrunched up pieces of paper found in the bin of Ulbrichts home are all they have (that we know about). There is nothing that actually proves or disproves that either Ulbricht or Karpeles, are the owners of Silk Road.
Now we just need the defence to come out and claim that Karpeles is actually Satoshi Nakamoto and then we've got ourselves a super interesting case. There is undoubtedly a movie script in here somewhere once the case is finished.
Keep in mind they also claim he was conspiring to murder, but haven't bothered to charge him with that.
The likely explanation here is that they exaggerate everything to some insane degree for exciting press conferences (and to subtly poison potential jurors).
It's an interesting tactic, but will likely fall upon deaf ears. They arrested him at the library while he was logged into the site as an admin. That, combined with the fact that he possessed a Bitcoin wallet with ~144,000 BTC (worth ~$28.5 million at the time) in it, will likely carry more weight than any argument that other people were possibly running it. They also admitted on day 1 of the trial that he created SR - they are just saying that he turned it over to someone else and wasn't running it. All the government has to prove now is that he profited from it, which seems like a very low hurdle given the amount of BTC he had.
Based upon all of this, I'd say he has a 99.9% chance of conviction, and will receive a sentence that will amount to life in prison. This judge will make an example out of him.
There seems to be a tendency on HN to pre-judge the outcome of trials and speak beyond the level of one's legal expertise.
Your first words are very prejudicial - "an interesting tactic". It's not a 'tactic', it's part of his defence. It might even be true. And your second paragraph is frankly fairly ridiculous - no trained lawyer talks about "a 99.9% chance of conviction".
It is a defense tactic. They are trying to create reasonable doubt by suggesting that someone else may have been behind it - that's a tactic.
As for the 99.9% comment, I was obviously trying to convey my opinion - based on the publicly available and very damning facts - that he has no meaningful chance of acquittal on the most serious counts. It wasn't meant to be a scientifically accurate number (as anyone but perhaps the Sheldon Coopers of the world surely understood). That said, the statistics are pretty close to that: once indicted at the federal level, every defendant on average has a 97% chance of being convicted [1]. Since this case is more airtight and more resources have been expended on it than most, my exaggerated number is not off by more than a few tenths of a percent. It's scary that we live in a country with a conviction rate this high, but it is an undeniable reality.
"They" the defense, didn't suggest anything, they got the prosecution's witness to admit that the DPR identity was believed by the investigator to have changed hands.
> It is a defense tactic. They are trying to create reasonable doubt by suggesting that someone else may have been behind it - that's a tactic.
Actually suggesting someone else is behind it would appear to be the defense's strategy. The cross-examination of the DHS witness would be a defense tactic.
There is a substantive difference between strategy and tactics that goes beyond semantics.
I think we're splitting hairs here. In any event, regardless of any tactics, strategies, or arguments they use, he is sure to be found guilty on most, if not all, of the charges.
Granted, the conviction rate of the Justice Department is as high as 97%[1], so it's certainly likely. But if you have had any experience with litigation whatsoever you would know that there's nothing at all that's certain in a high profile trial such as this one.
Assuming the jury is allowed to hear most of the relevant facts that have been released to the public, he will be found guilty of (at least) the narcotics conspiracy charges. Could there be a mistrial? Sure - those happen for any number of reasons. But he would still be found guilty at a retrial. The facts won't change. While I am no fan of the FBI (or the harsh prosecution and sentencing of non-violent offenders in general), in this case they appear to have done their job quite well and are going to get their pound of flesh. They methodically built a slam-dunk case - largely with the help of Ross Ulbricht himself.
Would you back up your 99.9% confidence level with a bet? For example, I will send you $1 if he is convicted, and you will send me $1,000 if he is acquitted?
If not, how much would you put at risk for the chance to win $1 if he is convicted?
I realize that there are several ardent supporters of this guy here, so I won't respond to any more of these taunting comments. I actually don't believe he should be facing the kind of time that he is for this, but I think he has no chance of acquittal. Whatever your opinion of SR, Ross Ulbricht was sloppy and stupid, and that's why he is sitting in a jail cell right now and will likely remain so for the rest of his life.
As for betting with you over the internet, that is a violation of the Interstate Wire Act, and I have no intention of being cellmates with Ross Ulbricht. But, for example, if this bet were offered in a legal sportsbook in Nevada, I would easily put up $10K to win $100 (for a 99% certainty - trying to win $1 is a bit of a fruitless exercise). I believe that I would have a positive edge on that bet.
> and will receive a sentence that will amount to life in prison
Does this contain an attempt to have someone killed? Or is it just running an online marketplace? If it's the latter I can't see how the sentence could be so harsh. Tax evasion tops.
In the US, conspiracy to distribute narcotics can carry up to life in prison. The sentence is based on the amount and type of drugs involved in the conspiracy - there is actually a table [1] that determines the offense level (which is then used with another table to determine the sentence [2]). In this case, because of the sheer volume of drugs sold via SR, if found guilty on the drug charges alone (he also faces several others) he would be guaranteed a multi-decade sentence.
Specifically, he's looking at a base offense level of 38, plus 2 points for distribution "through mass-marketing by means of an interactive computer service," for an offense level of 40. If he has no criminal history at all, that puts him in the 292-365 months (~25-30 years) in prison range on the drug charges alone. If he also gets the 2 point enhancement for making "a credible threat to use violence, or directed the use of violence" as has been alleged, then he would automatically be looking at 30 years to life since his offense level would be 42.
Wow. It's crazy to see the difference between jurisdictions in this case.
I took the time to look up the laws[1] for my country and found (disclaimer I'm no lawyer so I might be wrong) a maximum sentence of 5 years for anything related to drugs (including possession and Trafficking)
Were the US sentences always that high or are they a result of the "War on Drugs"?
Even in the 70s when Nixon declared "War on Drugs" he was repealing previous mandatory sentences introduced in the 50s. It was in the 80s that the huge mandatory sentences for "Crack" cocaine and lesser ones for other "hard drugs" were re-introduced. Some states also had mandatory sentences throughout this time.
Call me a conspiracy theorist all you want but you can't just go there and build a system that is a potential threat to the USD world reserve currency and to the power of the FED.
Silk Road doesn't pose a potential existential threat to the USD, and neither does Bitcoin. This vastly underestimates the strength of the existing global economic structure, and overestimates the impact of what is, essentially, a slightly higher-tech way to launder money and buy drugs on the internet.
I understand some Bitcoin fanatics of the cryptolibertarian and anarchist persuasion would like to believe that anything not a blockchain is a house of cards destined to tumble, but everything Ulbricht is charged with would still be a crime if the Silk Road ran entirely on dollars and cents, so to me, invoking conspiracy doesn't really pass the smell test.
If the government weas really that afraid of dark markets, or bitcoin, one would expect it to take heavier action against sites like Coinbase, or other open businesses which accept it, since they have far greater potential of spreading Bitcoin to the masses than inherently illegal sites like Silk Road, which would make most people uncomfortable even to know about. Yet, merely holding Bitcoins, or transacting in BTC, is not a crime.
I said "porentialy". As an example: China, Russia, other countries like Iran could start demanding bitcoins for their oil and gas in the future. There is limited number of bitcoins. Limited by an algorithm. The numer of usds is potentially unlimited. I could come up with other examples that could be unrealistic today but possible in 5 or 10 years. So kill the cryptocurrencies while it is still easy. I dont own and have never owned any cryptocurrencies.
I can't even conceive that China, Russia, etc. would one day demand payment for anything exclusively in bitcoins unless they're well aware that the countries they're selling to have enough bitcoins and are willing to deal in that.
Also, there's nothing stopping the US government from simply using BTC itself, or whatever cryptocurrency it sees fit, as it might any foreign currency.
I've never seen any sign that the Fed or the USG actually see cryptocurrencies as a threat.
Again: cryptocurrencies have built in anti-inflation mechanism: you can have just these many bitcoins. You can't inflate out your debt using printing press. Very good feature for a creditor nation, like China. Very bad for debtor nation like the US. Ie The USD monetary base at least doubled since 2008. To deal with the debt. Impossible to do with bitcoins. Or gold for that matter.
He also allegedly hired a hitman to take out 6 people. The hits weren't executed because the hitman was undercover but if this is true then I have no sympathy for him.
I have lots of sympathy for a man who was accused of something, smeared in the eyes of the public (and potential jurors), but wasn't even charged with that crime!
That's true, but that's much more the consequence of the legal status of most drugs and the "drug war" policies. I would argue that online marketplaces are solving this problem, not making it worse.
I didn't. Sure, offline drug dealers often cause violent crime, but online don't (apart from the accusation that DPR wanted to kill someone, but I stand firmly on the "innocent until proven guilty" side). The only people who buy drugs are the ones who want them, so you can't say they are victims.
It depends on the drug, literally. As dependency for some types leads to addiction which can cause problems, some of those addicted to some particular drug can be said to be victims. Many other drug types are not that harmful and users would be considered consumers. And of course some legal drugs are also harmful (nicotine, alcohol etc)....
What about Facebook or television? Or McDonalds? Once you feel that you have to moralize and keep people from doing things that you think are bad for them, where do you stop?
> Once you feel that you have to moralize and keep people from doing things that you think are bad for them, where do you stop?
Never. Why would one stop? It is a good thing to stop people from doing bad things.
It's not a moralization that drugs are bad for you. It's an objective medical fact of injuries to the body, psyche, collateral damage to bystanders etc.
Not to forget, acting morally is also a good thing. It seems to be a popular idea that acting morally should be avoided, and I disagree.
> Never. Why would one stop? It is a good thing to stop people from doing bad things.
> It's not a moralization that drugs are bad for you. It's an objective medical fact of injuries to the body, psyche, collateral damage to bystanders etc.
Overeating, sitting at a desk all day, consuming alcohol, smoking, tanning, etc. all can negatively impact an individual's health. Should those activities, and many more, also be banned?
Acting morally is an important thing, yes, but the problem is that there is no one definition of morality. How should we all behave? By your standards? By mine? The superset of everyone's personal concept of morality would allow and prohibit pretty much everything all at once.
One reasonable(?) baseline for morality could be the golden rule: don't do things that will hurt others or prevent others from freely living their life — i.e. don't murder, injure or enslave others, steal, etc. Or... don't be a dick.
The world is not black and white; it's black and grey.
>"It is a good thing to stop people from doing bad things."
Vague statement.
You're talking about stopping people from doing what you (or others, all besides the person in question) have decided is a "bad" thing.
You fail to realize that you are working off different definitions of "good" and "bad". Those are value judgements, and by definition almost always subjective.
E.g. The OP you are responding to probably has a definition of "good" and "bad" that takes into account victimless crimes, thus precluding all the "bad" from actually being "bad" if it is self-inflicted. Whereas, it seems you have a definition of "bad" that blanketly covers anything detrimental to an individual, self-inflicted or otherwise.
It's no wonder that the one group criticizes the other for slippery slopes and "where will you stop". Because you've drawn arbitrary lines, leading right back to the idea of subjective value judgements regarding "bad".
Personally, I hate arbitrary lines and definitions. Irreducible first-principles should be used to derive more complex ideas and constructs; and that is imperative if we are ever to have a truly fair and free society.
Online drug dealers may not cause violent crime directly but you have no idea what their supply chain looks like. Unless they are manufacturing the drugs themselves, which is unlikely for most big-money drugs, there is likely blood in their supply chain.
You could potentially argue that the drugs side is victimless. But assuming that the false ID stuff is true, then that's much less likely to be - the I would suspect that a fair percentage of people buying false IDs online are doing it to help with pretty nasty activities.
I hate to be pedantic, but, bitcoin wallets don't contain dollars. You can express bitcoin value in dollars, but that's a number that can change on a daily basis. It's like saying "he had a stock portfolio with $28 million in it"
Here's my perspective as a chronic pedant: my inherent* value system puts a high value on completeness of knowledge/understanding and clarity. But as a socially-aware human, I recognize people's dislike of pedantic behavior.
Life is a fairly constant battle between satisfying my brain's need to provide clarity and not annoying people with often excessive or unwanted detail.
Sometimes the itch to correct is strong enough that it's very difficult to ignore, even though I know it probably won't be well-received.
* I say inherent because while I consciously value knowledge/clarity, I'd presently like to move past such strong obsession but I'm working against a couple decades of all the small events that have shaped my brain.
If this is true then nearly all of bitcoin's growth over the last 3 years can be directly attributable to Mark Karpeles, either in the form of outright price manipulation, or the running of illegal goods marketplaces.
"Centrally controlled" is not the same thing as one guy who has a very large stake.
Bitcoin, by definition, is not "centrally controlled." It doesn't matter how many coins any entity controls, there's nothing that it could do to actually break the system or remove the inherent value of bitcoin. The fact that there are thousands and thousands of miners and nodes around the world protecting the ledger (the blockchain) is what makes bitcoin so groundbreaking.
If this theory wouldn't make a an awesome yarn for a Sorkin/Fincher movie I don't know what would. Karpeles to be played by Paul Giamatti and Ulbricht by Robert Pattinson.
One thing I haven't see in the legal analysis: If Ulbricht is guilty of the things that the defense has stipulated (building and running SilkRoad for some period of time), doesn't that mean he's admitted to most of the relevant charges?
I'm not sure what the "I'm not the kingpin" defense actually buys.
It depends on the specific acts he's being charged with, if he can create reasonable doubts to that then he's not guilty. 'Operating SilkRoad' isn't a crime, trafficking drugs is.
Depending on one's interpretation of common carrier, it's the same as the difference between "delivering email from user a to user b" and "conspiring with terrorists"
The subtle implication here is "throw some shit at the wall and see what sticks" was Der-Yeghiayan's investigative method of choice. Always good to discredit the prosecution's lead witnesses if you can.
I don't think there was anything fundamentally unethical about Silk Road (other than the owner very likely attempting to have several people murdered, of course), but the defense is clearly grasping at straws here.
Trial adjourned. There's a lot going on. DHS agent was pursuing Karpeles as late as August 2013. Ulbricht was arrested Oct 2013. Like I wrote in my last article, he went after Ulbricht based on a tip off from an IRS agent in September 2013. Whiplash! Amazing moment later today: in affadavit, DHS agent referred to @a_greenberg's interview of DPR and said it sounded like Mark Karpeles. Recall, this is the same guy who was on a 6 person team to arrest Ulbricht. In Aug '13 he said he had probable cause to suspect Karpeles.
[More tweets] DHS agent acknowledged under cross that he was preparing an affadavit for a warrant to search Karpeles's email. DHS agent's OWN THEORY around early to mid 2013 was that Mt. Gox and Silk Road worked in tandem. Investigation found that Mutum Sigilum, a Karpeles holding, had registered silkroadmarket.org
if you followed the story closely there is essentially no reason to believe the owner ever attempted to have anyone killed. The substantial evidence points directly to him bluffing in order to scare someone. I wrote a short summary on reddit a while back that you can read here https://www.reddit.com/r/silkroadnews/comments/1nndtk/ulbric...
Assault: "Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. No intent to cause physical injury needs to exist, and no physical injury needs to result. So defined in tort law and the criminal statutes of some states."
It's true. In many states, you are guilty of assault if you threaten someone sufficiently, even if you had no intention of carrying out the threat. It's true for a number of violent crimes.
Not sure why the GP got downvoted for stating facts, though I don't know the details of the murder-for-hire plot, so perhaps it somehow doesn't pertain in that particular case.
Regardless, it's a legit thing. So be careful about threatening people with bodily harm.
I take issue with this characterization. Unless there is a much, much more realistic piece of evidence yet to emerge, I regard this allegation as very unlikely.
And if it's not true, and all DPR did was help people to circumvent laws prohibiting transactions of prohibited substances, then he's a libertarian hero.
Whatever one thinks about Silk Road, darknets or drug policy in general (I have issues with all of them) I would hope that Ulbricht could get a better defense than one that seems as farcical as this. I don't know what it would be.
Maybe they're hoping people will think it's too crazy not to be true? The only possible way it isn't a complete joke is if it's true.
I thought the same thing until I read the entirety of the article. As others have pointed out, the DHS investigator Jared DerYeghiayan himself was convinced Mark Karpeles was Roberts as late as 2 months prior to Ulbricht's arrest (and admitted as much under cross-examination). It seems insane, almost far-fetched even, until you consider that DerYeghiayan even went as far as to draft a search warrant for Karpeles' email. If it wasn't at least plausible, any defense attorney who went down this road would be a fool.
Having sat on a jury before, I can guarantee you that this will have at least some impact on the decision. Even if you're convinced the defendant is guilty, the job of the jury is to act as finders of fact, and if sufficient doubt is raised to that end an acquittal is likely. The trial I sat on had a similar event unfold where the law enforcement involved completely screwed up and made some admissions during cross-examination that severely harmed reaching a guilty verdict.
Law enforcement revealing true exculpatory information during cross-examination isn't screwing up -- like all witnesses, their duty is to tell the truth. (Its true that some of them may view their job as getting a conviction, and may view providing the truth as screwing up when it is contrary to that, but its a very bad idea to reinforce that meme.)
As krrrh observed, I wasn't suggesting that they screwed up by mentioning anything. I apologize for not making that obvious. I have a very deep respect for law enforcement, and I'd like to believe that on the whole they're good people. Reports that shed negative light on LEOs are common IMO like other forms of negative news: It's more interesting or captivates more viewers.
That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
On the trial I sat on, one of the most damning admissions also came from a DHS employee who admitted they handled evidence without gloves. The admission in that case wasn't the screw up--violating the number one rule of handling evidence was!
> That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up. (Though it is relevant to whether the screw-up is compounded by, or transformed into, an abuse of government power. Because that is what happens when it is material to the case and concealed, actively or passively.)
> Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up.
I'm having a difficult time following your line of reasoning. I think it's completely relevant.
If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial. In nearly all circumstances, those sorts of screw-ups are completely accidental (stress, overworked, etc.), and are extremely important to the jury's decision-making process.
You know, I just read back through my original comment, and it seems to me that you're conflating two separate points I made. So, perhaps I should reiterate and clarify in case my original comment was misleading:
1) DerYeghiayan's admission was not a screw-up. You were confusing this with an example I used for purposes of illustration in my second paragraph. The agent is going to tell the truth, obviously, but he is not going to volunteer that information without first being asked while under oath (it's not his obligation to do so). Again, not a screw-up. He just happened to share a detail that may possibly affect the jury's decision.
This is also unrelated to point #2.
2) Where I mentioned screw-up was with regards to a trial I sat on, which I offered up tangentially as an example of mistakes law enforcement can make that undoubtedly change the direction of the trial toward an acquittal. During that specific trial, DHS border patrol agents admitted they handled the evidence without gloves--that was a complete and total screw-up. In fact, it was so much so, that I distinctly remember a comment made during cross-examination of the special agent assigned by the sheriff's office. When he caught wind of what the DHS agents did, his first reaction was "Crap! We screwed up."
So yes, mistakes can be made, and yes they're completely relevant to the decision-making process of a jury.
Another example comes from the same jury pool I was assigned to, but on a trial I wasn't part of. The trial lasted, as I understand from other jurors, for the whole of about 3-4 hours. During cross-examination, one of the LEOs involved inadvertently admitted details related to another case or circumstance involving the defendant (the exact details I can't remember), and resulted in the defense attorney immediately seeking council with the judge, and the judge declaring a mistrial due to the nature of the material the officer shared while under oath.
So, no, I don't agree. It's completely relevant, especially when mistakes are admitted or committed under cross-examination. (The latter being a circumstance of biasing the jury while under cross-examination.)
Now, it's likely I'm completely missing your point, in which case I'd greatly appreciate it if you could elaborate, because I have a strong suspicion that our disagreement may be based on us thinking about or arguing two entirely unrelated points. Indeed, we might be more in agreement than not, but I'm sincerely having trouble following why you're caught up with this notion that mistakes of this category are irrelevant to a jury trial.
I think that it may have been just a misphrasing in your post that I responded to, but:
> If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial.
I didn't say "whether an LEO screws up is irrelevant to the trial".
I said "whether it [the mishandling of evidence] is admitted under cross examination is irrelevant to whether it [again, the mishandling of evidence] is a screw up."
In response to your statement: "When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up."
But I don't think that statement is, from your subsequent post, what you actually meant there (though I'm not clear what else that sentence could mean.)
The parent comment was phrased somewhat ambiguously, but I think he meant that the law enforcement admitted to screwing up, not that they screwed up by admitting.
This argument can be applied to any transaction engaged in by people who are drunk or high or otherwise in a state of modified consciousness. Is it unethical to sell Cheetos because the buyer might be a stoner who is high and not in a state to give consent to the transaction?
Well they consented to get intoxicated so they should deal with the consequences. If what you say were true, intoxicated people couldn't even buy a bottle of water because that requires entering into a contract which you claim they cannot.
The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point. If you think making that point, with its immense opportunity cost, is the most important remaining thing you can do, fine, but you can't assume everyone is at that place in their lives.
I don't think someone should be expected to sacrifice everything on principle in order to be justified in refusing to comply with an unjust law.
> "The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point."
More than that, it also doesn't hold water if you consider the possibility that sacrificing yourself isn't the best way to further your political goals.
Even if your cause is more important than everything else in your life combined, you should not allow yourself to be neutralized (jailed, or made to commit suicide) if it does not further your goal to a greater extent than anything else you could do. "Live to fight another day" is in full effect in nearly all situations.
A friend of mine once commented that high treason is one of the only crimes on the books where the penalty for attempting it is infinitely higher than for succeeding, mainly because if you do succeed, you are then in charge of the country.
It's almost a requirement in a criminal defense case to have an alternative culprit, just the same way that it's almost required to have a motive and a weapon in a homicide case. The defense needs to raise a reasonable doubt that Ulbriicht wasn't the criminal and that's best done by presenting an alternative culprit.
There are no "homicide cases" in court. That might be term used by some cops to indicate a case involving a body, but even then it is ambiguous as cops often don't know whether the body was "killed" or whether they killed themselves. Homicide just means a killing by someone else (suicide is not homicide). State execution is also considered homicide even though there is no chargeable crime.
Actual crimes from homicide range from the various types of murder, manslaughter, felony-murder, Misdemeanor-manslaughter, negligence causing death, vehicular manslaughter ... and others I cannot remember off the top of my head.
I agree that weapons are a good thing to have but are far from necessary, especially when there aren't any (murder through neglect). Motives are equally unnecessary. Google "one-punch murder". You don't need a motive to be guilty, unless by motive you mean "mens rea", a very different concept.
"Voluntary manslaughter" is a killing that would otherwise be murder, but because of a recognized mitigating factor is punished as something less. It has all the elements of murder (killing with aforethought) but we choose not to punish it as such. For instance: The killing was provoked.
"Involuntary manslaughter" is a totally different thing in that there is no malice aforethought. Usually these are cased of responsible people failing to act, such as a life guard watching someone drown who they should save.
I would expect that a lifeguard watching someone drown would qualify as depraved indifference and would be tried as second-degree murder (in most US jurisdictions).
Intent (or "mens rea"), not motive. Some killers don't have a motive; see the Louisiana murderer who confessed to killing a child who came to his door to sell candy -- he confessed, saying only that he "had a bad day." Motives are used to explain why the accused might have done something, but aren't necessary for the legal definition of a crime.
In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life" (e.g, "depraved heart" manslaughter). The classic legal example is someone who sits at the top of a skyscraper idly tossing bricks off the side; they might not intend to kill someone, but their callous and wanton disregard for human life means that in most jurisdictions they're going down for murder.
Murder always requires mens rea. Crimes that do not require mens rea are called "strict liability crimes" but murder is definitely never one of those.
>In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life"
In such a case, the extreme indifference IS the mens rea. The prosecution must prove the existence of that extreme indifference. Murder without mens rea would mean that the prosecution wouldn't need to even discuss indifference.
All this talk about "reasonable doubt" reminded me of "12 Angry Men" (1), a 1957 movie that follows a jury in its deliberation of whether a man committed murder or not. The whole movie takes place in a single room, with the 12 same actors, yet it manages to be captivating throughout. Really a great piece of cinema.
The only chance Ulbricht seems to have at this stage, admittedly from where I am sitting, seems to be one where his team employs "defence through obscurity". If they can bog the trial down in technical details, question the witness credibility, and point fingers toward others then it will distract from harder evidence to counter.
It's a fairly common trial strategy, and sometimes it works.
Do they have the code for both? In that case, and if they're written by the same person, this can be very easy to determine, e.g. due to code reuse across projects.
While really valid, you also have to take into account what kind of hosting services are provided on Tor. Of course, one could host the solution themselves.
It was self-hosted. The only real hosting service ever on the darknet was Freedom Hosting, and its operator got busted (for having customers who hosted CP.)
The "Dread Pirate Roberts" moniker is from a (wonderful) movie called "The Princess Bride". In it, the hero assumes the mantle of the "Dread Pirate Roberts", and is at least the fourth successor to the title. It's an interesting factor in this case, because the choice of name hints that the "Dread Pirate Roberts" handle was chosen so it could be passed from person to person.
Not one but two (nearly identical) references to "The Princess Bride" have been flagkilled. I understand not wanting to devolve into reddit, but is HN really so humorless? This is life imitating art, people. In this context, such references are 100% on-point.
He wasn't the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.
What the heck are you talking about? The defense is based on law enforcement's own investigations pointing at a different culprit. How is that in any way related to a defense based on confusing the jury with a non sequitur?
