Basically, the evidence was massively damning, so their only serious hope of winning was by challenging the curiously nonspecific way the FBI found the Silk Road server; but they gave up their ability to do so for some dubious benefits.
>In any event, even if the FBI had somehow “hacked” into the SR Server in order to identify its IP address, such an investigative measure would not have run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. 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. See United States v. Vilar, 729 F.3d 62, 86 (2d Cir. 2013) (Fourth Amendment warrant requirement does not apply extraterritorially); In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, 552 F.3d 157, 167 (2d Cir. 2008) (same). At most, any search of the SR Server needed only to be “reasonable” – that is, justified by “legitimate governmental interests.” Vilar, 729 F.3d at 86. Given that the SR Server was hosting a blatantly criminal website, it would have been reasonable for the FBI to “hack” into it in order to search it, as any such “hack” would simply have constituted a search of foreign property known to contain criminal evidence, for which a warrant was not necessary.
It probably wouldn't have mattered, because the overwhelming majority of the evidence in the trial came from Ulbricht's laptop, which the USG searched both under a warrant and incident to Ulbricht's arrest --- an arrest for which they had some probable cause prior to the SR server search. There's also a doctrine of "inevitable discovery" with implications here as well.
The prevailing wisdom about this case seems correct: what shattered Ulbricht's legal defense was his utterly slipshod OPSEC.
Actually, an IRS agent found Google search results that tied him to Silk Road:
"That search led him to a thread on bitcointalk.org called 'A Heroin Store.' One of the posts there was from a user named 'altoid' who gave instructions on how to access Silk Road.
'You guys have a ton of great ideas. Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?' altoid wrote. 'It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com. I don’t think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff. They basically use bitcoin and tor to broker anonymous transactions.'
Once Alford had the username, the rest was as simple as clicking around. In a separate thread, altoid posted that he was looking for an IT pro. 'If interested, please send your answers to the following questions to rossulbricht at gmail dot com.'
That’s all Alford needed to get a warrant to gain access to that email. By comparing the data found in the email to the data found on Ulbricht’s laptop, the government has created an even more convincing argument that Ross Ulbricht is, in fact, Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts."
It's not legal to spy on citizens. Assuming the NSA (and likely not the FBI) held illegally seized data, it still wouldn't be admissible as evidence in a trial.
This was countered, above, in the states own motion.
Basically, 1.) that's not how they did that, 2.) even if it was, it wasn't illegal, as they did not know at the time of the search that the server belonged to a citizen and 3.) Ulbricbht hasn't even admitted the server was his so how could we have violated his rights if the server didn't belong to him in the first place?
People keep wanting to insist the government did something illegal here, but as far as I can tell, there's no evidence that speaks to that.
It actually requires neither. As many lawyers have pointed out in various threads, the defense team could have claimed the server was Ulbricht's property before trial, and had the motion failed, denied so during trial - so long as he never testified.
I suppose it is slightly weird, but it kinda makes sense from a "lawyered!" perspective.
He was possibly the first person to ever post about Silk Road. A few months later, that same user is recruiting for a "lead developer in a venture backed bitcoin startup company" conveniently avoiding specifics. If you recall, they also seized a package sent to Ulbricht containing nine fake IDs with different names in July 2013 (he was arrested three months later). Cumulatively, that's probably enough to merit suspicion/the issuance of a warrant to search his e-mail.
There is literally nothing unusual about "conveniently avoiding specifics" in a tech recruiting post. It's not even a tiny bit suspicious.
He may or may not have been the first to post about Silk Road on Bitcointalk, or anywhere for that matter, but that seems awfully thin ground for getting a warrant.
I'm surprised HN seems to be in favor of such action.
If someone is the first to post about a particular site specializing in illegal transactions, and it's publicly determinable that they were, before that, soliciting for developers familiar with the kind of infrastructure the site would need, and, that person also is the intended recipient of a package of false identity documents, and...
...things add up and produce enough cause to get a warrant. Given the analysis from opsec people, it's not surprising that there was eventually a warrant and an arrest and a trial; given that he was leaking so much information about who he was and what he was doing, the surprising thing is that the feds didn't catch him even sooner.
> He made the post mentioning Silk Road on Jan 29, 2011.
which was apparently the first mention. So, as far as the agent could tell, this was the first person to mention Silk Road on the open Internet. That's what's reasonable.
(Also, from a pure Bayesian POV, the fact that it nailed DPR on the very first try goes a lot towards demonstrating its relevance. NB: this parenthetical is not a legal argument; otherwise you could justify any search that turns up evidence.)
Along these lines, someone once tried to convince me that governments should be allowed to use evidence no matter how they get it. He basically proposed that police could go into someone's house to search without a warrant, but if they didn't find anything then the police could be prosecuted, which makes them only do it if they have a really strong reason to think they'll find something. It was a surprisingly good argument for something that many people would instinctively flinch away from.
Anyway, my answer was that if the police really had such strong suspicion of someone and they were right, they've got to have enough to get a warrant anyway, which is similar to what you're saying.
Also if they expected to face prosecution were they not to find anything, you might expect them to often 'find' things whether they were there or not...
To you, there might be "literally nothing" suspicious about it, but when that user's previous post on the forum discussed Silk Road, likely for the first time ever, a law enforcement officer, having few leads to go on, might feel inclined to investigate that individual further. Again, there's also the tiny detail about a package with nine fake IDs being sent to Ulbricht in July 2013. DHS agents confronted him about it around that time: "The photos also matched his Texas driving license, which the DHS investigators asked to see. All of this happened around the same time that Dread Pirate Roberts was discussing obtaining fake IDs on Silk Road, the FBI affidavit said. The FBI put the final piece of the puzzle in place by pulling Ulbricht's Texas driving license and comparing it with the license that Ulbricht showed the DHS. The numbers matched. At this point, it must have considered that it had enough evidence." http://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbrichts-silk-road-head-smacki...
You can't just look at the individual bits of evidence in isolation to determine whether there was probable cause, you have to look at it all together.
There's nothing suspicious about the recruitment ost, but it does contain his contact details. There is somethin gsuspicious about the 'have you heard about this great new site' post - a classic come-on - but it lacks identifying information about the author. One post provides the probable cause, the other supplies information about where to pursue further information.
Right, so the whole 'probable cause' is built on one post about Silk Road. As I say, that seems an awfully thin reason to go digging in someone's email.
I couldn't care less one way or the other about Ulbricht or Silk Road. Not my circus, not my monkeys, as they say.
But I do think it's disturbing one moderately suspicious post is enough to have your privacy violated.
I don't disagree, but given the highly illegal nature of the business (whether or not it ought to be legal is a separate, political question; I'd say yes, but as the law stands something like silk Road is clearly not legit), and Ulbricht's post being the social origin of public awareness, how is it not suspicious? If you can't find any earlier sign of its existence, it's reasonable* to suspect the social origin coincides with the operational origin. Remember he also posted (under the same username, altoid) to the Shroomery (a website dedicated to the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms) and set up a wordpress page with the basics of access and an invitation to come and sell drugs through there: http://web.archive.org/web/20110204025853/http://silkroad420...
I would imagine the FBI asked Wordpress for their logged data about that, which could have provided them with additional circumstantial evidence.
* in the legal sense of being arguable via logic, as opposed to an inexplicable decision based on intuition or unthinking application of dogma.
He had deleted the original comment, but someone had replied and copied the text. He subsequently posted an ad for job postings with the same username and his personal email address (I think rossulbricht@gmail.com).
Basically, he was about as sloppy as it gets if you're running a criminal drug enterprise. Also, his confidant, Variety Jones/Cimon, hinted that he had done some research on Ulbricht and found some stuff. He was absurdly cocky about evading law enforcement. Makes you wonder if he has some kind of psychological disorder.
HN has a timed limiter for nested replies that grows in length depending on nested depth, mainly to stop flame wars. You have to wait a few minutes or take the hint that the thread is getting too deep.
Interesting workaround, but that doesn't make what I said untrue does it? It just sounds like they put the MVP in and never completed the functionality.
There is no source on that because it isn't true[1].
Ulbricht was found via the server - all evidence that came as a result of that (including the laptop) would have been dismissed if a 4th amendment appeal was successful.
The only evidence found outside of the server chain was the posts to the Shroomery and Bitcointalk - and as the link in grandparent comment points out, this is not sufficient probable cause for a search warrant (and a search warrant on the Gmail in any case would still not have linked Ulbricht to DPR sufficiently)
[1] right in the second paragraph of article linked in grandparent comment:
> The arrest of Ross Ulbricht got its start when the FBI somehow discovered the real location of the Silk Road server in Iceland.
and
> Every shred of evidence except for two “hey, I found this site” posts derives solely from the server seizure.
Basically USA claimed to be using the CoE Convention on Cybercrime in order to have the server raid performed. But that convention requires that USA's government bodies extend the same legal protections to those in other countries as if they were USA citizens within their own jurisdiction (and the other country has to provide the safeguards of their own law too). That is, if the Fourth protects Ulbricht if he was in USA then the same protections must be applied.
This is very sensible. It means that parties can't go off on hunting expeditions and treat the citizens/subjects of other countries in the [convention's] union worse than they treat their own citizens.
Now the testimony I linked to in that prior post at once claimed that the CoE Convention was being used and claimed they weren't certain. To me that strongly suggests the USA government agent(s) was attempting to deceive whilst under oath, perhaps not strictly lying but certainly not being helpfully informative - perhaps they realised after the fact that they'd failed to abide by the convention and so claimed it was maybe "comity" in order to have a get out clause when the issue of safeguards was raised?
> ">In any event, even if the FBI had somehow “hacked” into the SR Server" //
So, such an unauthorised intrusion may not have run afoul of the Fourth, perhaps, but it would either have broken the domestic law or breached obligations under international conventions depending on if they sort permissions from Sweden first or not. [and possibly neither if they established a protocol that bypassed international agreement].
From where I'm viewing it seems USA don't really care about the application of the rule of law neither in USA nor in other countries when it comes to USA government agents.
I think you may be reading too much into the treaty. It isn't clear to me that it demands countries extend all domestic protections (but I have not read it terribly closely). I see where it says the laws they pass to comply with the treaty should provide protections.
Beyond that, I don't think it obligates the US and Iceland to cooperate solely under that framework, what it does is create a situation where if the US comes to Iceland with a proper warrant, Iceland is obligated to comply with that warrant. If the FBI just wants to send the police in Iceland a tip and Iceland does something based on that tip, well, that's that.
>I don't think it obligates the US and Iceland to cooperate solely under that framework //
Yes, agreed. But the statement by the FBI [cf previous Scribd link] claimed they used the Convention to acquire cooperation.
>"Although the Complaint and search warrants in this case refer to the request as a “Mutual Legal
Assistance Treaty request,” this description is not technically correct, as the United States does
not have an MLAT with Iceland. The request was instead an official request to Iceland issued
pursuant to the 2001 Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime and other relevant law of
Iceland, and as a matter of comity."
That statement is sketchy as anything ("we said it was MLAT but it wasn't"): it absolutely _looks_ like they concocted the rationale allowing the search after the fact and without due process.
I'm not sure if the treaty has anything about bypassing its terms either.
The request was instead an official request to Iceland issued pursuant to the 2001 Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime and other relevant law of Iceland, and as a matter of comity." isn't sketchy. It's 3 reasons Iceland would cooperate with a request from the US.
I really have no idea if the MLAT error would matter or not, but if the lawyer writing the brief is aware of the mistakes in the previous documents, it'd be way sketchier to not mention it.
The initial claim is they used MLAT. But then the FBI claimed they didn't, because they don't have an MLAT treaty in place - doesn't that seem a little, um, unprofessional at least not to even know the legal status of their own request. When they documented the phone call to the officials in Iceland what did they write down, what did they say was the legal basis for the investigation? It sure looks like they didn't have a basis at that point beyond need for the investigation.
It doesn't look like a mistake beyond the "we got caught in a lie" type of mistake.
For avoidance of doubt I don't personally think that this should invalidate the evidence gained. To me the truth is important. However, the officials involved if proven to be acting without legal rationale and without attention to due process and the rule of law should be heavily punished. Indeed if my reading of the CoE Convention is correct then an official apology would be due to Iceland for breaching the terms of the Convention as well.
When they documented the phone call to the officials in Iceland what did they write down, what did they say was the legal basis for the investigation? It sure looks like they didn't have a basis at that point beyond need for the investigation.
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I imagine the call went something like:
US: "We think we've found [blah blah blah]. We'd like you to seize the server."
Iceland: "Eh, OK, sounds good."
Then, if the statements that RMP followed Icelandic law are not a fabrication, they would have continued on until the RMP felt they had sufficient information to get their warrant or whatever.
I don't think the Icelandic government or police would have treated the FBI as an adversary.
You don't think Iceland wants to know why, or ensure that the action is lawful? Ordinarily speaking a democratic state doesn't have blanket powers to do as it pleases - the Icelandic authorities are bound by their own and EU laws, and other treaties.
I'm not suggesting they'd treat a request adversarially, I'm suggesting that they'd need to get evidence to apply to a court for a warrant (or whatever the local procedures are) under local laws or they'd need to ensure the operation met the requirements if the request was under CoE Convention say.
Perhaps I have too high an opinion of law enforcement agencies and the idea[l] of rule of law is just a charade?
Iceland are signatories to the ECHR for example which extends property and privacy rights.
It doesn't make sense to assume that the RMP (police in Iceland) failed to follow Icelandic law. Especially when the memorandum you linked says they followed local law and applied for a warrant (or so).
Subsequently, after obtaining the legal process required under Icelandic law to search the server, and after consulting with U.S. authorities concerning the timing of the search, the RMP covertly imaged the server and shared the results with the FBI on or about July 29, 2013.
It's certainly possible that the memo is full of misrepresentations or that the FBI mislead the RMP, but I don't think it is so likely that it should be assumed to be the case.
Even if the US was given the information in violation of Iceland law, which I'm not convinced of, it wouldn't have any bearing on what happens in a US court. My point stands completely.
And if Iceland gave over the info in error, that's their problem, not the US's.
The law they claimed to use to require Iceland to do the search also requires that USA provide the same protections as if the suspect and search had been made in the USA. USA of course can renege on their agreement to abide by the Convention but under rule of law it should have an effect on the US court.
If Iceland did the USA's bidding and in doing so contravened the USA's Convention agreement then it certainly looks like that should be the USA's problem - in practice USA don't seem to care about that sort of thing. The international community shouldn't allow USA to act unlawfully to parties just because they're not on USA soil.
What I'm saying is that it looks like the USA's request required them to provide certain legal protections that they didn't extend. It seems like they were prepared to flout the rule of law in order to apprehend DPR. The ends are right but I don't think they entirely justify the means.
There was at least one entry in Ulbricht's diary file with an entry like 'leaked real IP again'. If you believe Ulbricht actually wrote the diary file.
Ars Technica has consistently had the best coverage throughout the trial. Every other news source seems to be glossing over small details.
(For example, this Bloomberg article still uses the FBI estimate of $1.2 billion in transactions even though the analysis by the prosecution's witness found $213.8 million after examining Silk Road records.)
FBI's way of estimating "1.2 billion" involved pricing the net turn-over in Bitcoin (over the course of silk roads existence) at it's highest values in order to give the news a sensational effect.
Silkroad is a joke compared for example to some 300% increase in heroin production that Afghanistan saw after America invaded - it's just the later isn't favorable to publicize.
Notice - Even wikipedia blatantly quotes the misinformation published in the document in it's article:
It noted that, "From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013...
The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. These figures are equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions.
But - for the bitcoins to amount to 1.2 billion dollars they would have to be priced at a relatively high 2013 mark at least 100 magnitudes above 2011 prices (from which their estimate begins).
For the record the world-drug market is estimated at around $400 billion, so if silkroad over the course of 2.5 years had a turn over of 213 million, that would place it as accounting for .02% of the drug trade. Not the staggering blackmarket the FBI and US media have made it out to be.
You're really stretching the truth here. 1.2b/10m = $120. That's a reasonable value.
Instead of simply saying that, you say "it's highest values" and "they would have to be priced at July 2013 high on MT. Gox."
Just so we're clear.. July 2013 was in the midst of the Mt Gox scandal, and the price had just recently tanked from $220 in april, down to $66 in early july. In June Mt Gox had suspended withdrawls.
It's a huge stretch of the truth to estimate all values over 2.5 years in real time.
They are retroactively estimating the number of bitcoins that passed through from February 2011 (when bitcoin was worth some $0.10 or something near there) but pricing the net total over 2.5 years as of the 2013 value. (That's already a magnitude of 100, so the difference between 200-130 there is quite little).
You're right I didn't give accurate pricing numbers, I'll double check next time before I specify months and values, but my main point still stands. (Actually prior to Feburary 2013 Bitcoin was under $10 - so again their estimate is several magnitudes off.)
Of course, if he kept his earnings in Bitcoins (which he did), then they would fluctuate with the market price.. to about $120, which was about the market price when he was arrested.
And the truth is, Bitcoin's price was above that amount for most of 2013, and all of 2014, and today it stands above that price. So he could have sold his Bitcoins for even more than $120.
Future potential incoming isn't an estimate of market-price of goods. We are discussing the size of the drug business, not their potential gain as investors in Bitcoin (that would be investment income).
Sure it's not $0.10, it's $0.7 - and yes the price is mostly around $10 - which is my point; that the estimate they given is incredulous unless literally 95% of their transactional volume over 2 years occurred between April 2013 - July 2013.
yes the price is mostly around $10 - which is my point
Ok.. thanks.. that was my point. The FBI estimate might be off by an order of magnitude, but the amount you made up was off by TWO orders of magnitude. At least the FBI estimate had some tie to reality (the value at the time he was arrested).
> They are retroactively estimating the number of bitcoins that passed through from February 2011 (when bitcoin was worth some $0.10 or something near there) but pricing the net total over 2.5 years as of the 2013 value.
Surely the bulk of the activity came later on in Silk Road's life though right? It's not like each day had the same number of transactions.. For all we know, the FBI looked at all of the transactions into and out of SR and did a perfectly weighted average pricing query.
Yes it probably did, that's why $213 million by the prosecution sounds plausible, - but considering bitcoin did not break $100 till April 2013 and their estimate spans 2.5 years through July it 1.2 billion sounds highly implausible.
Keep in mind that isn't necessarily how news works. If the FBI estimated $1.2 billion, that is a news-worthy fact in of itself. If an expert witness tallied a lower number it would never "replace" the FBI number unless the FBI amended their estimate publicly.
As far as the potential sentence, the difference between $213 million and $1.2 billion is exactly nothing. The maximum sentence for drug conspiracy kicks in at levels less than 1% of either of these numbers worth of drugs.
Hardly surprising, his defense was in tatters after having his experts denied and his line of inquiry into mark karples blocked. The prosecution tracing bitcoins directly from silk rd to his personal wallet was just icing on their cake. This is a warning to everyone involved in these enterprises, OPSEC OPSEC OPSEC!!!
The defense learned during discovery that there was an affidavit from one of the investigators suggesting that Karpeles was a likely SR suspect. That suspicion was based on Karpeles position in the BTC ecosystem and, more damningly, on the fact that a public website promoting Silk Road was running from Karpeles own hardware.
It turns out that Karpeles had hardware with a Silk Road website because he ran a hosting company. Someone paid him to stand up a machine that hosted that site.
That someone? According to the evidence discovered from Ulbricht's laptop: Ross Ulbricht.
The "Karpeles holding company" was a domain registrar which accepted Bitcoin as payments. The customer of the domain registrar? One Ross Ulbricht! Through an alias kept in an aliases file on his computer, using an email account to which his computer held the password.
The murder-for-hire was brought up in this trial since they are sentence modifiers for the charges he was facing. The base charges he faced would lead to X years in jail (IIRC; 15-25 if served concurrently) but many of the charges can be modified leading to X+Y years in jail where Y depends on things like attempts at violence.
For all the non-violence fans in the room; Should a heroin dealer who tells his lackies to beat up the competition face a longer sentence than a heroin dealer who initiates no violence? The Federal Sentencing Guidelines think so.
They work on a system of Levels to categorize how bad his crime was:
Narcotics Trafficking over 5kg of Cocaine: Level 30
Narcotics Trafficking by someone who directs violence: +2 Levels
Narcotics Trafficking by someone who promotes their enterprise via mass media: +2 Levels
Narcotics Trafficking by someone who maintains a property to produce drugs: +2 Levels
Etc. etc. So instead of the ~15 year minimum a Level 30 charge would face, Ross is looking at more like a 24 year minimum sentence that corresponds with Level 38 charges.
I think a heroin dealer who is convicted of telling his lackies to beat up the competition should face a longer sentence than a heroin dealer who initiates no violence. Increasing the sentence based on unproven allegations just sounds like bad justice to me.
There is a body of law related to how these types of facts are established, and which types of facts can be determined by a judge vs. which must be put to the jury.
redandwhite was almost certainly a scammer and got paid to kill friendlychemist and tony76 + three roommates. Nob was an undercover agent who got paid to kill "The Employee" aka flush aka cronicpain aka Curtis Green. Two different incidences.
Of the two sets of charges, one was a much more easy conviction - the drug dealing.
It's not the prosecutor's job to introduce clouds of doubt into a prosecution. And this is not a case of "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be found guilty". He was, apparently quite overwhelmingly guilty of the charges related to running Silk Road. Why risk a conviction by charging him with something that might not stick (yes, I realize you can be found guilty of some charges and not others, but a whole world of doubt is introduced)?
Despite what others are saying about why he was not charged with these crimes, the real reason is because he is being indicted with these crimes, federally, in Maryland on those charges. He will face that trial next.
Now, to be fair, these allegations (not lies, allegations) could be just that. Allegations. The prosecution will need to prove them to get a conviction. The reason he is facing these separately could be that these attempted murder of a federal witness charges are much harder to prove and thus convict on.
Anti-forensics seem like a good idea if you're running a transnational drug empire. A simple electronic leash would have gone a long way; some level of compartmented logins, such that when you're sitting in a cafe you're not always logged in with all of your credentials (probably separated by VMs), would be the next step after that.
Using online tools correctly to becoming a subject of in-person investigation would have been of course great, too, but there should be strong backstops before "convicted" as well.
A low tech solution is to use a laptop that doesn't have a battery and keep it plugged in all the time. When they grab the laptop the cord invariably comes unplugged and the thing turns off. Bonus points if you have a fake battery so the weight doesn't give the game away.
A process that logs out active users, kills all their processes, and wipes decrypted storage keys from memory when the computer is separated from its owner (probably detected via bluetooth phone/wristband)?
Absolutely it is, on a few grounds. First off just looking at the various conspiracy charges (Money Laundering conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, drug trafficking conspiracy, and criminal empire conspiracy) can lead to numerous decades each in jail time. Functionally speaking this would lead to a life sentence but it could be something like 200 years in prison without possibility of parol.
On the count of conspiracy to commit murder, 6 times over, if those are ever brought to trial, can come with an actual life sentence, or life sentences. It is very likely he could face numerous sentences of life in prison plus a number of years of prison on top of that. All of this depends on the judge and how s/he would like to handling the sentencing portion of this trial, which probably will not happen for weeks or months.
As there was no plea agreement accepted by the defendant, it is quite likely that the prosecution has always believes that he would be found guilty and pay a very high price for his crimes. Because of this they either a) never gave him a plea deal to consider or b) gave a very costly plea deal which wouldn't have been much better than just going through the trial and going to jail for life.
I thought, generally, if someone was convicted of numerous charges, time spent would count concurrently for _all_ charges. So all the conspiracy charges would lead to a multi-decade long sentence rather than 200+ years. Could you shed some light on why that's not how it works for this particular case?
The most I can say is, it depends. Federal sentencing guidelines are interesting for a few reasons.
First, there is a formula which, quite literally, is a mathematical formula telling the judge a federal minimum and a federal maximum range of times for a crime. This is based on a number of data points surrounding the laws broken.
Second, each law has rules about its own sentencing guidelines baked in. Let's look at the specifics for Conspiracy for a Criminal Enterprise: 20 year minimum for first conviction, 30 year minimum for second conviction, a life sentence for a "extremely large enterprise". There are tables and figures for figuring out what all of this means for minimum to maximum and so on. I am not going to attempt to say I understand how this particular Federal judge will try to figure it out.
Third, in general sentences of multiple convictions on the same trial are supposed to be run concurrently. However, this can be changed if a court decides otherwise, for various reasons. Additionally it can be changed if a specific law states that it should not be run concurrently, but instead consecutively. The judge must actively consider whether to impose a concurrent or a consecutive sentence accounting to the US Code (18 US Code 3553 (a) [1]). Again I do not want to speak for a Federal judge but, I could easily see a judge interpreting these rules in this case to justify a consecutive instead of concurrent sentence.
I agree with you 100% that Mr. Ulbricht will likely not see the maximum consecutive sentence in this case. However, there are no hard and fast rules in Federal sentencing, they are guidelines. It could be decades, it could be quite a bit more.
It depends on the various statutes (which I'm just not sure of in this case), but judges at their discretion can usually sentence concurrently or consecutively. It wouldn't be unheard of for some of his charges to be concurrent and others to be consecutive, but that'll depend on the statute, the judge and potentially, the other jurisdictions where he continues to await trial (i.e., if he's convicted in his next trial, assuming that still takes place, that sentencing could happen consecutively or concurrently, depending on any number of variables).
I thought a conviction was sentenced based on the most severe available for a set of charges, not all charges cumulatively. There were a lot of articles recently about how the media often used some common misunderstanding to say someone faced "centuries" behind bars for something that probably would've maxed out around 20 years.
>If a judge wants to order the sentences to run consecutively or concurrently, she must state so specifically in the sentencing order, which is the court document that sets a defendant's sentences. If she doesn't do so, the sentences will run consecutively automatically.
I have trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of being imprisoned for the remainder of your life. Why do they even do it, instead of just execution? Might as well, right?
Especially for something like this. I haven't been following it closely at all, but presumably he hasn't stabbed/shot anyone, right? So why isn't it "prison for N years then we keep an eye on you for the rest of your life"? That'd be a whoooole lot cheaper than locking him up until he dies, and a much more reasonable punishment, IMO, for anyone who hasn't proved themselves some kind of psycho-killer.
I agree that lengthy imprisonment should be very rare, certainly for a much smaller proportion of crimes than it is currently used in the US. The current US sentencing system is geared towards very high sentences though (anomalously high by just about any standards except perhaps China's). So it would require a fairly major reform to fix. Right now if anyone is convicted of a felony in a federal court it's really easy for the sentencing range to be decades, which is made worse by the fact that there are really a lot of federal felonies (and some of them are broadly written).
One of the political/philosophical reasons is that the U.S. seems fonder than many countries of a retribution-based model of justice, where the goal of imprisoning someone is not only to protect society and dissuade future would-be criminals, but to "punish" them in a metaphysical sense. Many European countries have shifted in the past half-century to a more utilitarian model, in which the goal of the prison system is seen as almost purely targeted at reducing crimes. From that perspective, imprisoning people for particularly long periods of time often doesn't end up as a very appealing solution, admittedly depending strongly on how you weight factors.
That and "governments make mistakes" are the two arguments you can use pretty effectively against the death penalty on people who are not morally opposed to it.
Personally, I have no problem with the state putting a bullet in the head of a murder, but the thought of a wrong verdict and some of the batsh_t crazy things courts have done leaves me fearful of any capital punishment.
I am particularly unamused by some of the things prosecutors have done that have lead to false convictions and how few remedies and punishments for corrupt prosecutors.
Plus, in the sad cold-blooded way of limited budgets, I can find no justification for spending the extra money.
In a perfect world there would be no capital crimes committed. In a near perfect world courts would be 100% right. We live in neither and should act like it.
Agreed - you can't reinstate a life, nor can you reinstate some fraction of a life.
If the justice system fucks up and convicts an innocent man, it can't be undone, the damage is permanent. (Not saying Mr. Ulbricht is innocent, the evidence suggests otherwise, but still...)
Don't be dense. That's obvious. Equally obvious is that you can give back the future years innocent would have spent in prison. Unlike how you can't give back the future years of someone you killed
Remember that until the trial began, his defenders kept on saying he wasn't DPR and had nothing to do with Silk Road (including his mother), and then the defense admitted it in the beginning of the trial.
The BTC payments to the supposed assassins were also sourced directly to Ulbricht's wallet, so if you're going to indulge in counterfactuals about the "hit man" story, they need to revolve around Ulbricht twice staging elaborate hits in order to... what? What's the thing a staged assassination could cover up that's worse than an assassination?
The evidence is incredibly flimsy and has changed throughout.
The most significant reason I believe these charges aren't true is that the government essentially revealed its hand in trumpeting them so loudly at the bail proceeding and in public at that time, without yet charging him (the narrative is laid out here: http://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-road-murder-charges-ross-...).
To me, I now need to see overwhelming evidence in order to buy this. And that does not exist, or at least hasn't been presented yet. So now, we have to look at what evidence does exist: the ludicrous alleged email exchange (here: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss...).
I don't know about you, but this seems flatly unbelievable to me. And even if the dialogue weren't so Hollywood, let's not forget that the alleged victims don't even exist.
And most importantly, if this is the only evidence, the government was obligated to say so a long time ago rather than the song and dance that occurred during the bail proceeding.
Also, the government thinks he didn't actually get people killed, but that he was tricked into thinking that he had.
Why would Ross admit to founding Silk Road if it wasn't true?
This wasn't the only evidence; there were large bitcoin payments directly from Ross's wallet, as well as journal entries. Ross is a known liar, as he claimed not to be the founder of Silk Road before admitting he was, so I don't trust what he says.
And in every other state there are much more powerful prison guard unions which have a huge influence on our laws.
Info from wikipedia on the California prison guard union:
"...Although its membership is relatively small, representing only about one tenth the membership of the California Teachers Association, CCPOA political activity routinely exceeds that of all other labor unions in California. The union spends heavily on influencing political campaigns, and on lobbying legislators and other government officials. CCPOA also hires public relations firms and political polling firms."
Agreed, if Ulbricht hadn't tried to call a hit out on someone, life in prison would seem unreasonable. Based on the information we have, though, it seems pretty certain that he did.
Whether or not the hit went through, he tried to do it, which definitely puts him on the sociopathic spectrum.
If I had a button on some website that would cause someone to be killed, I wouldn't click it. A button on some website that enabled people to get the drugs they want, though? I wouldn't have quite the same moral quandaries.
Don't get me wrong, the hard drugs are bad and in essence the people who use them pathologically are victims of their own brain chemistry; I'm just not so certain that life in prison for someone who enables that is actually a solution to that problem (but the effectiveness of prohibition by force is a whole 'nother story).
It seems clear to me that the motivation for the prosecutors and LEOs involved is to crush the concept of an unregulated, international, black market. I'm definitely not convinced that this prosecution will actually produce the desired goal. Silk road was just the first of many darknet black markets that emerged to fulfill a need. Others are still thriving and as they get shut down, more will spring up in their place, gradually improving their ability to evade detection/termination.
'keeping an eye on' turns out to not work very well. Too easy to just disappear and become another person. So, for someone who will misbehave again its either life in prison or death.
It would be trivial for the government to keep a 24/7 watch on any given individual. If you're talking about someone who has already been convicted at trial, there's no technical or legal barrier to monitoring Ulbricht both physically and digitally for the rest of his life.
Practically speaking, of course, that's what's going to happen anyway.
Yes, several of those convictions carry the potential for a life sentence. Additionally, the New York Times reports that the two most serious convictions carry minimum sentences of 20 years and 10 years (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/nyregion/man-behind-silk-r...).
It certainly happens. The high profile case of Sholom Rubashkin for example: Various forms of financial fraud and an effective (due to age) life sentence.
Yeah, I'm inclined to be skeptical about that claim.
I'm more inclined to believe that the union of "drug dealers regularly involved in violence" and "drug dealers who reign in their violent ways to instead spend time on the computer filling SR orders" is near zero.
Of course it is near zero. But when demand dries up, so do the margins. And with profitability down violence just does not make sense from cost/benefit analysis.
Using may be a self-harm. Acquisition is often not. And once use makes acquisition a problem, violence ensues. And even when it doesn't, the ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society. The society that chose, one way or another, to cut that off at the source.
Or attempt to.
Personally? I don't have much issue with the use of many (though not all) drugs, in and of themselves. But they aren't used in an isolated vacuum.
the ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society
The problem with that argument is that, not only is limiting it to drugs is arbitrary (why not convict the guy who becomes morbidly obese or extremely anorexic?), but I think it often is simply wrong, because it ignores the real alternative. The medical bills of an heroin addict may be expensive, but a guy who dies in his 60s from drug use is probably much cheaper if he had died in his 90s, possibly with some chronic condition.
Besides, imprisoning him is probably more expensive still, so it's cutting your nose to spite the face anyway.
If people are committing crimes to support their drug habit, you can just convict them for those crimes, so that doesn't justify criminalizing the acquisition.
I guess the total cost of meth would be hard to calculate, but I'm totally confident that the health costs tied to obesity are far more damaging than meth. Meth just isn't as common as obesity.
Yes, this is precisely the indirect cost I alluded to in my immediately previous comment. That said, far more (several orders of magnitude more) people die from cheeseburgers than (directly or indirectly) from meth. In human lives, McDonald's is by far the greater risk.
Yea, I got that buddy. The point of my question was whether life is in the realm of possibility when news outlets often report the absolute statutory max that the offender could theoretically receive yet they end being sentenced for less.
I think a lot of people here sympathise with him because geeks have a libertarian bent. We believe that we know what's best for ourselves, and assume that other people do as well.
Obviously he broke the law and was not the most morally pure individual.
But, what about 100 years from now? Do you think the people of the future will think we are being silly to put him in prison for 25+ years for running an unregulated online marketplace?
This is just a technologically advanced incident in the "drug war". Aside from the tech aspect, the business could be compared to a formal crack house where dealers meet customers and the owner takes a cut. That is to say, there's a vast unregulated market for drugs and the SR is a drop in the bucket.
While notable, I imagine people 100 years ago will pay more attention to the 30+ years we have of imprisoning, killing, fining and assaulting people and their families for selling and using highly common and sought after substances than the unregulated marketplace aspect of this case.
I see a story about a protagonist who was not only supremely arrogant, he was supremely incompetent at opsec (pretty boring and tough to make a sympathetic protagonist out of that).
A movie framing the cops as the protagonists would be just as boring, as it would include a scene with someone googling something and finding the crumb they need to nail Ulbricht, followed by a scene of the arrest where they don't even need to crack the encryption on his laptop to get every single thing they needed to convict him.
A video of his arrest at the public library might have made an entertaining/viral youtube video, though.
Haha, fair enough. A creative retelling of this story could be pretty entertaining. If you sweep all of Ulbrichts terrible opsec under the rug (and retell it as excellent opsec), you could make a pretty compelling man vs The Man story.
Consider my criticism withdrawn - fiction, "based on a true story" does usually manage to be pretty entertaining.
[Edit: I do still think that a youtube video of him getting arrested would really have taken off.]
He seems like a smart guy and a good guy overall...(yes, I know he allegedly attempted to hire a hit-man and we can't tolerate crime etc. etc.).
It's a shame to see his entire life wasted for an (admittedly rather large) youthful indiscretion. I keep thinking there has to be a more efficient, a more just way of discouraging criminal activity.
As an aside... Sometimes it apparently doesn't pay to be overly smart. Or rather, smart enough to get into trouble, but not smart enough to avoid the dangers.
You see he's ok because he writes code and drug laws are bad, man.
I'm disgusted by people trying to claim he is anything but a horrible person while trying to brush away the fact that he paid for people to be murdered.
Sure, no one was killed, but that's only by the grace of his stupidity, and massive ego.
HN might hate the war on drugs and love people that write code and live in the valley but its embarrassing that self described smart people could fall so low as to latch on to that while ignoring the undeniable horrible things he did. He wasn't a smart guy, he wasn't a good guy, its like people didn't read the transcripts where they went through his journal detailing everything he did.
> You see he's ok because he writes code and drug laws are bad, man.
Given that there were people arguing Hans Reiser was unfairly convicted even after he confessed to murdering his wife, and suggesting that imprisonment was a waste of his talents, I am not particularly surprised by any expression of nerd supremacism any more. Saddened, but not surprised.
And even then there were people arguing he should get special treatemnt because "he's a programmer, don't lock him up with thugs, let him contribute his genius, man!"
> while trying to brush away the fact that he paid for people to be murdered
Allegedly, there's not actual evidence this actually happened... nor did the prosecution attempt to go after those charges... nor has anyone traced the actual people who were supposedly murdered (their identities don't exist -- they aren't real people), nor has anyone validated the bitcoin transactions that supposedly transferred $750,000
The evidence that he paid for murders is as damning as the rest of it, he kept the chatlogs and made diary entries about _paying to have someone murdered_, Please.
The fact that he was scammed and no one was murdered is irrelevant, completely and utterly, and only goes to show he's not as smart as he thought he was. He's still just as evil for trying and it more importantly celebrating when he was told it was successful.
Agreeing with tptacek, again, pretty sure your last statement is false.
Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment considering.
Look... I'm not trying to justify what DPR allegedly did. All I'm saying is I see some positive qualities in him. Very different from a hardened and callus mob boss. Maybe it's just youth and he would have eventually become that, but I don't think so.
People do things, but it isn't necessarily the sum of what they are.
For reference, see comment about Sammy Gravano below. By ratting out others, he served only a few years after a lifetime of crime and murder. They let him out, relocated him with enough resources to start a company, (presumably to catch some bigger fish), and he continued with crime. Because, it is what he was at his very basic. A criminal and a murder. I simply don't see that with DPR. And comparing the two cases, I don't see what I consider justice. It pains me to see this guy locked up for life. It's just a personal opinion. I don't expect the justice system to honer my feelings. That's all.
"Very different from a hardened and callus mob boss."
I don't understand ideas like this. Do you think mob bosses don't love their children? As in, that somebody who is capable of love is somehow... I don't know... less culpable? If anything, one should argue that it's the psychopaths who are truly incapable of empathy are the ones who are 'ill' !
Being in the unique position of protecting hundreds of innocent people from destruction by one extortionist, eh, what choice did he have?
I believe your difference with me and others on this point is that you do not see the turning over of hundreds of unlicensed medicine merchants to the hands of the USG to be destruction of innocent lives or, indeed, in any way unethical. You'd phrase it like "These HNers are literally saying murdering someone is better than turning over information on drug dealers to the authorities".
If the extortionist was going to expose the operating covers of US agents worldwide, the execution of the extortionist would be accepted by many. I fail to see much of a defensible distinction in this particular instance.
Edit: I should add I'm only referring to the kill-the-extortionist deal, none of the others (now it's up to 5??). And Ross certainly deserves blame for running stuff so poorly that he could end up blackmailed or endangering his customers in the first place. If true, it's as bad or worse than Telegram or Cryptocat, in terms of putting people in danger.
He does seem like a normal good guy sometimes and I guess that's what parent focused on. After all, he's kind of like us, spending a lot of time coding in front of his computer and he doesn't look that stupid.
> 09/30/2013
> Had revelation about the need to eat well, get good sleep, and meditate so I can stay positive and productive.
No, he's not stupid, he just subscribes to a "there's nothing really wrong with black market drug rings and murder" ideology. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how dumb that is.
He talks at length about his philosophy in a way that seems superficially intelligent, until you actually scratch the surface and discover that what he was saying was internally contradictory and had no intellectual merit.
For example:
Firearms and ammunition are becoming more and more regulated and controlled in many parts of the world. We actually had a site up called “The Armory” ... if we can find a model that works where people can get the equipment they need to defend themselves and their families despite what the state wants and often in defense of the state itself, I would be more than happy to provide that.
The Armory, lest we forget, sold bazookas and RPG launchers. The awful oppression he is rallying against here ("in many parts of the world") is usually a highly popular policy that's completely uncontroversial. From the perspective of people living in these places being able to buy sub-machine guns online and have them delivered to your door is not some kind of non-violent libertarian utopia. It's just horrible.
Just a few paragraphs later he is saying
We don’t allow the sale of anything that’s main purpose is to harm innocent people
His deep lack of technical knowledge was revealed by this sentence:
I’m not one hundred percent on this, but I don’t think it’s possible to do a DDoS over Tor
Ulbricht routinely conflated libertarianism, agorism and anarchism as if they are all the same. His knowledge of economics was as flaky as his knowledge of political systems:
There is also nothing morally wrong with [cartels]. If a cartel were to form, I would not attempt to break it up unless its members were breaking other rules. If you want an explanation for why cartels are nearly impossible to maintain in a free market environment, please read “Man, Economy and State” chapter 10, part 2, section D
I was curious what kind of economics textbook would state that cartels could not form in a free market. It turned out to be a book written by "the founder and leading theoretician of anarch-capitalism" (quote from wikipedia). The chapter he refers to is available online. It is a tedious text that contains no references to real world examples at any point. In fact the entire thing is abstract philosophical argument, without any attempt to cross-check against data, yet it purports to explain real economies.
Nobody smart would actually make such an absurd claim or cite such a text to support it.
Finally, for all you people who think Ulbricht was some heroic martyr for the war on drugs, here is what he had to say about it:
If prohibition is lifted, most people here will go away. You’ll go back to your lives and get your drugs from whatever state certified dispensaries are properly licensed to sell to you. Drug use will be as interesting as smoking and drinking .... If prohibition is lifted, and the drug industry is placed under the yoke of the state, then we won in a small way, but lost in a big way.
Ulbricht didn't actually want the war on drugs to end because ultimately what he wanted was anarchy.
Oh ffs. Clearly he is smarter than the average human, but he was still in way over his head. Ultimately he wasn't clever enough to achieve his goal, or even carry on his little website for very long. Context is everything, and in this context he had no clue who he was up against. Not smart.
Many of those statements aren't things where I merely disagree. They are factually false. There are plenty of examples of cartels forming in free markets without government intervention. The Silicon Valley wage fixing agreements is one recent example, but there are lots of others. It is quite, quite possible to do DoS attacks on Tor services (you don't even need the "distributed" part, but could do it anyway if you wanted to). Libertarianism is not the same thing as agorism under any definition I know of. He says in those articles he wouldn't allow weapons to be sold that were designed for use on crowds, but the Armory sold sub-machine guns. And so on.
Look, it's OK to be emotionally invested in some of the ideas Ulbricht stood for. That doesn't change the fact that many of the statements he made are flat wrong or simply contradictory.
> the statements he made are flat wrong or simply contradictory.
and it's OK because we all do this. I always find that kind of comment a bit too harsh because we always tend to forget people we judge are just humans like us.
I'm sure you have contradictions of your own in your own lifestyle. And I'm sure you would look stupid by your non/partial knowledge of some subjects to some people... Doesn't mean that you are stupid.
Also a private journal is something non-relevant because if you have one (I do have mine) take a look at what you wrote a few weeks or months or years ago and you will see they generally look pretty stupid, or they were in the moment, or you just didn't care because you thought no one would be reading it.
Those quotes aren't from his private journal. I'd be much more lenient on him if they were. They are from interviews and public postings where he is trying to explain what the Silk Road stands for, in public. That's exactly the time when he needs to be really sure why he's doing what he's doing and have a coherent, convincing theory of it. That's what a smart person would have. But he didn't.
President Bush gave Charles Colson the Presidential Citizens Medal. All Colson did was conspire to kill a US journalist while working as White House counsel. And conspire to firebomb the Brookings Institution and orchestrated the Watergate burglary. The guy was awarded 15 honorary doctorates and praised by so many Republicans.
Jack Anderson would possibly be dead since the conspiracy only halted when Watergate happened.
Surely there is redemption for Ross. Colson spent less than a year in prison even though the others (eg G Gordon Liddy) admtted they were planning to kill Anderson.
One line snark forgiven. The key word here is "seems".
He was a physics student, an eagle scout, he started a book recycling business that gave 10% to charity. He had some (however misguided) philosophical ideas. He got poison ivy picking trash out of a tree for Pete's sake. Positive qualities... and there are plenty more.
If you sat down and had a beer with the guy I guess you wouldn't think "criminal". I'm betting if you sat down and had a beer with Sammy Gravano you would be hard pressed not to think that.
Isn't this trial the sort of thing that "discourages criminal activity"? There were a lot of people who thought they could violate federal law under the anonymity of Tor, and now a lot of would-be perpetrators are aware that federal investigators do have the resources to find you.
They're definitely making an example of DPR, and I don't have a problem with that. Money laundering? Drug trafficking? Hiring hit men? If a New Jersey mobster had faced these charges for meatspace crimes, he'd certainly be spending the rest of his life in jail. (We can have a conversation about whether consenting adults should be able to purchase and use drugs, but there's no doubt he intentionally and repeatedly violated many existing federal laws.)
Let me rephrase that: the goal of the justice system here is to punish someone who violated some serious federal laws, but the media attention around the case has the side-effect of deterring others from believing Tor can help you commit crimes with impunity. It seems just that DPR is being treated like any mobster or gangster who laundered money earned through illegal activity.
Youthful indiscretion? Come on, he's about to turn thirty.
It's not an indiscretion to spend a few years running a drug dealing marketplace and planning to find fame through publicity deals, books, movies, beyond the mere quarter of a billion dollar fortune amassed.
He's 29, and the "indiscretion" was a carefully planned and run drug trafficking empire, with millions of dollars in profit. This isn't some college kid who got caught selling Aderall to his friends.
The problem is that it can be so easy and at the same time so damaging to be a "cyber criminal" that you have to impose severe sentences even if the criminals were just being young and stupid.
Now did he really do any damages by operating SR? I really don't know...
Extradition is a thing too. You don't have to live in the US to break laws in the US, and you can bet that the government would have stopped at nothing to shut him down.
It's hard for me to have anything but contempt for this entire proceeding. None of these actions are a crime in a free society. And if they were, there'd be no need to dictate what can and can't be introduced as a defense. No "politics?" What garbage. Every line of code that DPR wrote was political.
This right here is the thing that kind of bugs me.
Once upon a time, the notion of civil disobedience was intimately connected to accepting and even welcoming the punishment that came with breaking the unjust law -- after all, if people just walked away untouched from it, how unjust could it be? Only by suffering actual grievous harm at the hands of the law could someone demonstrate that the law was unjust.
Now, though, the attitude seems to be "Nope, was just protesting this law I don't like, that means you shouldn't do anything to me".
As the saying goes: that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
In Plato's writings Apology and Crito he documents Socrates views on this. Ultimately Socrates agrees it is only just to accept his sentence as undermining one law is as bad as undermining all laws. Really great readings on the relationship between individual and society.
I think you're both right. A person should be aware of the potential consequences for breaking what they perceive to be an unjust law, but if others also believe the law to be unjust they should have the right to be outraged regardless.
I guess I don't understand what people who object to this outcome are supposed to do then. It's inappropriate to object to someone facing decades in prison for facilitating consensual transactions between adults?
People who object to a law should use a martyr as a rallying cry to show people the extent which laws are unjust and convince other people and politicians that the laws should be changed.
By making your demand the freeing of someone who may be a martyr but did little to effect actual change in the laws(is not a pivotal leader in the political portion of the movement) you consider unjust, you are not progressing the ideas you believe in. Only trying to undo a single action.
If and when the laws are changed to make the bulk of their actions legal, they will likely be freed then either for legal or political reasons.
> is not a pivotal leader in the political portion of the movement
I don't agree that this matters, but if it did, then certainly DPR is a pivotal leader in the "political portion" of the movement. I'm not sure how you can say he's not?
Because he does not seem to lead any people, or actively promote changes in laws (as evidenced by his choice of defense if nothing else). Instead he seems to be a regular business man, trying to make money. For pivotal leader I am talking a Martin Luther King, not a Reverend Jesse Jackson.
There's a fine line between acknowledging that persecution is sometimes a requirement of successful disobedience, but you should not expect it as a requirement. That'd be like saying being surprised that people are mad when protesters get beaten, saying "that's the price for civil disobedience".
If his defense was 'I ran the site, but I don't believe the site violates the laws I'm charged with violating', you argument would hold some water.
That was not his argument. He was basically arguing "I'm not the guy that ran that site". That's is basically admitting, whoever ran that site committed a bunch of crimes.
Are you saying that you think running Silk Road didn't constitute "narcotics conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise"? Or are you saying that you don't like that those laws prevent running a site like Silk Road?
I do agree that, if he is DPR, he was better defending himself as such and rallying the support he had built from his writings.
As for the charges, I'm saying that yes, those are not proper crimes in a free society, and none pass common sense constitutional muster. He didn't violate anyone's rights, defraud anyone, or engage anyone with violence. Who is the victim?
Philosophically I agree with you. I wouldn't argue there are no victims, but whatever damage to addicts is caused by making drugs marginally more accessible, I don't think it adds up to 30-life in prison for some guy.
Unfortunately there is a huge distance between what libertarian philosophy argues for and what is actually legal. To me, Silk Road is a no-shit-it's-completely-illegal enterprise given the current war on drugs. Plus, it's a major thumb right into the drug enforcers eyes. Not smart if you care about staying out of jail.
Should we change the laws? Absolutely. But this guy was not doing anything to change those laws. He was just profiting from the situation because he was willing to take the risk (or dumb enough to take the risk). I don't find him especially sympathetic. If he was out there saying 'I run Silk Road, and we are not responsible for what people are doing on it', or even better 'I run Silk Road, and we are eliminating violence from the drug trade, it's a net benefit to society by eliminating gangs', he would be someone worth defending. It would be a lot harder for the state to come down on him. Maybe some people would rally behind him and demand change because he is right. Instead, I'm just seeing a guy that made a lot of money by violating laws, and wants to dodge the consequences right up until he is thrown in jail.
> But this guy was not doing anything to change those laws.
I can't understand how you can say that. I never used Silk Road - I buy my weed locally. But I was definitely inspired by a lot of what DPR wrote and advocated.
“If prohibition is lifted, where will you be? Will you forget about all this revolution stuff? Will you go back to ignoring that itching feeling that something isn’t right, that men in uniforms and behind desks have just a bit too much control over your life, and are taking more and more of your sovereignty every day? Will you go back to thinking that taxes are as inevitable as death and the best you can do is to pull as hard as you can for them until you mind, body and spirit are all used up? Or will you feel the loss, as one more wild west frontier comes under the dominion of the enemy, and redouble your efforts to stop it?
I know where I’ll be. I won’t rest until children are born into a world where oppression, institutional violence and control, world war, and all the other hallmarks of the state are as ancient history as pharaohs commanding armies of slaves. The drug war merely brings to light their nature and shows us who they really are. Legalizing it won’t change that and will only make them stronger. Hold on to what you DO have, and stand for the freedom you deserve!” - Dread Pirate Roberts
Let's be completely honest, writing stuff on minor internet forums is not real activism. Real activism is engaging with voters outside of your safe space, presenting policy papers, working with leaders, etc. Perhaps he used his money to lobby for different laws? I never heard of him doing that.
I won't weigh in on whether or not he should be lobbying. Activism is hard, and it's a lot easier to get approval in an internet community dedicated to your fringe views than to spend time trying to convince people to register to vote with maybe 1 success per 2 hours.
I disagree with you when you say that activism only exists within the bounds of the electoral system. This system is rigged and doesn't provide the tools for the societal changes wished by many. There are other ways to fight the system than voting and convincing people to vote. Civil disobedience is one of them.
However, getting caught and prosecuted is part of civil disobedience and your activism shouldn't stop when you get caught. A public trial is a platform that can be used to make your ideas known to a larger public.
As far as Ulbritch goes, it seems to me his "activism" was only an excuse.
> "But this guy was not doing anything to change those laws"
I disagree strongly. One of his primary objectives appears to have been to show that widespread use of drugs does not require violent criminal gangs, which is one of the main justifications for the drug war. In that regard, I think he succeeded. Simply demonstrating this and undermining that argument has done more to delegitimize the drug war than any vote or petition.
He talked at length about his goals in a couple of Forbes articles.
His goal was anarchy, nothing more. In particular he explicitly did NOT want the war on drugs to end, because he feared if it did people would lose interest in fighting the state.
So people who see Ulbricht through the prism of non-violent drug addiction (or whatever) ... need a reality check. That wasn't Ross.
> "Society is the victim" and "No quality control"
They had, apparently, the same customers-rating-sellers quality control mechanism that Amazon itself uses, and by introducing those and removing the need for physical interactions between buyers and sellers I'd imagine that the Silk Road offered a significantly safer, less damaging marketplace than the physical one that it encroached on and will presumably now once again be replaced by.
That said, there are very different reasons why allowing him to get away with it would be difficult - it would undermine the entire "war on drugs" and the efficacy and power of the legal system. Something that HN would be sure to have a volatile view on.
> "No quality control to even know you're getting what you ordered.
I mean, seriously, you can't just do that. Society is the victim."
This is a somewhat hypocritical claim. Society is only the victim of poor drug quality control because their sale and manufacture is illegal. Underground markets of any kind have problems with quality control; the solution to that problem is to make them legal.
Are you ignoring the attempt to have several people killed? Even if it seems he was actually getting scammed, it sure looks like he tried to arrange murder for hire.
Have you read the transcripts of his supposed "murder for hire" discussions?
They are with a supposed Hell's Angel, who, right on the first email, opens up about his business dealings, what he does, how he does it, etc. It's waaaaaaaay to open and forthcoming for a hardened and experienced criminal to just flat out say things like:
> Also, we have kidnapped friendlychemists partner Xin already and are on the hunt for friendlychemist.
> We are all familiar with PGP as we have been using it for years via email linked to our smartphones. It’s the only way we communicate with each other aside from in person, since phone calls are not secure.
> After some “questioning” he admitted he was intending on moving to a different country and setting up a new seller account on this site. We don’t take too kindly to thieves. He’s gone.
> If you have your mind set on just finding his location, I can talk to them and get them to get it for you for a fee (not sure what amount as usually when we hunt someone, there is more involved after we find them).
> I can almost guarantee it, but I stop short of guaranteeing anything unless I am 100% certain I can get the job done. I do that so I don’t look like an idiot if I can’t accomplish something I have said I can.
It reads like a novel (or more likely a LE agent baiting him). Would also explain why none of the "victims" were ever really identified, nor any missing persons reports filed.
Doesn't excuse what DPR did, just saying this part of the prosecution's story doesn't sit well with me.
~~
Edit:
Here's the supposed conversation about the "hits" for reference
It's waaaaaaaay to open and forthcoming for a hardened and experienced criminal to just flat out say things like
This is exactly what Ulbricht's lawyer tried to sell the jury on regarding Ulbricht's own actions and poor OPSEC.
Nobody believes murders were actually carried out. That's not a live issue. But what is a live issue is the question of whether Ulbricht believed he was directing two murders. And given Ulbricht's shocking naivete in every other matter concerning Silk Road, it's not hard to reach that conclusion.
> Nobody believes murders were actually carried out.
Then I'd question why DPR went on to direct 4 additional murders? In the email logs an image of the supposedly dead FriendlyChemist was uploaded to DPR and he confirmed it was in fact him and was satisfied the hit was carried out... believing it enough to send an additional $500,000 for the next hits.
DPR had pictures of the real-life FriendlyChemist, as he required photo id of any insider working on SR. He also sent all of FriendlyChemists personal information (name, address, wife and kids' names, etc) to the supposed Hell's Angel during one of their email exchanges -- but none of the data is real and can't be traced to any actual people.
The prosecution said that they believe this conversation was actually someone scamming him, and that there were in fact no murders carried out.
It clearly shows that DPR tried to have people killed, though (unless you think there's wholesale fabrication of evidence going on, which is getting into conspiracy theory land).
> unless you think there's wholesale fabrication of evidence going on, which is getting into conspiracy theory land
I don't initially think that... but, to play devil's advocate...
After the first "murder" is carried out, there is an image of the dead FriendlyChemist supposedly stripped of XIF data and uploaded to DPR, who then confirms receipt and the job was completed satisfactorily.
Now, earlier in the case it became common knowledge that DPR required anyone who worked with him to send him a lot of personal details (name, address, etc) as well as a scan of their driver's license (as a Photo ID).
The first "murder" was of an ex-insider who had taken with him a lot of confidential information including the identities (and photos) of a huge number of SR insiders.
How would DPR of received and confirmed a "hit" on a person who was never hit and very possibly had nothing to do with this scam? He surely would have recognized the "murdered" individual, or at least seen it wasn't the correct target. Some 3rd party scammer would not of had access to that information or the original target.
Also, at a point DPR sends the supposed Hell's Angel a bunch of personal information for the first target, including full name, address, wife and kids' names, etc. None of the information was able to be traced to real-life people... they don't exist... isn't that a little weird?
"Also, at a point DPR sends the supposed Hell's Angel a bunch of personal information for the first target, including full name, address, wife and kids' names, etc. None of the information was able to be traced to real-life people... they don't exist... isn't that a little weird?"
Quality control? I want to make sure you're trustworthy. So perhaps as a test I'll give you all this detailed demographic information ... about someone who doesn't exist.
If you come back and say "job done. killed him." - well, I now know you're not to be trusted with the real deal.
> If you come back and say "job done. killed him." - well, I now know you're not to be trusted with the real deal.
Well, after DPR supposedly confirmed the first hit was carried out properly (via uploaded image of the supposedly dead FriendlyChemist), he ultimately went on to contract 4 more "hits". Three were simply because they lived with the main target and the supposed Hell's Angel made an argument it would be "cleaner" to hit them all at the house instead of risk something in public.
None of the information was able to be traced to real-life people...
Doesn't that say to you that FriendlyChemist was sharp enough to fake his identity? Which is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a guy working on a black market website who later goes on to steal secrets.
He paid hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the assassin after the hit. If he believed he was scammed, he certainly loved it and paid soundly for the privilege. It's all in the cleartext logs of Ulbricht's laptop.
But he had millions of Bitcoin, and every reason to believe that Bitcoin would rise in value. He lived very modestly for what he had, so it's not like this is anything other than a number in a computer fro him.
This was discussed in depth on HN when the story first broke -- unless I'm wrong the story goes something like this:
S1: I will disclose the silk road's confidential information unless you pay me $500k, because I owe S2 that money.
DPR: Let me talk to S2.
S2: Hello, this is S2.
DPR: I will give you $150k to kill S1. I have paid much less for a hit, so consider yourself lucky to get this deal.
S2: Done and done, have a nice day.
Paying to "have someone killed" is a good way to give them some money, but not the money they wanted, while still scaring them off.
"It's way too open to discuss [murder]" ... on a site where people are openly dealing heroin, meth, cocaine, stolen IDs, credit cards, forged passports.
Why -wouldn't- someone feel safe discussing it there?
This conversation was via unencrypted plain 'ol email. During the narrative the supposed Hell's Angel has difficulties setting up the encrypted chat DPR suggested they use.
I'm assuming he was talking about what they charged him with, in the article it states: "Ulbricht didn’t face murder solicitation charges in the trial and prosecutors said they don’t believe any murders were carried out."
Do you have any evidence that this occurred? Have you ever seen any? The government hasn't provided it.
These are out-and-out lies, designed to impugn his public credibility. It seems to have worked with some of the comments in this thread.
If you believe that he was the violent psychopath portrayed at the bail proceeding, how do you feel about the government neglecting to charge him with those crimes?
No, because part of the reason he was denied bail is that he had a relative fortune of several million in Bitcoins, not all of which have been traced, and is thus a serious flight risk given the severity of the charges against him.
Probably not. Then again, for a long time was there anywhere in the world that didn't practice slavery? Is popularity really the best system to evaluate these laws?
Are you some kind of novelty account? Ross hired hitmen to kill rivals. He personally maintained and profited from an illegal drug trade. Please go back to reddit, thanks.
Dumber than you, so automatically a Redditor, huh? Considering this is Hacker News with definite faults of its own, that's a very glass house stone of you to throw. In particular, you should compare how HN handles a gender-in-tech thread to certain subreddits' treatment of the same topic.
It's almost like Reddit is a grouping of wildly disparate communities with different ideals, some for humor, some serious. How many communities does HN have? Oh, right, one.
Everybody is repeating the murder-for-hire nonsense as if it has anything to do with this trial. Show me the evidence that he engaged in that. Why wasn't he charged with that?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-ulbric...
Basically, the evidence was massively damning, so their only serious hope of winning was by challenging the curiously nonspecific way the FBI found the Silk Road server; but they gave up their ability to do so for some dubious benefits.