
Arrest of Senior Adviser to the Operator of the “Silk Road” Website - dbcooper
http://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-arrest-and-unsealing-charges-against-senior-adviser
======
dmix
It seems an independent researcher who goes by the name "La Moustache" on
Twitter managed to correctly ID Variety Jones.

> The research conducted by an independent researcher by the name of “La
> Moustache” determined that Variety Jones is likely Roger or Thomas Clark.

> [...] The posts, some containing as much as 3,000 words, explain how “Plural
> of Mongoose” was arrested after being found running an underground cannabis
> business in UK, amongst other related crimes. At one point, Jones even
> identifies himself as “Roger Thomas Clark,” which were the same names
> uncovered by researcher La Moustache. Despite these revelations the FBI have
> not yet given any response as to their next course of action.

[http://silkroaddrugs.org/dpr-mentor-to-be-back-
online/](http://silkroaddrugs.org/dpr-mentor-to-be-back-online/)

I'm curious if the FBI pieced this together themselves or was it La Moustache
who figured it out?

Edit: Also of note...in the criminal complaint they said he is a Canadian
national born in 1961... making him 54 years old.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/292196413/US-v-Roger-Thomas-
Clark-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/292196413/US-v-Roger-Thomas-Clark-
Complaint#scribd)

~~~
probdist
Wow the complaint has some bombshells:

In particular I'd highlight this as pretty crazy: (screenshot from scribd
because I don't have a plaintext copy)
[http://imgur.com/kaFSSzl](http://imgur.com/kaFSSzl)

One of the Customer Support Staff Members on the Silk Road was a homeland
security investigator. Wow.

~~~
johnchristopher
What's crazy about undercover agents ?

------
laarc
_Finally, CLARK also advised Ulbricht on tactics to thwart efforts by law
enforcement to investigate Silk Road. In that vein, CLARK repeatedly advocated
the use of intimidation and violence to keep members of the Silk Road support
staff from cooperating with law enforcement. In one such conversation, in
which CLARK and Ulbricht discussed “track[ing] down” a certain Silk Road
employee to ensure that he had not gone “[o]ff the rails,” CLARK commented,
“[D]ude, we’re criminal drug dealers – what line shouldn’t we cross?”_

Friendly fellow. I've heard that the site's community felt like they were a
part of a movement. Did they know the operators felt this way?

Analysis of the community in general seems interesting. I wonder if their
forums were archived anywhere.

~~~
uououuttt
I know HN user gwern did some work partially documenting the forums.

It was an interesting place to be, especially towards the beginning. I feel
that most of us would've supported violence against those cooperating with law
enforcement.

~~~
laarc
Setting aside personal bias: Kudos for admitting that. It takes a lot of
courage to put your beliefs out in the open, or even to talk about the beliefs
of a group you once identified with.

 _I feel that most of us would 've supported violence against those
cooperating with law enforcement._

Could you help me understand that mindset?

It seems like violence is one reason we as a species took hundreds of
thousands of years to discover (or at least to harness) the scientific method.
For the first time, we're now in a position to detect a big rock headed
straight for Earth, and then actually have any nonzero chance of doing
something to change the situation. Studying history, one plausible hypothesis
we're in this situation might be: Funnel all of the smartest people together,
and figure out a way to let them work together for a very long time on the
same kinds of problems.

And to let smart people work together, it's necessary to have systems in place
to suppress violence. In short, law enforcement. There have been abuses of
power, but on the whole, law enforcement seems like one of the main reasons
we're well-off today.

So that's where I'm coming from. I'm not trying to be overbearing or say X is
bad and Y is good -- I apologize if I'm failing.

It's just the opposite: I'm interested, and open-minded, to understand how
various intelligent people could conclude "It's us or them, and if you're
cooperating with law enforcement, you deserve violence." Would you help me to
understand the community's viewpoint? Was there any nuance, or is it as simple
as "they are traitors, therefore X" mindset? There must be _something_ if so
many intelligent people somehow started to believe this, right?

If someone reading this feels like replying anonymously, make a new HN account
using Tor. Your reply will be marked [dead] to begin with, but those of us
with showdead enabled will see them. The community can now vouch for dead-but-
thoughtful comments, which makes them visible to everyone.

This is the type of topic that usually devolves into a flamewar, but maybe
thoughtful conversation has a chance.

~~~
Absentinsomniac
I can try to give a reply. You have to remember what SR was for. These were
people who were not only using SR, but active in the community as well. They
were mostly engaged in illegal activities, a good deal of whom were active
offline as well taking part in illegal activities.

Law enforcement is a constant point of anxiety for every single person
involved in this process. If someone who you thought you could trust is now
actively threatening your freedom (or access to a substance, which is also a
form of freedom), you take action to prevent this. In general, I don't
remember the mindset actually being "pro violence" in an abstract sense, but
it was hostile to law enforcement because law enforcement represented the end
of ones freedom.

And they weren't wrong. The drug war was (and is) a very real thing. I think
it goes without saying that most were for the freedom to consume, produce,
distribute, and use any drugs they see fit. Law enforcement were encroaching
on that freedom. They were the aggressors coming in and disrupting a pretty
peaceful process. In many cases, unprovoked. I don't think that's much of a
misrepresentation.

~~~
laarc
(Trying to figure out how to reply without sounding like I'm challenging an
idea or putting someone on the defensive... All I can think of is: Thank you
for the reply. Know that I respect everyone's viewpoint, and that we're only
trying to chase a mystery.)

 _If someone who you thought you could trust is now actively threatening your
freedom (or access to a substance, which is also a form of freedom), you take
action to prevent this._

So I've spent five minutes mentally putting myself in that situation, and... I
don't know. Am I just a coward? It's important in the abstract sense to fight
for freedoms, and perhaps in the literal sense when one system (i.e. country)
is at war with another.

But the idea of taking a bat to someone's head for betraying my trust in them
is... Well, that's really the question to explore, right? How could someone
actually do that, let alone approve of someone else doing that? The question
is far too pointed, though. Just trying to understand.

~~~
FatalLogic
>But the idea of taking a bat to someone's head for betraying my trust in them
is... Well, that's really the question to explore, right? How could someone
actually do that, let alone approve of someone else doing that?

But, implicitly, you already _do_ approve of that. Your government commits
various forms of violence in your name, as all governments do - most notably
in the form of military and police actions, some of which you may not agree
with.

~~~
xorcist
> Your government commits various forms of violence in your name, as all
> governments do

That's why we have separate systems to keep the violence in check. Granted, it
may not always work that well in practice, but it is important to the system
that there are checks and balances in place. The question here regarded the
moral system where someone can unilaterally decide someone else deserves to be
murdered, and what makes people voluntarily choose this system.

~~~
icebraining
If you are being targeted by the "checked and balanced" system for doing what
you believe to be an harmless activity, isn't that enough to lose your faith
in it?

~~~
xorcist
I suspect that much is true. It does not follow that it would make you prefer
a completely arbitrary system, where the leader could decide you dead at any
time. Murdering people without process also pretty much rules out the
"harmless activity" part, by every possible meaning of the word.

~~~
icebraining
I think this is mixing up the timelines. He was threatened by LE to life
imprisonment for the things he did _before_ he allegedly procured murder. So
that can't rule out the "harmless activity" part, because _it hadn 't happened
yet_.

As for not preferring a system where one person can decide you dead at any
time, well: [http://www.killedbypolice.net/](http://www.killedbypolice.net/)

------
tacojuan
No mention of the extortion/blackmail VJ claimed to be facing from some rogue
FBI agent?

------
xorcist
I'm surprised to see that Ulbricht thought government issued id was the viable
solution to the spam/troll/infiltrator problem on the dark web. I would have
expected more experiments with reputation based systems and blockchain based
identity (such as namecoin). But identity is hard, I get that. Probably the
hardest problem these sites face. (Just for curiosity's sake, does anyone with
a bit more insight know if collecting passports is a common occurrence in
other dark markets?)

------
dang
Other articles:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680330),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680175).

------
rajacombinator
Mega facepalm after I click through and read "Preet Bharara". Can we just make
this guy a Senator already?

~~~
psykovsky
...because justice and politics mix oh so well... the results are astounding!

