
See No Evil: The Case of Alfred Anaya - jayzee
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/alfred-anaya/all/&src=longreads
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SagelyGuru
Some people here rightly question why he got twice as long sentence as the top
guys. This is the key to understanding what really happened in this case (see
below).

What case? Pure hearsay by real but <cooperating> drug traffickers, woven into
a skillful tale of bespoke swimming pools, deliberately painting him as a drug
dealer in the jury's minds. The intimidation charge, btw., is explained: it
was needed to discredit the traffickers' initial account of him not being
involved. Of course, the true reason for changing their story, i.e.
successfully reducing their own sentences, would not have played so well for
the prosecutor. The only remotely substantiated 'evidence' against him was
that he saw some cash. By that count most bankers ought to be in jail with
him.

So we come to the explanation of the glaring discrepancy in the sentencing:

1) His skills were making life difficult for the police, so he had to be
<dealt with>, regardless of justice or law. This is why the prosecutor offered
to cut sentencing deals with the real traffickers, just to get him.

2) Being innocent and <not cooperating> are the worst crimes in the US of
today. The same principle as in Aaron Schwarz case.

Regardless of the details of this case, don't you think that it is just plain
wrong that prosecutors can order any 'witness account' they want from most
people in their clutches? Years in jail at their discretion is a very powerful
inducement, one that must be distorting justice (read framing innocent people)
on daily basis.

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SagelyGuru
The moral aspect of this story is interesting.

Had he taken up the offer of a luxury bugged storefront with all the equipment
he wanted, he would now be a respectable, financially secure citizen instead
of languishing for over 24 years in jail. What do such extremely diverse
outcomes for the same past activities say about the validity of the law and
its implementation process?

The only hitch is that his innocent clients who have every right to hide their
jewelery and other valuables in their own car would all have their security
knowingly compromised by him.

What does that tell us about the authorities, their attitude towards our
privacy rights, and the moral values they expect and enforce?

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mercurial
> The judge agreed with McCracken’s harsh assessment. He sentenced Anaya to
> 292 months in federal prison—more than 24 years—with no possibility of
> parole. Curtis Crow and Cesar Bonilla Montiel, the men at the top of the
> organization, received sentences half that length.

I guess justice is served and we call sleep better at night? Is "war on drugs"
a magic formula which can be used to justify anything, just like "war on
terror" and "think of the children"?

~~~
ledge
Apparently he was also charged with two counts of intimidating a witness,
which the Wired article does not mention, so maybe there is more to this
story.

Either way, it saddens me to know that the instigators, aggressors, and
profiteers of this "war" will never spend a day in prison.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's a compelling story but I agree that leaving out details like that is a
failure of journalistic ethics.

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yardie
First, he was too cooperative. As soon as they brought him in for questioning
he should have retained a lawyer. 15 compartments? For who? Do you know what
they use them for? The answer to all those questions is "Let me ask my lawyer,
first".

People watch to much TV. They think the justice system is fair based on the
fact that Law and Order wraps up the case in 45 minutes and the perp always
confesses. It doesn't work like that. Even from the article the DA takes great
joy in sending people to prison. If you are in front of him your innocence is
not taken into account. He's trying to send you to prison for as long as
possible.

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joshmlewis
On one hand, I feel bad for the guy. I mean it seems like unless you're
wealthy or have a really good case in these situations hiring a lawyer is too
pricey for most people and so when the district attorney is coming at you with
all they got and they shove you in with the other "drug" criminals and all you
have is your appointed court defender, you're going to have a bad time. It's
almost like he didn't have a "fair" shot just because the weight of
accusations against him and the power behind it versus what he had was just
outweighed.

On the other hand, he had to of known what was going on. You start down the
path of shady, it's just going to get darker. I can't say I blame him or I
wouldn't do the same if I had a passion for such things, but still he had to
of known the risk. I don't believe in his sentence however and it really sucks
the guys at the top only got half the length he did. There might have been
other things involved sure, but stil a sentence like that is pretty staggering
and life changing.

~~~
ledge
By the same token though, the Tor developers had to have known that Tor would
be used for distribution of child pornography, and gun manufacturers surely
know that their guns will be used to kill innocent people.

~~~
jiggy2011
True, but I think there is a distinction to be made between designing a
protocol like tor and actually providing the service of setting up tor sites
for people who you suspect are using them to distribute child porn.

~~~
ledge
Sure, I suppose Freenet or some other P2P would have made for a better
analogy.

~~~
jiggy2011
I think the distinction is when you are dealing directly with known or
suspected criminals and providing them services to help in criminal activity
rather than providing something that can have criminal uses but also legit
ones.

~~~
tempestn
Exactly, this. Creating Tor is like the general practice of building these
traps as a business. Traps have both legal and illegal uses, and you have no
way of knowing what will happen with each trap after you build it. No problem
there. The problem is when that service is provided directly to someone known
to be using it for an illegal purpose. In the case of Tor, it is not provided
directly to anyone, but rather available freely to everyone. Now, say Tor came
with home installations of the client, and the client mentions to the
installer that now he's got a great way to buy drugs anonymously on SR. That
would be a problem.

~~~
pencilcheck
So that means if internet is created for terrorists to solve a problem be more
efficient in communication among themselves, the creator of internet would
have to be thrown in jail, even if there is also a good use in internet? Or
the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering people,
aren't the creators suppose to be executed as well? How about the camera? It
was probably designed to create child porn!!! The creators should be fined and
be thrown to jail as well!!! What makes the value of a tech, or neutral
product, an act or passenger of evil or violation of laws depending on the
context it is created in? Who is to decide that? You? Prosecutor? The
government? I empathize this guy, as he is not confident enough, and is too
kind.

~~~
tempestn
"Or the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering
people..."

It's not about whether it _could_ be created for smothering people. If you're
a tailor, and someone says to you, "I need a special kind of jacket with a
loop like this that I can use to strangle people with,"* and you make that for
them, then yes, you are liable when they indeed use it for that purpose! As
for who decides whether the creator knew it would be used for an illegal
purpose, that would be the jury.

If before there was an internet, a terrorist group approached a technologist
and described a network that they required to better organize terror plots,
then YES, that person should be held accountable for the uses the group puts
it to, even if it eventually has positive consequences as well.

On the other hand, if a person makes and distributes anything, dangerous or
not, _with_ a legitimate use case in mind, they should absolutely be held
blameless if it is then used by someone else to commit a crime.

*Assuming of course that a "reasonable person" would actually believe the person was indeed going to do that, since it comes across as pretty bizarre...

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venomsnake
The whole justice system is badly in need of reform. Monstrosities like the
ones signed into law for the war on terror, war on drugs and war on sex
offenders need to be scaled back. Also discretion must be removed from the
prosecutors. And why not instead of minimal sentence guidance, create a
maximum for combined sentence where no bodily harm was inflicted. Like - 3
years. This will infuse some sanity.

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angersock
This is troubling, right?

There's sort of three options about tech facilitating <bad thing>: you hold
the people behind the tech responsible, you hold the people behind the tech
blameless, or you cherry-pick when they're at fault.

I'd argue that cherry-picking is what we currently do, and that it is
troublesome in its inherent double-standards: if I show teenagers how to make
pipebombs and they hurt someone, that's on me, but if I write tech manuals for
special forces on the same subject, that's okay. If I write software that
helps ensure messages are private, that's okay, but if the same software is
used to carry child porn, that's awful. If I write software for recording
customer information, that's okay, but if I provide it to the government,
that's not okay.

Cherry-picking is rubbish in this way, because the same tech--particularly for
tools and services!--can be used for both good and harm. It may be difficult
to argue for peaceful uses of stealth fighters, but barring a few cases it
would seem that all tech is dual-use. We can acknowledge this fact, and pick
one extreme or the other.

If we take the view that all tech providers are culpable for the use of their
tech, we stifle innovation and retard the pace of development--if the morass
of patent claims is bad, consider what happens if every product has to go
through a strict liability filter to make sure it can't hurt anyone. We don't
even stop the bad uses of tech--we can still be saddened to find that someone
has found an illegal use for our tools that simply had never occurred to us.

If we go the other way, and hold tech providers blameless, we don't slow
innovation. We simplify the cases against people who do commit crimes, and
streamline the justice process. We give up the ability to try and stop the
spread of things like traps and weapons and whatnot, and can focus on actually
going after the people that use them for ill, or deciding not to waste
resources on things that become impractical to enforce.

None of this matters a hill of beans, though, because we seem to be hellbent
on a justice system which doesn't even bother to make clear the inscrutable
laws with which it will nail you to the wall. Brilliant.

~~~
tempestn
While I agree that the result in this case was extreme, it seems that the
article does point out the distinction, which is whether the person behind the
tech is directly aware that it will be used for <bad thing>.

In this particular case, I could see how there's a strong argument that he
was. I mean, when he saw the $800k, honestly, he _did_ know it was related to
drugs. He made the choice to continue. Should he have been charged as a
conspirator and ultimately sentenced to 24 years? Not in my opinion! But he
wasn't completely blameless either.

~~~
betterunix
"While I agree that the result in this case was extreme, it seems that the
article does point out the distinction, which is whether the person behind the
tech is directly aware that it will be used for <bad thing>."

Then anyone who implements a cryptosystem is in legal peril. There is no
question that cryptosystems are used by criminals to commit crimes. So far,
cryptographers have been able to sleep at night knowing that their work is
also used to protect people from criminals and other dangers.

~~~
Nrsolis
I dont think cryptographers have anything to be worried about here unless they
are directly involved in designing a crypto-system for a person they know or
could reasonably suspect would be involved in doing something illegal.

This individuals biggest problem was that he had more than a casual
association with people that he could have reasonably suspected were involved
in something illegal. If he had stopped having anything to do with the people
who had the 800k hidden, he'd be a free man now. If he had tipped off the cops
that he saw a car with 800k hidden in a secret compartment, he'd very likely
have won the accolades of the entire police department along with buying
himself some very welcome immunity from prosecution.

He chose sides and lost.

~~~
john_b
And if the people who worked with the two guys who had the 800k hidden had
found out he'd snitched, then what?

The bottom line is that you shouldn't have to "choose sides" every time you
see something suspicious. Most seemingly suspicious occurences are innocent,
and calling the police on someone every time you see one is childish and
naive.

~~~
Nrsolis
How about not dealing with sketchy people who need hidden compartments in
their vehicles? Why is that not an option from the outset?

I hate to say it, but I find the range of "legal" uses for a hidden
compartment in a moving vehicle to be vanishingly small. I'd put them in the
same range as legal reasons to wearing a full facemask/helmet in a bank.

