
Ross Ulbricht Convicted of Running Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts - DavidChouinard
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-04/ross-ulbricht-convicted-of-running-silk-road-as-dread-pirate
======
comex
This is a good explanation of how the defense totally screwed up:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-
ulbric...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-ulbricht-got-
a-fair-trial-but-not-a-fair-investigation/)

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.

~~~
ikeboy
The problem with the article is that it calls the finding of the server
"blatantly illegal", when that hasn't come to trial.

The government says
[https://ia600603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.4...](https://ia600603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824.75.0.pdf)

>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.

which seems reasonable.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd like to refer this back to a response I gave before -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8441139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8441139).

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.

~~~
maxerickson
Iceland.

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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
[Thanks, I should have checked!]

> _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.

~~~
maxerickson
_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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

~~~
maxerickson
_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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

~~~
maxerickson
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.

------
freakyterrorist
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!!!

~~~
notatoad
"don't try and have people killed" is probably also a fairly good warning to
people involved in these enterprises.

~~~
jMyles
He didn't. These were lies - straight up lies - designed to impugn his
credibility during jury selection and the bail proceeding.

Ask yourself: Why wasn't he charged with these crimes?

~~~
BigChiefSmokem
Because no one was murdered. He _tried_ to hire a hitman but the hitman ended
up being an undercover FBI agent.

Don't defend this man, he is manipulative human garbage.

~~~
WillNotDownvote
Which would still be a crime, if he committed it. But he wasn't tried for it.

~~~
FireBeyond
Put him away for the things that are an easy conviction, rather than the more
nebulous details of that attempt. Why cloud things?

~~~
FireBeyond
Not sure why this is being down voted.

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)?

------
rdl
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.

(Or you could just not do the crime.)

~~~
bhayden
What's an electronic leash? Like running TailsOS on a flash drive that's
tethered to a bracelet?

~~~
jaryd
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.

------
brotoss
So is life in prison a possibility?

~~~
viewer5
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.

~~~
digikata
It's counter-intuitive, but execution seems to be a much more expensive option
than life in prison.

e.g. (semi-randomly picked links on the topic)

[http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31614](http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31614)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/01/cons...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/01/considering-
the-death-penalty-your-tax-dollars-at-work/)

hmm maybe I'm misconstruing your comment though...

~~~
protomyth
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.

~~~
mark-r
The number of inmates being found innocent by new DNA tests is really
frightening.

~~~
protomyth
Yes, it is.

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.

------
tindrlabs
Ross actually lived above me in college. Very surreal to see this all going
down.

------
notadocta
I want to feel bad for the guy, almost, but I don't.

I just wish he got away with it, I wish he were smarter about it.

~~~
andrewfelix
It's interesting that a lot of people sort of sympathise with him seemingly
because of the context in which he carried out the crimes.

ie. If he'd been using a landline and peso's instead of BTC and the internet
we'd probably attach a completely different emotional response.

~~~
dsuth
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.

------
damon_c
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?

~~~
code_duck
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.

~~~
code_duck
Uh, hundred years from now, I mean.

------
eyeareque
The story of Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht will make for a great movie.

~~~
eric_h
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.

~~~
kevinnk
"I see a story about a protagonist who was not only supremely arrogant, he was
supremely incompetent at opsec"

Ever seen Catch Me If You Can?

Also, I agree a true to life story would be pretty boring. Thankfully, truth
isn't exactly a requirement in hollywood storytelling.

~~~
eric_h
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.]

------
jqm
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.

~~~
tptacek
_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.)_

This is one of the all-time great HN quotes.

~~~
pencilo
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.

~~~
Alupis
> 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

~~~
pencilo
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.

------
rasputhin
I Dont this Mr Ulbricht stood a chance. That case was decided before it began.

------
recibe
Ross made the decision, now Ross pays the price.

Lots of people could have done this, and lots of people were smart enough not
to.

------
jMyles
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.

Free Ross.

~~~
ubernostrum
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.

~~~
jMyles
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?

That's all I'm doing.

~~~
genericuser
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.

~~~
jMyles
> 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?

~~~
genericuser
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.

------
bunkydoo
Could have seen that coming long long ago.

------
pcrh
Looks like he's going to have to learn how to break out of jail...

~~~
Scruff_Face
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Plan_%28film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Plan_%28film%29)

------
ffn
RIP in pieces, Dread Pirate Roberts, the Blackbeard of our era. May we meet
again in 5 or so years on the silver screen.

------
lectrick
> and even tried to arrange the murder of five people who threatened the
> anonymity of buyers and sellers.

1) No one was murdered

2) If drug trade was somehow regulated legally and decriminalized like in
Portugal instead of being outright illegal, there would be no perverse
incentive to murder to begin with... and there would probably also be no
incentive for a Silk Road

When is US law going to realize that overly strict punishments (come on, does
this guy really deserve _life in prison_?) simply create a perverse incentive
to harm in order to ensure people stay quiet, and that creating black markets
results in negative externalities? If the punishments were less severe (or
even simply allowed but highly taxed/regulated) then there would be less
murder of witnesses, period.

I can't find a tremendous amount of evidence around this, except for this:
[https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/yablon_dan...](https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/yablon_daniel.pdf)

(I think I'm becoming libertarian?)

