Sigh, I guess I was not clear enough with "If you take that as a given prior".
If you do have the assumption, axiom, belief, whatever, that drugs are moral and ease suffering, and that releasing data on these people will lead to long lives in prison, causing a chain of disastrous effects on many families, then yes, stopping the person that is trying to harm these other people may be considered.
Many people die each year due to the USG's war on drugs policy, and it has a violent affect on many of the countries to the south of Texas. Just for a bit of context/scope.
Edit: On second reading, I actually dislike your rhetoric even less. You can rephase anything as a series of immediate actions. It's not the harm of "reporting to law enforcement" it's what happens next.
The response that your second reading of my comment generated seems to be "you didn't fully consider the impact of reporting someone to law enforcement, and, by implication, could be incorrect in your weighting of whether it might be justifiable to have someone killed to prevent them from doing that."
Given the stated assumptions, yes. Is there a flaw in that logic?
To arrive at another outcome, you'd need to weigh the suffering and somehow decide that a single person's life, who is actively trying to hurt others (that is, they aren't an innocent bystander), is somehow worth more. In some scenarios this can be a philosophical debate (how much small annoyance to millions of people is one other person's life worth?), but with an active adversary and no other course of action, it seems like the only rational decision.
You seem to be indicating that in this scenario you'd always value a single person's life (despite their actions) above many others' suffering. Is it because you view LE as morally superior, or do you have another set of priors that shape your reasoning?
Further down in the comments, you indicated it was OK in the case of Nazi Germany since it wasn't "real" law enforcement and it "involves certitude". That seems to indicate to me that you don't actually believe it's "invariably wrong".
OK, easier scenario: A guy is insane, and is going to murder 20 people. Your only option is to ask his friend to kill him. Is is still "invariably" wrong?
Anyways, my original question to you (and on other threads, like where you appear to defend seizure actions) is where exactly are you getting your priors? In all your replies you just rephase things as if we're supposed to draw the right conclusion.
And I'm only asking because it's you, someone proven in security and rather insightful on many threads.
If it's just an innate, fundamental belief you hold, fine. I was just wondering if you had some special source or logic that lets you decide these things so absolutely.
Should DPR have considered nonviolent means to prevent the release of this information? Maybe he could have offered money in exchange for silence and everybody walks away healthy?
The hit in the complaint I read basically had the extortionist (FriendlyChemist) say he needed $500K to pay a dealer. DPR asks to talk to the dealer, and FC drops out of the picture and the dealer is happy to settle for $150K or so.
That makes zero sense, if $500K was actually owed. I doubt DPR was so naive to think that instantly a new contact would come online and trust him completely and be willing to negotiate a murder.
It looks FAR more likely that DPR and FC both "knew" the "dealer" was just FC on another account, and it was a way of negotiating that let DPR look "hard".
The complaint also makes it clear that police found no evidence of such a murder around the timeframe given.
First, you're missing the other hit story, the one he was actually charged with, where he paid an undercover cop to have a business associated murdered.
Second, the story you provide here is implausible. The "way of negotiating" you describe here doesn't make Ulbricht look hard; it makes him look guilty of an extremely serious felony. It would be well beyond incompetent to use "I'm ordering a hit on you" as a cover story.
Correct, in the complaint I only saw a mention of the second "hit" which looks a lot like negotiating the price down. After all, it did work; he didn't pay $500K. But perhaps I'm just wrong.
I'd be pretty sure his failure mode didn't take into account severity of his crimes. If you're gonna go operate on the scale he did, might as well go all out. Considering they can prosecute and probably give him life if they want, what's a few additional life sentences?
Ridiculous and slightly offensive comparison: It's not like Thomas Jefferson left an out clause for himself when starting the US revolution.
If you do have the assumption, axiom, belief, whatever, that drugs are moral and ease suffering, and that releasing data on these people will lead to long lives in prison, causing a chain of disastrous effects on many families, then yes, stopping the person that is trying to harm these other people may be considered.
Many people die each year due to the USG's war on drugs policy, and it has a violent affect on many of the countries to the south of Texas. Just for a bit of context/scope.
Edit: On second reading, I actually dislike your rhetoric even less. You can rephase anything as a series of immediate actions. It's not the harm of "reporting to law enforcement" it's what happens next.