Evidence the government will present in the Silk Road trial

http://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-evidence-list/

by jtreminio • 12 years ago

35 28 12 years ago

nemo3• 12 years ago

This is a pretty poor write up.

"The government's argument is that, as the site's alleged administrator, Dread Pirate Roberts, anything that occurred there is his fault."

The government's argument is that Ulbricht, as the alleged administrator of the site who was not only fully aware of what was happening, but was designing and tailoring the site to facilitate illegal behavior, courting dealers/criminals to the site, and profiting from the illegal activity he facilitated, so he was engaged in a criminal conspiracy. "Anything that occurred there is his fault" is a ludicrous misrepresentation of what an accusation of criminal conspiracy means.

Also with that pile of evidence, esp. finding him logged in as the admin. while arresting him, it's looking completely unlikely that Ulbricht would not be found guilty, esp. with the completely inept/absurd responses by the defense team.

ubernostrum2• 12 years ago

Yup.

This is like some of the torrent/pirate sites, where the ordinary safe-harbor type of defense would be "Who? Us? We had no idea people were doing that sort of thing!" and gets shot down by "Yeah, you were designing and advertising it specifically to enable that sort of thing, attract people who would do that sort of thing, and talked at length about how your site was entirely for doing that sort of thing."

NoMoreNicksLeft6• 12 years ago

but was designing and tailoring the site to facilitate illegal behavior

So if I have booths built at my nightclub that make it easier for dealers to sell smack without others being able to see...

It's a crime to build furniture?

How is that sane?

We're at the point in the drug war where it's such an unspeakable and incredible failure, that the government feels empowered to twist laws or even make them up on the spot to get the rare PR victory (that will of course mean no real world change).

It's sick.

krapp4• 12 years ago

No, the crime would be making it easy to deal smack in your nightclub. And then taking a cut of the sales.

ubernostrum2• 12 years ago

So if I have booths built at my nightclub that make it easier for dealers to sell smack without others being able to see...

If you advertised it as "NoMoreNicksLeft's House of Smack Dealing, totally anonymous drug-dealing booths, reasonable rates, guaranteed privacy and security for all your drug-dealing needs"... then I think you can see where the issue is.

And the issue with Silk Road is largely that it was explicitly designed to cater to, and advertised as catering to, illegal activity.

nemo3• 12 years ago

If you worked with the smack dealers, set up a space explicitly designed for drug transactions, and then took a cut of the profits then that would be a better analogy, and you'd definitely be guilty of criminal conspiracy.

at-fates-hands4• 12 years ago

This is all you need to know:

After federal agents put Ulbricht in handcuffs, they say they had his machine still logged into Silk Road’s backend. He was working on user support tickets when it happened.

And this little ditty:

Being allegedly signed into Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts, signed into the Pidgin instant messenger app as Dread Pirate Roberts, and chatting with Cirrus (there’s that name again) will all be important as the prosecution attempts to solidify the links between Ulbricht and Dread Pirate Roberts.

GAME. SET. MATCH - government. Any hacker knows the last thing you want to have happen is having the feds nab you while you're still logged into a session. No encryption, no quick nuke command. This is the worst possible scenario and the Feds caught him with his pants down.

junto• 12 years ago

The only way he's going to get out of this is on a technicality, and that is extremely unlikely. If he does get off they have the attempted murder charges. He's looking pretty finished before the trial even starts.

Does this leak taint the jury?

at-fates-hands4• 12 years ago

>> Does this leak taint the jury?

Nope.

The attorneys will ask potential jury members during the selection process if they have been following the case in the papers. If the have, it may be grounds for challenging a person to serve on the jury for this specific case if they have a pre-determined view about Ulbricht's guilt or innocence.

The process is total chess match since both sides want to get people who are sympathetic to their client or their cause. You should watch the movie "Runaway Jury". In the meantime, here's a quick overview of the jury selection process works:

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/how-are-poten...

NoMoreNicksLeft6• 12 years ago

Only criminals that the government doesn't give a shit about get off on technicalities.

Those that they've got a hard-on for, well, for them they don't even have to have a rational theory of the crime, nor does the crime need to be a crime.

Alex3917• 12 years ago

Is there any sort of phone app or comparable tool that will act as a dead man's switch and automatically log you out if you get more than a couple feet from your computer?

at-fates-hands4• 12 years ago

A lot of the guys I know run TAILS (https://tails.boum.org/) on a USB stick. They say if the cops bust them, all they have to do is rip out the stick and they're safe since TAILS encrypts all your files.

How accurate their statement is, I don't know.

dustingetz• 12 years ago

Which is also the point of using a whole SWAT team to arrest a hacker.

Evidence the government will present in the Silk Road trial

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