[ASneakyFox]

I personally think ulbricht is guilty..

I just wish the prosecutors and investigators didn't rely on so many questionable and in some cases possibly illegal tactics to bring him down. It really just makes him look more innocent.

As notorious as he was ( and as bad as he was at online security) the us government shouldn't be having so much trouble to prove their case (assuming their allegations are correct)

[tomp]

I too think he is guilty.

Guilty of breaking non-sense, victim-less laws. Laws that restrict usage of non-addictive mind-altering substances that are much less harmful than other, legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, medical drugs). Laws that shouldn't even be on the books! Laws that cause millions of dollars of damage and thousands of deaths each year. Laws that power organized crime.

The drug laws.

I totally support him, and I hope he comes out a free man, albeit his business will probably be ruined.

[nhstanley]

> ...non-addictive...

I agree with your general point, but SR was being used for all kinds of things including selling Cocaine and Heroin (and also for not selling drugs but services). Those are very addictive drugs by almost any definition. Fine if you want to argue they are less harmful than, say, alcohol, but they are definitely addictive. Do not allow your point to be weakened by stating something that is clearly incorrect.

[davvolun]

Fair enough, I always go back to something a high school teacher mentioned when these types of arguments come up. Martin Luther King Jr. broke the law to make a point, to fight injustice, to "stick it to the man." But MLK unequivocally and publicly broke those laws; he made the statement 'these are unjust laws and they need to be changed' and suffered the punishment for breaking those laws, as determined by a court of law, mitigated by public outcry. Illegally copying and selling movies because you think copyright law is bullshit, as an example, is not living up to MLK's method, it's having your cake and eating it too. You think a law is unjust, fight the law, don't break it and try to get away with it. That makes you, at best, little better than those in organized crime. And, at the end of the day, if you've made tons of money off of the crime, and you stand to make more if the law is repealed, it really waters down your moral/ethical argument.

[hncomplete]

SR also sold identity theft kits, hacking tools and such.

It was not just a place of victimless crime. It would be nice if just ONE of you DPR-loving sociopaths would be honest enough to admit this.

[tripzilch]

SR also sold identity theft kits, hacking tools and such.

(I agree with "hncomplete"'s point, minus the "sociopath" remark)

[hahainternet]

> I totally support him, and I hope he comes out a free man, albeit his business will probably be ruined.

He tried to have people killed. You are defending this. What the hell is wrong with you?

I don't support drug laws. I ESPECIALLY don't support attempted murder.

[mortov]

"I personally think ulbricht is guilty.."

Which is presumably the intention of the fanfare around the smears - pollute the jury pool as much as possible to avoid the inconvenience of people making a decision based on the facts or evidence presented in court; get out the jury deliberations quickly, just go for whatever knee-jerk guilty feeling you got when you read the headlines about how evil the defendant is; don't bother reading any detail or anything that might hurt your brain and destroy your prejudices !

Despite my reservations, the US would be better served if it had contempt of court laws like England which specifically prohibit discussion of any details of court cases prior to them being heard precisely in order to stop this sort of situation happening.

edit: spelling.

[ceejayoz]

Pollute the jury pool? If they bring in 100 potential jurors maybe one might have some basic knowledge about Bitcoin if they're lucky. A few might recall hearing about it on the nightly news once. Chances are none will have heard anything about "the Dread Pirate Roberts".

[madaxe_again]

Guilty... interesting word. Guilty of what? Under which jurisdiction? By whose measure? The media's? Yours? I assume you'd like a tarring and feathering? Shouldn't you also be talking about the state's guilt for using "possibly illegal" tactics, as I'd say that sticking false charges on someone for murder is a damn sight worse than being an intermediary in an illicit marketplace.

Hell, why aren't they going after banks for providing cash, which is an anonymous "currency" used on the illegal drug marketplaces known as "the park" and "behind the nursery school"?

I think the man deserves respect for sticking his neck out and doing something that's sparked fundamental discourse on drug policy.

[s_q_b]

Guilty of violating the USC Drug Kingping Act amongst others. Guilty of running an $80 million narcotics ring. Guilty of murder for hire. Guilty under the law as written.

You may believe him innocent by appeal to natural law, or un-prosecutable due to the Fourth Amendment, and on the latter you may be right. But from a moral standpoint, "guilty" is definitely the right word.

[logfromblammo]

I personally think that I should be skeptical of information released by entities that have a vested interest in influencing public opinion.

I think it highly likely that the prosecution is going over the evidence that it intends to use with a fine-toothed comb to avoid potential embarrassments during discovery. As this is a somewhat newsworthy case, they are going to be particularly cautious about making sure all the keystone facts are supported by admissible evidence. On top of that, they have to conceal some of their tactics so that they can continue to use them successfully in the future.

If Ulbricht did solicit murder for hire, I'm not entirely certain that he would have even thought of trying that if government agents were not already investigating him, due to his involvement in the drug trade. It might have been entrapment, just as a means of putting him into police custody, making him unable to interfere with further investigations by erasing trails that had not yet been followed, and also providing a means to seize his Bitcoins.

By that hypothesis, the state suspects he is Dread Pirate Roberts, but lacks the evidence to prove it. People in custody are less able to shield themselves from investigations. So they set him up with an illegal entrapment that would not necessarily support a conviction, but is plenty good enough for an indictment and arrest. Then they grab him and execute warrants based on the "I gotcha, sucka" charges that will end up supporting the drug kingpin case. With that access, they make seizures and file civil forfeiture cases against the assets, because the legal standards for those are woefully skewed in the state's favor. The prosecutor declines to pursue the murder for hire charges because he always knew they were bogus, and instead dumps all the gathered evidence into the drug trafficking and racketeering charges, as it is now sanitized by warrants under the previous indictment.

If that is indeed what has happened here, and it results in a conviction, I don't care how guilty Ulbricht is, because the state should not be able to corrupt our legal system in that fashion. He should go free, and the prosecutors and police that were involved should fill that cell in his place.

[kemayo]

> It might have been entrapment, just as a means of putting him into police custody, making him unable to interfere with further investigations by erasing trails that had not yet been followed, and also providing a means to seize his Bitcoins.

It's only entrapment if government agents persuaded him to commit a crime he wasn't otherwise inclined to commit. For it to be a defense he'd have to show that the government actively talked him into hiring someone -- just offering to do it and seeing if he takes them up on it isn't enough. (The analogy I've seen used is that an undercover cop saying "hey, want to buy some cocaine?" isn't entrapment.)

[s_q_b]

I love it. They used to say "The only way to know what the Times is free to print anything it wishes is for the Enquirer to be able to do so too."

Ubricht proved we're not dealing with supervillians. Just security experts with lots of funding. Ordinary humans that can be set back using tech just like us.

Their difficulty in proving their case gives me hope that there's still time to make technology a force for good, both within and without government.