Silk Road Lawyers Poke Holes In FBI's Story 191
wiredog points out an article from Brian Krebs about the court proceedings against Ross Ulbricht for his involvement in Silk Road, the online drug marketplace that was shut down (at least temporarily) by law enforcement last year. Ulbricht's lawyers have demanded information from the FBI in the course of discovery, and the documents provided by the government don't seem to confirm the FBI's story.
For starters, the defense asked the government for the name of the software that FBI agents used to record evidence of the CAPTCHA traffic that allegedly leaked from the Silk Road servers. The government essentially responded (PDF) that it could not comply with that request because the FBI maintained no records of its own access, meaning that the only record of their activity is in the logs of the seized Silk Road servers. ... The FBI claims that it found the Silk Road server by examining plain text Internet traffic to and from the Silk Road CAPTCHA, and that it visited the address using a regular browser and received the CAPTCHA page. But Weaver says the traffic logs from the Silk Road server (PDF) that also were released by the government this week tell a different story. ... “What happened is they contacted that IP directly and got a PHPMyAdmin configuration page.” See this PDF file for a look at that PHPMyAdmin page. Here is the PHPMyAdmin server configuration.
Perjury (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Informative)
No. Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court. Failing to provide evidence for your points is merely a justification for acquittal.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, sorry. That's even more accurate, but what's relevant in this case is that it has to be provable(like any other criminal charge).
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The FBI can't back up its "chain" of evidence. It SAYS it went from X to Z via Y, but has no records of Y. Oops... that's a fuckup.
This smells from miles away as "parallel construction" which is ILLEGAL. The government does not have authority to lie to courts in order to obtain a conviction.
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The government does not have authority to lie to courts in order to obtain a conviction.
The government may not have the authority to lie to courts _BUT_ unless someone hold them accountable then it is a moot point. A law that is not renforced is essentilly a law that has been rescinded. America is quickly reaching a point, if we are not there already, where their are two systems of law; one for the wealty, the privledged and the corporations and one for the rest of us. Guess who is getting fucked hard ?
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America is quickly reaching a point, if we are not there already, where their are two systems of law; one for the wealty, the privledged and the corporations and one for the rest of us. Guess who is getting fucked hard ?
I'm not going to claim I disagree with you, but whether we agree is not the real point.
The only answer to being fucked hard is to fuck back. You don't have to enjoy it, you just have to make sure THEY enjoy it a lot less.
Then, when the worst offenders are too sore to continue, you can work on building societal justice.
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Does that apply even if you're scratching your head while saying the false things (or the "least untruthful things") intentionally?
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Perjury is saying false things INTENTIONALLY while under oath in court.
The "intentionally" part is necessary, correct. But the "in court" part is not necessary. Perjury applies to intentional lies in all sorts of official proceedings and documents.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you're Keith Alexander. Then it apparently does not apply at all.
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Unless you're Keith Alexander. Then it apparently does not apply at all.
Perjury laws are enforced extremely rarely except for cases like Martha Stewart where you're a suspect for something else they can't prove. They are almost never enforced against anyone in government, nor against expert witnesses. (BTW, I personally think is wrong. I'm not arguing for it, just stating what is.)
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
Perjury is saying false things INTENTIONALLY while under oath in court.
Nitpick: Even that is not necessarily perjury. To be guilty of perjury, you not only have to intentionally lie under oath, but you have to lie about something of material significance to the case. For instance, if you lie about having sex with an intern during a deposition about an allegedly corrupt real estate deal in Arkansas, that is not perjury if the intern had nothing whatsoever to do with the real estate transactions.
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"while under oath in court" does not relate to discovery. You might be informative, but you are misleading everyone with your information.
You have some idea of the topic, and your limited experience led you down the wrong path.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
Failing in your parallel construction, and telling the court you discovered evidence in a way you couldn't have, seems to me to be perjury.
Not admitting to parallel construction under oath is perjury. You're just stating how you get caught. The act of parallel construction
is "almost" lying and denying it under oath is definitely lying. The only way to prevent perjury with parallel construction is to make
sure that the people who know about the parallel construction don't ever testify. One way to do this is with anonymous tips which
at least gives plausible deniability but unless the new investigation is unaware of the previous investigation then there are still
people who know about the parallel construction. It would be interesting for lawyers to start calling the primary investigators to
the stand at every trial and asking the simple question "are you aware of any parallel construction?" Basically force investigators
to give up the practice, admit to it, or commit perjury.
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It would be interesting for lawyers to start calling the primary investigators to the stand at every trial and asking the simple question "are you aware of any parallel construction?" Basically force investigators to give up the practice, admit to it, or commit perjury.
Jack Ryan: Who authorized this?
Ritter: I'm sure they'll ask you that.
Jack Ryan: Who authorized it?
Ritter: I have no recollection, Senator.
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I didn't read all of the documents. But where was the under oath part?
Telling the court how you uncovered the evidence is part of discovery, not the "under oath" swearing of individual witnesses. Or am I wrong here?
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the search and seizure of private information without warrant is a crime,
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To steal a funny word from spiritplumber [slashdot.org], it just makes them derpy people.
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Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court relevant to the case at hand. If the prosecutor asks you if you watch porn while prosecuting you for marijuana possession, it's not perjury if you lie because it's not relevant.
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Easy cheesy. [thefreedictionary.com]
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It could also be considered obstruction of justice if they are intentionally withholding evidence.
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>No. Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court. Failing to provide evidence for your points is merely a justification for acquittal.
It's perjury if you say "X is how we found him" but in fact X is a parallel construction built on warrentless snooping by the NSA, who work hard to compromise TOR.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're the government's witness. If agents committed perjury themselves on the stand that's a different matter. That's why we have judges and ultimately they can exclude testimony/evidence based on the credibility of the witnesses or evidence that they affirm is true. What frosts my cornflakes is that the Prosecutors have a conflict of interest here in seizing and selling assets that were DPR's, the bitcoins, before the trial even commenced. The proceeds of which wound up in the government coffers supporting the prosecution. That alone should have been prohibited by the judge in the case so it remains to be seen how these holes in the evidence trail will be handled. IMO this guy is still fucked.
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A. That's not a conflict of interest. The prosecutors are always supposed to represent the state's interest. It'd be like saying "conflict of interest because the defendant is paying his lawyer". It's kinda silly.
B. Once you're in a federal case, you're fucked as far as money goes. They're going to dump tons of money of proving your guilt. There is never a money shortage for prosecuting a federal case. If you're going to be accused of breaking a law in the US, be accused of breaking a local law.
C.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but there still has to be the right to defend yourself. If you take away the means by which I can pay lawyers, my funds, then I can't get the best legal representation. Therefore the prosecution is already convicting you before the trial even commences. This was already addressed by SCOTUS earlier this year [huffingtonpost.com] and it's sad that it went the way it did. It's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and I could see seizing them after trial but not before or at least the judge allowing the guy to pay for his defense. In this case the judge already allowed the bitcoins to be auctioned but there's the sense here of convicting before any adjudication has actually been done. That really needs to be fixed in the legal system.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Informative)
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So when do they sell off the assets of Wachovia and HSBC for their money laundering for international drug lords?
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The moral
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Well there's a difference between seizure and forfeiture and regrettably the 6th amendment is inadequate in allowing you to use your assets wholly to defend yourself. Thus you're right, you'll get the public defender who often opts for a plea deal rather than a rigorous defense.
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The task of public defenders is to make their boss look bad. Any who is too good and manages to actually get their clients found not-guilty will be quickly shunted to another department in favor of one more eager to talk them into plea bargains. They are also kept deliberately over-worked and under-funded.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Interesting)
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It is part of a larger problem with law enforcement lately where police can bring charges against the assets themselves and keep them...
Just to add to your statement to help clarify what is happening... I believe the RICO laws passed many years ago (1960's) were basically designed to drain the funds of mobsters so they could not higher big name lawyers to defend themselves. The promise at the time was that this would only be used for mafia like criminals. People agreed because the mafia was the "bad guy" and needed to be stopped at all costs.
The statutes use some legal tricks to define an inanimate object (currency) as a "person" or enti
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.
Is selling the evidence off before the trial (which it was seized to be used in) also par for the course ?
What happens to seized evidence after a not-guilty verdict - or do certain people already know that is not a possibility ?
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Oh, the selling part is made up wholesale by Virtucon. I guess I missed that part.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Informative)
So this [theguardian.com] is part of a collective hallucination?
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C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.
Seizing evidence is one thing, seizing evidence and selling it for money is perfectly legal, after the trial, conviction, etc. Doing so before trial is an entirely different thing, and will probably lead to some problems down the road, especially if DPR is not convicted. At that point, it's going to be a very very interesting case.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, this is the US, the selling of the evidence and even its seizure is independent of the trial, in fact, it would be handled in a seperate civil trial under a much more leniant standard of evidence, allowing for all of his assets to be seized and kept EVEN IF HIS TRIAL RETURNS A NOT-GUILTY VERDICT.
He can actually be found not-guilty, let free, and they still get to keep his stuff.
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this is the US, the selling of the evidence and even its seizure is independent of the trial, in fact, it would be handled in a seperate civil trial under a much more leniant standard of evidence, allowing for all of his assets to be seized and kept EVEN IF HIS TRIAL RETURNS A NOT-GUILTY VERDICT.
He can actually be found not-guilty, let free, and they still get to keep his stuff.
I just want to be put on the record saying: "That is completely insane."
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Insightful)
I just want to be put on the record saying: "That is completely insane."
Yes, it is... We have a rather broken legal system in the US because of this and many things like it...
Sadly, too many people are blind to it because it doesn't affect them in their day to day lives...
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Our system is designed to prosecute that which can be proved, not an examination for the truth.
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Maybe... I'd question if that is a good design... but putting that aside, the fact that you can have your stuff taken away, be acquitted, and not get it back, is wrong and immoral.
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Well that is pretty much how they got away with the drug war for so long, keep the enforcement to the poor minority communities, and let all the white suburban kids off with a stern talking to and treatment options.....has worked wonders for years.
Its perfectly ok to stomp your jack boot down as long as it lands on the poor, and preferably the dark skinned poor, but, this is America, we are pretty equal opportunity about that too, I have seen plenty of poor white people find themselves known by the system,
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, they sold the Silk Road money-laundered (mixed) bitcoins which nobody (even DPR) would claim, since that would be an easy admission to felony money laundering. Since they were unclaimed, they were sold.
DPR's PERSONAL bitcoins have still not been sold.
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Something of a trap was laid. The coins were siezed from silk road - but the accused's defense is that he is not actually DPR, but rather an innocent person who was caught up in the investigation. If he admits to possessing the coins, he effectively admits his guilt.
It's not that uncommon for the government to sieze and sell assets they can demonstrate to be proceeds of or used in committing crime, even when they can't actually secure a conviction. It's a procedure much loved by law enforcement agencies, as
Re:Perjury (Score:4, Insightful)
He was fucked the moment law enforcement decided that he was a bad guy.
Keep in mind that the law enfarcement deciding that someone is a bad guy doesn't imply that he isn't a bad guy.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
He was fucked the moment law enforcement decided that he was a bad guy.
Keep in mind that the law enfarcement deciding that someone is a bad guy doesn't imply that he isn't a bad guy.
Once law enforcement labels you a "bad guy" nowadays, the difference between being mislabeled and actually BEING a bad guy is pretty much academic. They're going to do their absolute best (and worst) to fuck your life up as much as possible.
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Re:Perjury (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when has The Constitution ACTUALLY stopped runaway law enforcement from fucking someone over?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=police+falsified+evidence [lmgtfy.com]
Or CNN. (Score:2)
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Right, whether you actually are or are not a bad guy has no influence on the amount of fuckage that will be rendered.
Re:Perjury (Score:5, Insightful)
So does this mean they go to jail for perjury?
That's not how it works in America. Only citizens take that risk of actually being punished for a crime. Government agencies are free to do what they want.
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It's true because I'm ignorant.
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Silly rabbit, jail is for peons!
Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a private company does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and customers.
Whenever an elected official does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and votes.
Whenever a law enforcement does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and... then what? It's not like they can be voted out and it's not like they have competition, so why should they bother changing anything?
I don't have a solution, other than "don't fcuk the police". Meaning: if someone belongs to an unethical unelected bureaucracy, don't talk to them, don't date them, don't sell them groceries, refuse to interact with them unless they force you to at gunpoint.
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Yes. I occasionally shop at WalMart. I wish they paid their employees more, but they're not "evil" by my standards - if someone gave you the option of getting $10,000 or having that money given to a WalMart employee, what would you choose? If you would choose the employee then I would call you a hypocrite - you always have the option of walking into a WalMart and giving money to employ
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a law enforcement does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and... then what?
And then you end up with a society where the reputation of law enforcement officers is such that "fuck the police", "don't snitch", etc., become popular sentiments, and respect for the rule of law is replaced by a hatred for the agents of an oppressive state. The failure by the police to police their own (blue code of silence, etc.), entirely expected (and deemed inevitable) by many, has gotten us to where we are today. Where we go from here is anyone's guess.
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Another no-knock warrant served after midnight, cops all SWATted up, flashbangs a-flying'. Sure sounds fun.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a solution
Here's the solution: You know those flyers you receive in the mail before election day from politicians saying they will "get tough on crime" and have the endorsement of the police chief and/or police union? Whenever you get one of these flyers, vote for the other guy.
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Maybe so, maybe no. The SR forums had people panicking because they discovered IP address leaks several times. It's not exactly unimaginable that SR did indeed leak its own IP address, especially as a comment on the Krebs blog suggests the nginx config was busted.
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Bonus points for the fact that nobody noticed how your pop culture reference was actually relevant. [wikipedia.org]
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My unconstitutional trumps your FBI illegal.
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It doesn't work that way. It is also illegal to make shit up in court. Their only legal option at that point is to not testify at all. If that means no prosecution, so be it. That is what the law actually demands.
The reasoning is simple. The NSA is the actual accuser which the defendant has a right to face. The FBI's testimony is merely hearsay which is not permissible.
How does this matter? (Score:2)
I'm confused.
Re:How does this matter? (Score:5, Informative)
speculating (Score:2)
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I thought I touched that base. Meanwhile, the NSA is still the most likely source.
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I thought I touched that base. Meanwhile, the NSA is still the most likely source.
My personal front runner for this is the DEA, but that's just my $0.02.
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If thaty was the case, they could just say so in court. It's not illegal to accept a tip from random people who stumble upon a crime.
What does it matter? (Score:2)
So-called "parallel construction" isn't illegal or unconstitutional, and even IF -- and that's a very big if -- the initial tip came from "NSA", keep in mind that there has been a decades-old exemption for things like international terrorism and international narcotics trafficking when discovered during the course of legitimate foreign signals intelligence collection.
So, while you may not like it, nothing that is illegal or unconstitutional occurred here, and it is not the result of post-9/11 laws, or "new
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Parallel construction isn't only about the NSA...it is any alternative construction of evidence to conceal a sensitive source or method that may have led to and/or assisted in the investigation. It's very old, and the only thing some legal experts say about it is that it MAY -- key word being may -- run afoul of evidentiary rules and discovery procedures. It's a very old concept, and as long as the alternate chain of evidence is completely supportable and nothing illegal occurred* to initiate the investigat
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But you can never "know" the discovery was incidental, under any construct, because you can always assume the government is lying -- with or without the Snowden disclosures. And we didn't learn from Snowden how collection is defined in a SIGINT context; electronic collection has been defined that way since at least 1982. I agree that the FBI (or any government agency) cannot engage another agency/country/etc. in order to skirt US laws...and I didn't say they should be able to, nor do I believe they did.
Furt
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...it doesn't have to be "spooks". In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW, not the capability, that is paramount.
What about in the United States? ;-P
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Wow, you're a real true believer, aren't you?
So do you understand the concern here? That with parallel construction, the 4th amendment is all but violated in name. When they have a complete panopticon and know exactly what everyone is doing at all times, and in a legal system where the typical person arguably* commits 3 felonies a day [threefeloniesaday.com], it doesn't matter if they don't publicly admit to violating privacy. And that without the basic right to privacy, democracy is all but doomed.
(*You don't have enough wealth t
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If you think we live under the rule of law then why the fuck hasn't James Clapper being charged with perjury yet?
Because it's not as simple as you appear to wish it to be [fas.org]. And this is from a longtime crusader against government secrecy who is on "your side".
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Likewise for that xbox to the feds thing on /. the other day.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
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Evidence not legally collected won't be admissible, so if the defendant's lawyers can call BS on some of the legally obtained evidence and have it excluded, what's left might not be enough for a conviction.
Re:How does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, because the US has a set of requirements for defining the circumstances under which the government can search private property, and the scope of that search if allowed.
The FBI has effectively just admitted that they had no legitimate way of knowing that they had probable cause. This means one of two things - They broke the law to obtain that evidence (the police can't search you to get the evidence they need to get approval to search you); or more likely, they lied about the real origin of their evidence (ie, the NSA told them "go here and do this, and make up a good cover story").
Re:How does this matter? (Score:5, Informative)
We also know that this Parallel Construction process really does happen. Thomas Tamm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Tamm/ [wikipedia.org], one of the many pre-Snowden leakers, was a lawyer at the Justice Department whose job it was to prepare warrants for the FISA court. He had cases where the basis for the warrant, the "probable cause", was based on illegal warrentless surveillance by the NSA. He knew that this was illegal but it was up to the FISA court to deny the warrants. They didn't. Instead they granted many such warrants and the decisions were never open to public scrutiny. After seeing too much of this, Tamm leaked the story to the New York Times in 2005. The Bush administration was able to dismiss the story, more or less as just allegations. This and similar treatment of other leaked stories was the reason that Snowden released he had to leak hard evidence and lots of it. The PBS Frontline documentary, The United States of Secrets has a good summary of these events.
Whaa? (Score:2)
Silk Road had their servers configured so that the PHPMyAdmin pages were accessible from the internet at large? Sheesh. No wonder they got brought down.
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Lawyer is wrong, no holes in FBI story (Score:5, Informative)
So.. (Score:4, Insightful)
FBI: We got the evidence through illict methods, so here is a nice little story we made up that is designed to be difficult to argue against.
Snowden leaks: NSA data now used by DEA, others. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great link: http://www.alexaobrien.com/sec... [alexaobrien.com]
NSA programs PINWALE, MARINA, NUCLEON are now used to share their collected data (that isn't actually "collected" under new legal redefinition.) with DOD and who knows how many other agencies.
"Parallel Construction" is used to hide sources.
This is what happens when checks and balances decay in a system that has no honor or respect for what once made it great.
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Often, I see TV shows that dramatize the hindrance of proper procedure to convict a "bad guy". But what threat does Silk Road represent versus government agencies that use illegal data collection and secret information to convict people? More people die from legal prescriptions than illegal -- but regardless of what anyone believes about Silk Road's activities, they bypass laws that are designed to protect people (whether they do or not). While the justice system is bypassing it's own rules, or eroding lega
Buying a leak (Score:3)
What if DPR offered a $10 million bounty for someone at the NSA to leak proof of illegal collection / parallel construction -- the proceeds coming from the return of his money.
------------
If you had access to this proof would you take the offer?
The War on Drugs (TM) (Score:4, Insightful)
FBI Had VPN Access (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is the FBI is covering up that they somehow got VPN access into the Silk Road's internal server network. The same VPN access Ulbricht used to administer the servers from his local coffee shop.
They had already been tipped off about Ulbricht when he tried to order fake IDs from Canada. Then they figured out he was spending a good amount of time using the local coffee shop's wifi. They then sniffed his wifi traffic directly or just ordered the coffee shop / ISP to allow them to do the same. They couldn't decrypt his VPN session but they could see the destination IP which either lead to his server host provider or a 3rd party VPN service. Either way they just pressured the company that runs the service to give them the keys. Now that they have access to the server network they could collect what ever information they needed to build a case.
The key to my theory is the PDF of the PHPMyAdmin access. Notice it's an internal IP address. No way they were accessing that from anywhere but the server network.
The Poisoned Tree (Score:2)
Parallel construction (Score:2)
PHPmyadmin's history of bugs and problems (Score:2)
Re:Methinks that (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. And now the government must be stoked that it will have a test case to bring to the Supreme Court so that the Supreme Court can twist out some "logic" to say parallel construction is OK. They say that bad facts make bad law, and Ubrecht is fairly unlikeable, what with the attempts to find a hit man. From a "destroy the 4th" perspective, this case is even better than Smith v. Maryland: http://www.google.com/url?q=ht... [google.com] (*). The Feds must be creaming their pants in anticipation of having parallel construction deemed constitutional.
(*) This is the grandfather of our massive indiscriminate surveillance policy. The short summary is that the police were too lazy to get a search warrant that would surely have been granted, simply had the phone company set one up. And although it dealt with a single individual, with specific facts sufficient for a warrant, and covered a specific and short time period, the Third Party Doctrine took on a different character after that, being applied to all people, in the absence of any evidence, for all time.
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