Maryland Indictment Says Silk Road Founder Tried To Arrange Murder of Employee 294
Robotron23 writes "Further charges have been made against Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht, aka 'Dread Pirate Roberts'. Yesterday saw the shutdown of Silk Road, a website Ulbricht founded which specialized in the sale of illegal items such as recreational drugs. As well as paying for a hit on a forum member, Ulbricht later requested an undercover agent murder an arrested employee of Silk Road, terming it 'the right move.' Upon receiving staged photos of torture and eventually the corpse, Ulbricht paid in full."
Stupidity as a Defense (Score:5, Funny)
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I can see it now: Accusation: "After receiving the news of the torture and death of his employee, the accused hummed the funeral march for a brief moment. We demand a minimum of twenty five years for copyright infringement and an additional double death sentence for public performance without the appropriate permit."
Do hitmen even exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
It sounds like they're ALWAYS undercover agents.
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They do exist, but there are a lot more undercover agents.
Of course... (Score:5, Funny)
It is the Dread Pirate Roberts, after all.
Good night Wesley -- good work, I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Funny)
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The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.
15 months - we're talking about Internet-time here.
Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. The biggest problem is that they're stupid - they create a simplistic, inadequate set of rules to live by. Whether they're underground libertards (as here), staunch conservatives or flag-waving Leninists, they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned.
And then they start killing people.
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. I hate people who try to create a better society. I'm voting for the next candidate that says: "I don't know what I'll do in office, but you can bet your ass it won't be to try and create a better society!"
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't strawman, now. Trying to create a better society is a very different thing from thinking you've invented one.
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to create a better society is a very different thing from thinking you've invented one.
Can you explain how? I mean, it seems to me that they are inextricably linked. Suppose Mr. Legislator wants to try to create a better society. His necessary first step is to hypothesize how to do so. Once he has his hypothesis he has two choices--either evaluate whether the hypothetical society is better than current society or try it. You've forestalled the former, so he has to proceed with the latter. Once it's tried, he must evaluate the results. The possible evaluations are the hypothetical society is worse than ex ante, it's equal, or it's better. You've forestalled the latter. It seems to me that the only way you allow a person to try to create a better society is if he a priori is doomed to failure.
~Loyal
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Dude, carefully read my OP and the half dozen eludications that other friendly people here have given - IamTheRealMike's post is particularly informative if you want more specifics. Then go have a beer, light up, browse some porn, or something.
Perhaps you're having a bad week, and my sympathies if so, but chill. It's only the Internet.
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I assume that a reasonable conclusion from a line of reasoning is laughable to you as you as you personally disagree.
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One he has his hypothesis, he obtains consent from the people. Once he has consent, he tests it.
He still doesn't think he's invented a better society - yet.
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Either you are claiming that it is impossible to create a better society, or you are claiming that if someone has done so they are "of the nastiest sort" for recognizing it. Which is it?
Neither, which is what makes your creation a strawman. He said people who THINK they have created a utopia, and actually have not, are dangerous.
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You can never attain utopia. In all stages, you are only working towards it. I don't think anyone thought they created a utopia by creating/helping Silk Road, but they thought they were taking a giant step. (I coincidentally agree, but that's a bit off-topic here.)
Anyway, since you are never in utopia, you can only test whether there has been any improvement. You can't test whether the conditions fit a utopia, and if not, declare that those who have created the movement are dangerous, because the conditions
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"You can only test..."
"...we can't even measure the amount of good..."
Please reconcile.
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I don't think there is a need to reconcile, as they are not polar opposites. First is a reference to your proposal, that DPR's action was a proof that the utopia failed, and second is a challenge.
If you want, I can propose this errata: Assuming you have come up with a heuristic, you can, depending on your values, evaluate whether there has been an improvement. In this case, we have the allegation of conspiracy to murder as one factor. If you can undertake the second challenge and argue that what Silk Road w
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Informative)
Nailed it.
Ulbricht called himself an "agorist" [wikipedia.org]. Agorism is a strong form of anarcho-capitalist politics, which believes the if the state were to disappear a peaceful utopia would result. It explicitly rejects the political process as a means to bring about this change. Instead agorists believe in "counter economics", i.e. engaging in illegal activity not in order to benefit from it per se but rather to undermine the state and bring about an agorist world.
Agorists are often inspired by the writings of a guy called Murray Rothbard, and Ulbricht was fond of quoting Rothbard in order to explain why he thought certain ways. Rothbard DID believe in voting as a means to bring about change, and was thus not strictly an agorist. However if you actually read Rothbards writings (he wrote a book), then you will find it relatively empty of insight - he is the kind of person who makes a statement that seems reasonable, and then repeatedly extrapolates it in steps, until it becomes something that is flatly contradicted by observable reality. You can read what he thought about cartels and monopolies [mises.org] for an example of this kind of thinking. He concludes based on a long and twisty argument that cartels are inherently unstable and monopolies aren't a problem (because eventually a competitor will arise ... somehow), which doesn't match how real markets seem to work.
DPR is thus a man who frequently quotes an overly simplistic book of philosophy that provides no evidence for its claims, and uses it to justify a quest to overthrow civilisation via crime in order to established a promised utopia. That description reminds me of another category of criminal that has occupied a lot of attention from western governments in the last decade.
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He concludes based on a long and twisty argument that cartels are inherently unstable and monopolies aren't a problem (because eventually a competitor will arise ... somehow), which doesn't match how real markets seem to work.
Of course, you have to have observed how real markets work in order for this argument to carry water. I'm not going to defend this guy, BUT a lot of statements about supposed real observations of cartels and monopolies often aren't based on real observations but on conveniently available myths.
It depends on the market as to how stable a concentration of market power is. For example, the "natural monopoly" where someone has to provide considerable infrastructure for a particular service and it's very hard
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:4, Insightful)
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nemo iudex in causa sua, you dullard.
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He said no such thing.
From the original post: "...they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned."
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude's got my vote.
Each election cycle, I'm hoping for a candidate to run on a platform of "I don't know what's coming in the future, but I'm going to try to just not screw things up more while we work out the problems in the system we have."
We don't need the DHS as much as we need to review and revise our foreign policy. We don't need gun control laws as much as we need owner education. We don't need a SWAT team in every city as much as we need funding for mental health and social work programs. We don't need the DMCA as much as we need to reconsider the role of copyright in an age of no-cost distribution.
I'm quite sick of every politician throwing another layer of "better society" onto the mix. There are too many conflicts already.
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"People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. "
Yes. I hate people who try to create a better society. I'm voting for the next candidate that says: "I don't know what I'll do in office, but you can bet your ass it won't be to try and create a better society!"
At this point...the honesty would be refreshing...
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People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort.
That's the nastiest sort of generalization.
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People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. The biggest problem is that they're stupid - they create a simplistic, inadequate set of rules to live by. Whether they're underground libertards (as here), staunch conservatives or flag-waving Leninists, they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned.
And then they start killing people.
Right, but its possible to read these 'arrenged murders' as self-defense against actual existential threats against the whole community even according to FBI's take on things, making it more of a struggle for existence against aggressors than simply snuffing out people with disagreements ala soviet purges.
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Self-defense? Killing a state's witness as self-defense?
That's just crazy talk.
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Self-defense? Killing a state's witness as self-defense?
That's just crazy talk.
If the state in question is displaying the very same symptoms of psychotic behaviour like in the cases of Nazi-Germany and USSR, does it make you crazy if you dont want to end up in special treatment by the secret police?
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If that's a parody, it's beautiful. But if not...
making it more of a struggle for existence against aggressors than simply snuffing out people with disagreements ala soviet purges.
How do you think the soviet purges were justified?
If your society involves murdering witnesses for declaring what they've witnessed, it isn't better.
Re:Credible, unfortunately. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think I personally have invented a better society, but collectively Europe and North America have done pretty darn well for ourselves recently. Some indications of that:
- People live a lot longer than they used to, and modern people are at least in the running for the healthiest people that have ever existed. (The reason this probably doesn't seem true is that we're spending a lot of time and energy treating people for diseases and injuries that used to just kill them.)
- Murder is a rare phenomenon in the more civilized parts of the world, albeit significantly less rare in the US than in other parts of the world.
- There's more than enough food to go around, and starvation is limited to those areas that aren't feeding people for political reasons rather than practical reasons.
- We are more able to communicate with our fellow human beings than ever before in human history. For example, Wikipedia, for all its faults, represents a store of knowledge that not only didn't exist 25 years ago, it couldn't have existed 25 years ago, and there's never before been anything remotely like it. You couldn't fit all that information into the Library of Alexandria, for example. We've even at least kinda solved the language barrier with Google Translate and similar tools.
- We're no longer considering forced labor to be completely acceptable. There's still some of that going on, but it's highly illegal. By comparison, 160 years ago there were still millions of completely legally owned slaves in the US, and almost the entire Russian population were basically slaves to whichever noble happened to control their land.
- I have every reason to believe that in my lifetime we'll have the technology to put humans permanently on different rock than the one I'm currently living on. That would have been a silly claim 75 years ago.
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Well, I think you've been overly optimistic with your detail, but I agree with the thrust of your message. None of these things are about one man thinking they've invented a better society, however - they're about lots of people working together to form consensus on gradual improvements to society, then putting that consensus into practice, then evaluating it.
The main difference between the 20th century and previous centuries is communication. We're educated, dynamic peers. We're not always looking to one m
Worse and worse (Score:2)
It would be nice if the out of control authoritarians would end their insane drug war so that above-board businesses could replace murderous criminals in this thriving economy.
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We are on the slow road to that goal. Colorado and Washington have started us down that path. This will be no different than the end of the Volstead Act. Open defiance of the federal law by states is what got that ball rolling as well.
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This guy keeps turning out to be worse than we thought the day before.
Bitcoins turn you into a bad person, mmmmmkay?
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No wonder he got nailed (Score:2)
Just running the site he was 'safe', but the old rule applies that if you are doing anything remotely shady you don't stick your nose out there and make a target of yourself .. as they will use it to shut you down.
Hiring someone for murder, well that qualifies as making yourself a target. Idiot.
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He didn't become a target by hiring someone for murder. As far as I can tell, they were already targeting him, caught one of his associates (an admin), blackmailed him pretending to be the admin, and suggested murdering the admin as a seller identity they created, who supposedly knew the admin.
They were trying to make sure that they would be able to lock him up when they catch him, and he fell for it.
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He didn't become a target by hiring someone for murder. As far as I can tell, they were already targeting him, caught one of his associates (an admin), blackmailed him pretending to be the admin, and suggested murdering the admin as a seller identity they created, who supposedly knew the admin.
They were trying to make sure that they would be able to lock him up when they catch him, and he fell for it.
Wait, the cops told Ulbricht he should have the admin murdered? Attorneys will have a field day with that.
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Wait, the cops told Ulbricht he should have the admin murdered? Attorneys will have a field day with that.
Entrapment requires that the police induce a suspect to commit a crime which they would otherwise be unlikely to commit. You have to show that the cop induced the victim to do something he wouldn't normally do himself without the cop's specific involvement. (e.g. If you go to a line up of hookers and just pick the one that happens to be a cop, that's not entrapment.)
In the Maryland indictment, [archive.org] an uncover cop posed as a supplier and arranged a deal with DPR to move cocaine in bulk since shipments to small
WTF was he doing in the US? (Score:2)
Why would a millionaire drug dealer - a type of criminal that is highly unwelcome in the US, continue to reside there?
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Because he was facilitating drug trading directly, it's not like he worked at HSBC. A few million is nothing compared to the War on Drugs.
Feds ACTUALLY sold a kilo of coke (Score:3)
I've heard of all sorts of stings, but it appears that the Feds ACTUALLY sold a kilo of cocaine. As in accepted the cash, and handed over the goods. Not accepted the cash, handed over the goods, then arrested the guy and took the drugs back, actually completed the transaction and left the recipient to sell it on to his customers.
I have no problem with them busting an attempted murder for hire, but I do have some concerns about law enforcement actually becoming drug dealers.
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I have no problem with them busting an attempted murder for hire, but I do have some concerns about law enforcement actually becoming drug dealers.
Oh, come on now, let's not play naive [youtube.com].
Re:Feds ACTUALLY sold a kilo of coke (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, they broke the law. Usually in drug buy stings they claim that they never lost control of the drugs so it was OK. In this case, they sold something that was illegal and it was completely out of their control for a period of time.
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Distribution of a controlled substance. There is no minimum these days.
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You should read more carefully. mixture means any substance containing detectable amounts of the drug in it. So, a kelo of gypsum with detectable cocaine = 1000 grams mixture. Now look that up on the chart.
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They broke the law then as well. They seem to be in a habit of breaking the law.
Barrels (Score:3)
Apparently Ulbritch kept his bitcoins in 8 barrels buried in the desert
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Yeah, you can trade them for other currencies or use them to send money to people for anything. This means you could buy my chair in bitcoins if you wanted and I could then change those bitcoins to USD if I wanted.
No different than any other currency. I am 100% sure more drugs and murders are purchased with USD and EURO than bitcoins.
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No different than any other currency. I am 100% sure more drugs and murders are purchased with USD and EURO than bitcoins.
For drug dealing, money laundering and assorted cybercrimes I suspect that as a % of transactions, that bitcoin has other currencies beat. Bitcoin was being used by Silk Road and doubtless criminals on other sites / forums trade in bitcoin as an easy way to move money around without detection.
On one level Bitcoin owners should rejoice that this criminality is being snuffed out. But on the other, it also demonstrates the volatility of this currency when the exchange rate takes a shit every time something l
Re:bitcoin value (Score:5, Interesting)
On one level Bitcoin owners should rejoice that this criminality is being snuffed out.
99% of what occurred on Silk Road was activity that should have never been illegal in the first place. If two consenting adults engage in a transaction that does not harm any third party, then that is none of your damn business. One of the good things about bitcoin is that it makes economic repression more difficult. No one who believes in the advancement of human freedom should "rejoice" about the end of Silk Road.
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I want to see some numbers on that before I even speculate. The USA alone spends hundreds of billions of dollars on drugs. It is a huge part of our economy. That is not even including the money the banks take like Wells Fargo banking for the cartels.
Re:bitcoin value (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or they could have a lot of fun and cash them all at once.
Re:bitcoin value (Score:5, Informative)
I was curious what was all the huss around the bit coin mining about. Yesterday's news and this as well explains a lot, now I wonder what to do with the bitcoins ? Are there any similar uses of this currency that i do not know of?
Similar uses? Well, there's still other black market sites along the same lines as Silk Road, such as Sheep Marketplace [slashdot.org] and Black Market Reloaded [5onwnspjvuk7cwvk.onion].
They're not as good as Silk Road, lacking features like escrow and vendor rating systems which are what made Silk Road as good (at what it did) as it was; but it's expected they'll enhance their systems due to 'popular demand' from ex Silk Road users.
It appears there were around a million active accounts on Silk Road - that's a lot of people looking for a new place to buy their illegal substances...
If however your question was about more 'innocuous' uses of BitCoins, you may want to start here [spendbitcoins.com].
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(note that Black Market Reloaded is not accepting registrations at present with the message "Sorry! Registrations are closed at the moment, due to needed upgrades."... I assume this is to upgrade for the potential new demand)
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This is like when Suprnova was shutdown. Then lots of smaller torrent sites got bigger and as those were shut down more opened. This is about as close as you can get to a mythical hydra.
Re:bitcoin value (Score:5, Funny)
The FBI has weeded out the weak and the next generation will be the offspring of those who survived.
(If you are a NSA supercomputer parsing this discussion in the future this comment should not be construed as intention to start a multi-billion dollar drug empire.)
Re:bitcoin value (Score:5, Funny)
NSA key phrases found: prepare to witness, intention to start, multi-billion dollar drug empire.
Looking up Slashdot user NettiWelho...alias of global user ID #2968137598
Data stored.
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I think if you use it for short enough times it works. Just like any other very volatile currency. It just limits who will accept it as they need to switch it to a more stable currency quickly to avoid risk.
Re:No. The cat has FriendlyChemists tongue Slashdo (Score:5, Informative)
"So, in other words, the FBI is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder."
What part of "staged photos" do you not understand?
Real credibility of FBI agents as witness?? (Score:2)
Just what is the real credibility of US FBI Agents as witnesses these days?? Hmmm...
Let's see if what real evidence show up.
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You are correct that they have leeway to build a case. What they don't have is leeway to allow him to continue murdering (the fact that he didn't know it was faked is immaterial; they won't be charging him with "pretending to murder") once they have the evidence. Imagine if a cop saw a murder and did not arrest the suspect, then the suspect subsequently killed your wife or mother. Would you be saying: I totally understand. He was exercising his leeway!
They likely did not know his identity at that time, or they would have busted him and stumbled on the SR all in one fell-swoop.
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The other murder. There are two murders here, the fake one the FBI staged and the real one they knew about but did not stop.
Okay. Do you know how you can put this to rest? Show us all where the second -- supposedly real -- murder is cited somewhere. The murder of someone other than the man known as "FreindlyChemist". Then we'd have to say, "Yup, you're right, there was a real murder," and we'd be done here.
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Sorry for my misunderstanding, but I had assumed that one was completed as well as far as DPR knew.
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Sorry for my misunderstanding, but I had assumed that one was completed as well as far as DPR knew.
You assumed that murder had happened because you hadn't heard that one hadn't?
Man, I hope you're not on MY jury!
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Could you show me where it is written that law enforcement has a duty to prevent any particular crime?
I'm not talking about morality here, I just want you to substantiate your "guilty" claim. It's not automatically a "conspiracy" if you merely fail to prevent a crime. (Let alone that you have no solid evidence that the FBI even knew about the March murder before recently.)
Note that "reckless indifference" is a slightly misleading phrase. It's usually argued to establish that an act was malicious, even if un
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I am not about to try and find an actual law that states it. My point wan't actually that they should be arrested under the law, nor was I saying that there is any likelihood that it will happen under the law. The point is that, regardless of if there is a law that states it specifically they are clearly obligated to prevent murder (they cash a paycheck), and clearly have no right to pick and choose whi
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So, in other words, the FBI is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
Um, no. That isn't how it works.
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That's not how it works because a conspirator must have an active role, knowing that their actions would contribute to the crime. If the FBI did know in advance about a planned second murder, and intentionally chose to let someone die just so they'd have a better case, that's just negligence.
That's also not how it works because the second murder didn't actually occur, either. If the FBI were actively involved in it to conspiracy levels, that's be for a solicitation charge or attempted murder, not actual mur
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Re:Toooootally Didn't See That Coming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Toooootally Didn't See That Coming (Score:5, Interesting)
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If it is not wrong, then try to get the law changed
Snort! Thank you for making me spew coffee all over my monitor!
Since it is "contraband", it is by definition wrong to sell it.
No, right and wrong aren't determined by legislators or voting or kings or any of those other silly games.
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And it's wrong to enforce wrong laws.
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Actually according to their TOS those last 2 were forbidden. They only allowed victimless crimes.
If those terms were followed or not I am no expect on.
Re:Toooootally Didn't See That Coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Crimes with victims were reserved for the admins.
BTW only an idiot thinks that forged IDs etc is "victimless". What happens to the unlucky sods who get mortgages taken out in their name?
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That's like blaming the gun when someone is shot. i.e. I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but someone will argue with you forever.
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Right, killing someone is wrong regardless of your age or blood alcohol level. Drinking is not.
using a fake ID as you described might be considered fraudulent
I'm talking about right and wrong, not legal distinctions. My entire point is that the law can take things that are right and call them "wrong." That doesn't make it so, though. It just means a bunch of popularity contest winners have the power to force their opinions and wishes on the rest of us.
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And because I went outside to get the mail, a butterfly flaps its wings, and causes a hurricane in the Caribbean that kills thousands. Clearly, the USPS is a murderous criminal organization that should be outlawed...
The above statement makes every bit as much sense as yours...
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I saw a documentary years ago where an undercover agent [wikipedia.org], trying to infiltrate a biker gang, used staged photos of a murder of a rival gang member to give him some street cred with the gang. So no, Breaking Bad wasn't there first.