Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested 126
An anonymous reader writes With the Ulbricht trial ongoing in a case over the original Silk Road, Homeland Security agents have made another arrest in the Silk Road 2.0 case more than two and a half months after the site was shut down. This time they arrested Brian Richard Farrell who went by the moniker "DoctorClu." From the article: "Homeland Security agents tracked Silk Road 2.0 activity to Farrell's Bellevue home in July, according to an affidavit by Special Agent Michael Larson. In the months that followed, agents watched his activities and interviewed a roommate who said Farrell received UPS, FedEx and postal packages daily. One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, Larson said. That led to a search on Jan. 2 that recovered computers, drug paraphernalia, silver bullion bars worth $3,900, and $35,000 in cash, Larson said."
Odd link substitution (Score:3, Informative)
Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
One day the world will be liberated and people will be free to trade. Right now we live in a Kafkaesque dystopia.
Speaking of Kafka, what does "recovered" mean in this sentence: "That led to a search on Jan. 2 that recovered computers, drug paraphernalia, silver bullion bars worth $3,900, and $35,000 in cash, Larson said."
I always thought the "recover" was the antonym of "steal", but they are using it as a synonym.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I believe a single computer is still legal. Multiple computers is clearly more than a typical citizen needs and therefore suggests intent to traffic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:4, Interesting)
No plea bargain, we want the trial every single time. Don't care how much it costs, we want the evidence submitted for public review, we want investigatory procedure to be shown as valid, we want the accused to have their day in court, we want a fair trial where the government proves it's case. Not once but every single time because that is justice being seen to be observed. We do not want justice based upon extortion, we do not want justice based upon accusation and torture until you confess, we do not want guilty please with small sentences under threat of huge sentences that is not justice, that is a blatant corruption, why because greedy shit heads want cheaper injustice for the majority poor (guilty until you can spend enough to prove you are innocent) whilst they themselves get their own version of injustice for the rich (they are guilty of nothing just suffering from affluenza and that apparently is also our fault for letting the get so rich in the first place).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
we do live in a world where we are liberated and free to trade
except for items which are deemed illegal for a given reason
some of those reasons are stupid. so we change the laws. for example: marijuana is becoming legal. isn't that amazing? the population actually has a voice and can vote and change their laws. hmmm... that's not very dystopian nor kafkaesque
heroin and meth and kiddie porn and RPGs never will be legal. go ahead, put it to vote. i think marijuana should be legal. most agree with me. i don't
Re: (Score:1)
You are new here. I will forgive you for feeding a long-sleeping troll. But for fuck's sake man, don't do it in the future. This is circletimessquare. Look at the username up there. See it? See the link to his homepage?
The guy is a certified, grade A crackpot.
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the real problem with heroin? It's the warlike conditions under which it has to be obtained and used, because of the laws. Many heroin users can be productive and would not turn to crime if they could get it legally.
If someone OD's, and they had all the information they wanted about dosage, etc., then they wanted to die or didn't care, and you should have intervened before they OD'd instead of paying lip service to "human tragedies" etc.
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:5, Informative)
You have forgotten the financial costs on society. If you have a society with any kind of social system, welfare, social healthcare or similar heroin cost society are large amount of money. It was why it was banned in the first place. Currently the US estimates that it spends $5 Billion on health care costs associated with heroin use. In addition it is estimated that heroin costs about $11 billion in lost productivity.
People ODing is also not a black and white situation. You take too big a dose and collapse, do we leave you to lie there till you die? Or do we take steps to save your life? Ambulances, doctors, nurses, treatment etc. Or lets say you have died. Then what? Do we leave your body there to rot, how do we deal with your assets? Your debts?
It may come as a surprise but when you live in a group your action effect the others in the group. That means your actions have a cost to the people around you. In some instances society as a whole decides the cost of an individual activity is too great for the group to accept and that activity is banned. If you as an individual do not like that you, as the individual, have to leave that group.
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:4, Insightful)
In a democracy, I as an individual have an unalienable right to speak up and change the laws.
The financial costs are a result of the laws. We produce a vast oversupply, more than enough to take care of everyone. Heroin users can be productive and contribute to society. It is the laws that drive them underground and to crime that cause the drag.
Heroin use is a case of civil rights, not finance. We should not ask "how much does it cost?" but "is it the right thing to do, to legalize heroin?"
Finance is all about funding things today based on future returns. And as the private sector has proven again and again, when those future returns don't materialize, it is perfectly okay to create money (via the Fed) to bail out the financiers. Why can't we do the same for individuals?
Even Kenneth Rogoff agrees [harvard.edu] that it would have been better to bail out homeowners instead of banks:
The question is why politics makes impossible the obviously "best and most effective approach". I think we see something similar with drug prohibition. It becomes a political thing and reason goes out the window.
Re: (Score:2)
Where is this democracy you live in? I suspect not here in the United States where while officially it is a Federal Republic... though has since well moved into the post-constitutional arena, where unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats have huge sway, and elected 'leaders' no longer feel themselves restrained by the laws they swore to uphold.
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:5, Informative)
All of the financial costs related to heroin use comes from enforcement and criminalization of heroin, hardly any of the damage comes from use of heroin.
All crime related to heroin addiction comes from the cost of getting heroin. If it was legal or could be purchased if the buyer could be proven to be an addict, then the cost would be lower and the addict would not need to steal. All of the violence from addiction comes from the ability to not get heroin legally.
OD'ing comes from heroin purity not being controlled. If all legally sold heroin was the same purity, then addicts would OD a lot less.
AID's and the spreading of disease of heroin users comes from sharing needles and lack of access to medicine. If heroin was legal or medically dispensed, then addicts could also have access to clean needles.
Addicts are forced to operate in the shadows and out of the eye of government and medical professionals. If you made heroin legal or medically accessible, then addicts could start working on getting clean or at least not getting worse.
Re: (Score:2)
This simply isn't true. Enforcement costs and prosecution costs are definitely there, but the medical costs of heroin are not solely created by the fact that it is criminalised, though I will acknowledge that some of them are.
Long term exposure to heroin use can cause things like intense depression, impaired cognitive function, damage to the heart, lungs and liver. It can also cause the failure of control of semi-autonomous muscles so people have trouble urinating and the like. All of these create ongoin
Re: (Score:2)
In a free market, all these costs can be offset by pigouvian taxes [wikipedia.org]... these are simply taxes on the thing that causes the costs... this is not a controversial opinion. So, you sell heroin with taxes that cover these costs.
As a side note, opiates can be near instantly counteracted with nalaxone. If this drug was made available at the point of purchase and people were supervised, even by another user, then the likelihood of ODs and the like are nearly eliminated.
As for your rights... you should have the right
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
Nalaxone will prevent ODs in a lot of cases and counter act the immediate effects of opiates. However it does not prevent the long term damage.
I am also aware of taxes that attempt to pass the cost of an activity to the people involved. The problem with them is often the tax required is too high so you have the effect of either subsidising it from general tax revenue OR pushing the cost of something so high you are effectively criminalising it via price and people move to finding illicit sources. You see this in the current cost of cigarettes.
As for the rights. I agree. I am advocating that peoples rights are curtailed in a society. In the same way that I am not allowed to have my stereo playing at 1000db at 2am on a Saturday night. Or to burn off my garbage in a bonfire in the back yard. Or to drive my motorcyle at 200kph. Or any one of a million other laws and by-laws that make our society function.
You may feel that legalising heroin would have a net benefit on society, I may believe that legalising heroin would be a net penalty on society. These are obviously differences in opinion but the fundamentals of having an individuals rights curtailed for the benefit of society as a greater whole is already there and I'm sure that there are many many cases where you agree with curtailing an individuals rights.
I am also aware of the concept of if a government has the power to ban all the things I don't like then it will also have the power to ban the things I do.
As an aside I live in Australia which has a universal health-care system and a universal welfare system. It is not as socialist as say a northern european country but compared to the US you would find it very left wing. If you are ill you are looked after to the best of our ability irrespective of whether you can afford to pay for the care or not. Many of the arguments around rights and what people can and cannot do in the US are settled questions here. Abortion and gun control being the two most obvious ones.
One of the biggest differences you notice when going to the US from Australia is the disenfranchisement of so much of the population. The obvious poverty and the feeling that they see no way out is actually quite shocking. You can wander around any Australian city at night and feel safe and while there are homeless people the numbers are small (Brisbane has a homeless population of 50, in a city of 2 million). http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au... [qld.gov.au]
So perhaps that helps explain where I am coming from when I sit in favour of restricting an individuals rights to something like heroin. I believe that it would be a significant net cost to society to legalise it and the only way for it to not be a net cost would be for society to abandon those who become victims of it. Something I am not willing to advocate.
Sorry for a ridiculously long rambling post.
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe you must restrict rights when you generate uncompensated negative externalities... So, when you harm another person, at that point we have the right to restrict your activity with legal means.
All your examples of laws fit into this category. You can clearly see that you generate uncompensated negative externalities when you play your stereo to the annoyance of your neighbours, or create pollution in your back yard... You might fail to see that I cannot safely use the roads if I can't easily judge your speed. I will likely be surprised that the 200kph motorcycle that I pulled out in front of, that I could barely see a few seconds ago, has now collided with me.
Laws that don't fit this category are simply unjust, and lower our economic welfare, and this is where the drug laws stick out like a sore thumb in our legal system.
Now, I know Australia too... there are plenty of drugs here... heroin and meth are being used right now in large quantities... You pay the medical costs anyway... The taxes you say that have to be paid for... they are being paid for... but they come from the wrong sources... they should come from tax of the product. Because right now, the rest of society pays for that... and on top of that we use the criminal justice system to harm them (and prison and criminal records are harm), lowering their economic utility, and spending our own money to do that!
A taxed market can only be economically more efficient than the current prohibition system... which means both the drug user, and the non-drug users are better off. The money that pays for the costs come from the consumption of the cause of the costs.
Yes, there'll be a black market in untaxed items... we can stamp on that... like cigarettes... but it is still only a percentage of the full market... which will continue to pay the taxes to cover the entire thing anyway... cause we control the taxes. It certainly beats handing the entire market to the criminals as we currently do with illegal drugs.
This is true in the US, the UK, Australia.
Re: (Score:2)
You get no disagreement from me with regards to your theory or the fact that those drugs are being used in large quantities or that I am paying for it now.
The only question I have, and it is an impossible one to answer, is would the economic losses of legalised heroin be higher or lower than the economic losses caused by heroin when it is illegal.
Would legalising it increase its usage? If yes, would that increased usage cause economic damage and would that damage exceed that currently being suffered while i
Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score:4, Insightful)
The only question I have, and it is an impossible one to answer, is would the economic losses of legalised heroin be higher or lower than the economic losses caused by heroin when it is illegal.
I've already proven that the total economic costs (in terms of individual utility, which is how we measure things economically) must be decreased under a prohibition market vs a regulated and taxed market... Because utility is literally the thing people chose to do, in fighting it with prohibition you have chosen to take on the negative externalities (say increased universal medical costs) yourself, plus the costs of enforcing the prohibition, plus the negative externality costs you are imposing on the users. You literally pay taxes to imprison non-violent, non-theft drug users, to corrupt police and create powerful gangs that operate in stolen property and forced prostitution.
Would legalising it increase its usage? If yes, would that increased usage cause economic damage and would that damage exceed that currently being suffered while it is illegal?
Well... you see... economists study this thing called elasticity... which is exactly how much usage increases or decreases with change in price (including costs such as risking prison time)... It's a well known fact that the demand elasticity for addictive substances is highly inelastic. In simple terms, varying the price has little effect on the amount demanded. You don't see drug users significantly increasing or decreasing their usage no matter how expensive it becomes, or even how cheap it becomes.
I've seen alcohol kill people. It still shouldn't be illegal. You've never seen someone discover alcohol? You don't think people have lost their jobs over it?
Any chance you've ever met a heroin user that you didn't know used it?
I would take your anecdote, and follow your gut instinct and not take heroin because you've seen what it can do to people, and you don't want to end up like that... and you should spread that message. However, that in no way justifies the current criminalisation of free personal choices. It's not for the government (or others) to make our decisions for us.
Re: (Score:2)
No, because Libertarians and Objectivists don't understand the necessity of government regulation in free markets... A Libertarian or Objectivist would be against regulation and taxing of drugs.
This is standard neo-classical marginalist welfare economics. You can study microeconomics yourself and you will see this is quite standard theory. Modern economists understand that pigovian taxes can be used to offset the dead weight loss in markets caused to society by negative externalities.
This means tax the drug
Re: (Score:2)
I lost productivity arguing this silly point (Score:2)
If all those drug users were not doing drugs, it doesn't mean that they would automatically be leading healthy, happy lives. However, I'll take that number at face value for the sake of argument.
So we have a number that represents the cost to society. Now prove to me that it would cost society that same amount or mor
Re: (Score:2)
Far more on bank bailouts associated with heroin use.
Re: (Score:2)
Next question: how much do we lose to alcohol and tobacco in terms of medical costs and lost productivity? Tobacco appears to be more addictive than heroin, and kicking alcohol isn't a picnic either. People drinking alcohol are also going to be more of a danger to others around them than people taking heroin, except for the problems caused by heroin being illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
We lose far more than we collect from the taxes on them.
As far as the government is concerned banning outright tobacco and alcohol would make huge sense. In fact they did try it. The problem for the government is a much larger percentage of the population is happy with people smoking and drinking then there is people happy with them taking heroin. As a result heroin can be banned where as alcohol and tobacco not so much.
In Tasmania, the little island off the bottom of Australia, the state government is c
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
heroin is highly addictive. it's stronger than willpower. it takes over your life. you can't work or maintain relationships. it destroys lives
"i know a guy who uses heroin all the time and makes six figures..." yeah, and i know pink panda that eats moonrocks. basic biochemistry is not denied when you are talking about a drug like heroin. it overwhelms your brain chemistry and overpowers your willpower. you *will* become an addict and your life *will* be destroyed. heroin is stronger than you. no one, absolu
Re: (Score:3)
Heroin was the best medicine I ever had. It calmed me down, made me able to function without the constant "white noise" that makes me so anxious around people. The biggest problem with heroin was its illegality.
How much music has been produced on heroin? Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, etc. Obviously you can execute lots of intricate muscle movements to control the sound produced by your instrument, while high. Listen to Charlie Parker Live at [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
the idea you need a drug to be creative is a tired old chestnut that requires no refutation by anyone serious. at worst, there are talentless hacks who take drugs because they think it makes them brilliant or for the subculture mystique. but now they are just drug addicted talentless hacks
some take it to be more productive. of course, they're just borrowing time from later, when the drug fucks their lives up so much they're far less productive for a much longer time, or, far worse, dead. gee, it's great the
Re: (Score:2)
You don't have a right to other people's productivity... If people want to live short exciting lives... or even short boring lives addicted to drugs, that is their choice... not yours.
Everyone has their own meaning to life, and by controlling people's choices, you are imposing your own meaning on them... and that meaning is meaningless to them.
People are best off when they are free to make their own informed decisions... When you limit their options, they are always worse off.
Re: (Score:2)
there is no destroyer of freedom, in the history of our species, than drug addiction
the most sadistic fascist authoritarian torturer in his wildest imagination could not devise a greater freedom destroyer than putting bars in your mind. a constantinterrupt switch, where instead of thinking about art or philosophy or science... gotta get my fix... gotta get my fix... gotta get my fix. permanent degradation
nevermind the logical paradox of it all: "you can't deny me my freedom... to destroy my freedom" wha?
to
Re: (Score:2)
That's a very strange philosophy you have... Is there any theory which backs it up, or is it just an assertion you've created from nothing?
I prefer a much stronger theoretical basis in what we have the rights to limit other people's actions... they are the four assumptions of the free market, in which we can prove mathematically that if fulfilled they lead to everyone being better off and no one being worse off... It maximises people's individual utility.
The four assumptions are, no externalities, perfect d
Re: (Score:2)
the most insidious vicious freedom destroying authoritarian government possible, would dose the populace with heroin, as the ultimate exertion of absolute control
there exists nothing that is capable of destroying free will better than hard drugs
bars in the mind, an interrupt switch in your very consciousness, is far greater control against your free will than any physical restraint possible
and look:
authoritarian control via hard drug:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
the fascist origins:
http://www.tofugu.com [tofugu.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You have nothing to back that assertion up... I might as well say nothing destroys freedom more than being an idiot arguing against drug legalisation on the internet... It's a baseless assertion. If you can't argue without making baseless assertions, you have no argument.
Rat Park simply proves you wrong... And this is in line with all economic choices... In a given environment, the best course of action, the one that brings you the most happiness, may be to take drugs... in a different environment, the choi
Re: (Score:2)
i stopped reading there. if you understood the chemistry of opiates, you would understand they hijack basic reward pathways in the brain stronger than any want, desire, or need we could ever have: social contact, sex, even food
how can you take a thinking human being, root all of their wants, needs, and desires to op
Re: (Score:3)
you would understand they hijack basic reward pathways in the brain stronger than any want, desire, or need we could ever have: social contact, sex, even food
I stopped reading there... drug addicts I know still seem to eat.
And what is your obsession with sex anyway? Like anyone who doesn't want social contact or sex may as well not be living their life?
The rest is irrelevant. You're placing your utility function into the heads of others... You suggest people should be into art, philosophy or science? This m
Re: (Score:2)
drugs are the negative externality
an addict is not happy
in fact, their capacity for happiness has been permanently degraded, even after they kick the habit. whatever temporary pain they had has been replaced by a permanent reduction in range of choice. for now their very brain chemistry tells them to feed something that in no way contributes to their happiness or freedom. it is a monkey on their back
Re: (Score:2)
drugs are the negative externality
Total fail of understanding what a negative externality is... You lose the argument on this basis alone.
an addict is not happy
Not being happy means nothing... many non addicts are not happy. However, given that they chose the drugs means that they are happier than chosing the alternatives.
in fact, their capacity for happiness has been permanently degraded, even after they kick the habit. whatever temporary pain they had has been replaced by a permanent reduction in range of
Re: (Score:2)
Tobacco seems to be harder to kick than heroin. If heroin destroys freedom, then tobacco is worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Heroin was the best medicine I ever had. It calmed me down, made me able to function without the constant "white noise" that makes me so anxious around people. The biggest problem with heroin was its illegality.
How much music has been produced on heroin? Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, etc. Obviously you can execute lots of intricate muscle movements to control the sound produced by your instrument, while high. Listen to Charlie Parker Live at Carnegie Hall [youtube.com]; it's documented that he shot up right before the concert. Can you hear it in his playing? Can you hear his creativity and energy?
While recording "Kind of Blue" the story goes that all the musicians would be off shooting up before takes. And Kind of Blue sold, and still sells.
In conclusion, heroin is a tool, a technology, a medicine. Give everyone access to all the knowledge we have and let each person decide for themselves. Also, do research to eliminate unwanted side effects, to produce better drugs. And just let ppl choose for themselves.
Heroin is one of the worst drugs I have encountered and used. Very few people can lead a functional life while being a heroin addict. Besides the lying & stealing a person who is addicted will do to their family, there is the mental consequences of it. People that are addicted to heroin are more likely to get mad when something happens, more likely to explode in a rage when shit doesn't go there way. Thinking of others feelings doesn't matter to the heroin addict because all they think about is
Re: (Score:2)
My experience is different. I remember under a bridge, downtown, offering an addict a full syringe, and he only took a little.
No one's forcing you to shoot up. Why are you generalizing your experience to me? Your mileage may vary.
Re: (Score:2)
Heroin was the best medicine I ever had. It calmed me down, made me able to function without the constant "white noise" that makes me so anxious around people. The biggest problem with heroin was its illegality.
How much music has been produced on heroin? Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, etc.
Charlie Parker had cirrhosis and died at 34, "The coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age."
John Coltrane died at 40
Miles Davis lived to be 65, so it doesn't seem like any drugs destroyed his life
Keith Richards is a skin-suit on a robotic exoskeleton
Kurt Cobain died at 27
Chet Baker died of accidental causes while high on cocaine and heroin at 58
Art Pepper died of a stroke...no idea if drugs contributed at all, but he was also only
Re: (Score:2)
Firstly, it's not magical... Will power or not, some get addicted, most do not. I mean, assuming you want to deal with this rationally rather than just emotionally. So, you have to deal with facts, not propaganda... For example, 23% of users become addicts, no where near 100%... most addicts quit by the time they are 40... Most heroin users are lucid, functional and capable of holding jobs.
From an economics point of view, people who are addicted simply find that heroin has a high utility for them. We know t
Re: (Score:3)
see i stopped reading there. you're right, it's not magic, it's the basic science of pharmacology
what you said is akin to saying gravity makes some people fall down, but not most. or only a few take an effective dose of potassium chloride and die, the rest live. or many can take an effective dose of lsd and feel no effects
it doesn't work that way
we're not talking about sensation, mood, feeling. we're talking about biology, chemis
Re: (Score:2)
you should stop talking about a subject you don't understand, or stop with your paper thin bullshit junkie rationalizations
If you are not talking from personal experience, you are the one who does not understand the topic. Although I am not a junky or an addict, I have used opiates in the past.
What you believe and what is reality are two different things. You only need to look at Rat Park [wikipedia.org] experiment to see that your biological understanding of heroin is wrong.
Rat's trapped in cages take heroin to the exclus
Re: (Score:2)
yes, if we lived in a utopia where all our needs were taken care of, and we had the tiny minds of fucking *rodents*, opiates might be easy to get off and on
but being creatures with complex minds aware of existential stresses and the simple pain and drudgery of daily life that no rat can conceptualize, there is no rat park that ever could be constructed that would satisfy us more than something like heroin
Re: (Score:2)
Excuse me... but I did not suggest the end goal to be to stop people taking heroin... That is you imposing your view of heroin use onto my statements... In fact, I directly addressed this issue... That it is more humane to allow the rats to use heroin when they are trapped in a cage, and it is more humane to allow humans to use heroin, when they are trapped in this figurative cage we call modern day living.
Precisely because we cannot provide those suffering from the desperate pain of life experience the pro
Re: (Score:2)
taking heroin is merely the temporary relief form the typical pains of existence we all experience, to be replaced with a far far worse and much greater pain of addiction
whatever problems you had in life before heroin, are now 100x worse after
i'm an empty voice on the internet, i have no power
meanwhile, a drug that rewires your basic reward pathways dictates to you with a freedom destro
Re: (Score:2)
taking heroin is merely the temporary relief form the typical pains of existence we all experience, to be replaced with a far far worse and much greater pain of addiction
whatever problems you had in life before heroin, are now 100x worse after
Again, those are baseless assertions... My drug use has improved my quality of life every single time, meth, heroin, cocaine, lsd, psylocybin, ecstasy, cannibus... all have had positive utility to me.
For some people, yes, it temporarily removes the pain... for some thi
Re: (Score:2)
I get the feeling you don't know what a basic science is. Pharmacology is a science, which means that it's subject to change when we observe things. You have a belief that is sufficient for you to disregard other people's experience and observations and experiments. That's not science. That's faith-based and unscientific.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oscar Wilde
John Keats
Lewis Carroll
Robert Louis Stevenson
Charles Dickens
Florence Nightengale
Re: (Score:2)
Heroin used be legal, until someone decided they could make more money selling synthetics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That can become a convenient excuse to justify forcing your personal preferences on other people. And if "civil society" reaches beneath my skin to claim ownership on my very body itself, it's hard to avoid thinking it as pretty totalitarian.
That is an absurd claim. Of course freedom is affected by regulations. The question is whether a given s
Re: (Score:2)
UK Member of Parliament Harriet Harman started her career as legal secretary for the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), during which time she also represented the Paedophile Information Exchange and the Paedophile Action for Liberation pro-paedophile organisations, where she lobbied Parliament from 1976 until she quit the post to become an elected Member, for the legalisation of sex with children. Her lobbying didn't stop there. As a Cabinet Secretary, she had the Prime minister's ear, and
Re: (Score:1)
Oh, they can trade, comrade - but they must only trade approved items!
You have it backwards. There is no whitelist - almost everything is legal to trade, so that'd be silly.
There's a blacklist for things that are illegal. Effectively.
Re: (Score:2)
If he had pot, it was at least legal under Wa state law.
Re: (Score:2)
One day the world will be liberated and people will be free to trade. Right now we live in a Kafkaesque dystopia.
So basically this guy was a freedom fighter? Or just perhaps he was a somewhat tech savvy dealer who didn't give a shit what product he sold or the harm it might cause providing he got his cut?
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's Bellevue. Getting a billion packages a day is normal, though they're usually from Amazon.
Re: (Score:1)
Fuck Bellevue. Fucking decrepit old people doddering along dressed in bright yellow highway worker jackets and wearing headlamps, so afraid that the other bumbling alzheimer's patients still driving will hit them. Fuck Bellevue. Bunch of out-of-touch insulated rich fucks with silly trivial shallow problems like "oh my mexican yard worker didn't show up today, whatever will I do? My lawn needs trimming!" Fuck Bellevue High and its two black kids and parking lot full of rich kid cars. Fuck Bellevue and its ga
Re: (Score:2)
Nah man Bellevue is a miasma of rich old fucks who have nothing better to do than whine about their really really small problems and illnesses for which they are way overtreated because they have so much fucking money. Fucking Bill fucking Gates lives in Bellevue (Medina). Fuck those fucks. The Bellevue Fucking Library has security guards that go around and kick the legs of chairs, if someone's sleeping in them. Fuck that homeless-phobia.
Re: (Score:2)
but you'd think the smart play would be to avoid obvious telltales like an overlarge amount of shipments to your house.
Perhaps Amazon Prime has gotten me under FBI surveillance, then.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's unlikely that they caught him by monitoring his UPS deliveries. We won't hear about how they REALLY caught him, because it likely involves surveillance techniques of questionable legality.
Probably cost taxpayers over $1 million (Score:1)
To get $40k in drug trafficking shut down. Way to go guys.
Always presume parallel construction (Score:4, Insightful)
The stories about how these people get caught are usually "convenient", but I'm guessing it's parallel construction derived from classified capabilities (most likely that Tor is fully penetrated by the NSA).
Defense in depth, people.
Yes, sometimes people get caught due to stupid oversights, such as being the only dorm room's network node on campus that is connected to Tor at the moment that the bomb threat was emailed. That's why god invented VPN gateways running on VPSs and so forth, though.
Re: (Score:2)
To email bomb threats?
He certainly does move in mysterious ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Did feds mount a sustained attack on Tor to decloak crime suspects? (Jan 22 2015)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:1)
There is a basic problem with selling illegal things.
If nobody knows you are selling them, you will have no customers.
What the world needs is a bitcoin like system for tracking reputations. No, I don't know how an anon crypto reputation would work. Would someone who previously sold you illegal things certify the transaction had been carried out without going to jail? Buyers and sellers collect keys from each other. Big reputations are required to access wholesale pricing. Reputations become valuable, m
Land of the Free, indeed. (Score:3, Insightful)
one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine [..] carries a mandatory minimum prison term of 10 years and a maximum punishment of life in prison
America, what is wrong with you? A man accused of conspiring to distribute drugs, not accused of actually distributing any drugs at all but simply conspiring to do so, faces at minimum a decade in prison and perhaps the rest of his life in prison? What the fuck? Your murderers get much less time in prison after the government has proven that they killed someone. This man is accused merely of planning or thinking of committing a crime, and if found guilty will be locked up for no less than ten full years.
Absolute insanity.
Perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, ...
107 Xanex pills is what, a 3 month supply (Score:2)
for someone with a psychiatric problem? Less if they take more than one a day?
That isn't even slightly suspicious. I had a prescription for 30 of them to take one per evening.