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Crime

Irish Court Orders Alleged Silk Road Admin To Be Extradited To US (arstechnica.com) 73

An anonymous reader writes: A 27-year-old Irishman who American prosecutors believe was a top administrator on Silk Road named "Libertas" has been approved for extradition to the United States. According to the Irish Times, a High Court judge ordered Gary Davis to be handed over to American authorities on Friday. In December 2013, federal prosecutors in New York unveiled charges against Davis and two other Silk Road staffers, Andrew Michael Jones ("Inigo") and Peter Phillip Nash ("Samesamebutdifferent"). They were all charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. After a few years of operation, Silk Road itself was shuttered when its creator, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested in San Francisco in October 2013. Ulbricht was convicted at a high-profile trial and was sentenced to life in prison in May 2015.
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Irish Court Orders Alleged Silk Road Admin To Be Extradited To US

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    This is a complete disgrace. This is an Irish citizen. If he's committed a crime on Irish soil he should be tried in and Irish court under Irish law.

    The idea that countries, mainly America, can now extradite people all over the world sticks two fingers up at the idea of sovereign states.

    What's next ? An American being sent to face the death penalty because there's a video of them dropping some chewing gum on the streets of Singapore ?

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The main test of extradition in Ireland is whether the charges are reciprocal, i.e would Ireland seek to extradite and charge a person if they were abroad and an offence had been committed in Ireland. It doesn't matter if they were physically present in Ireland when the offence was made. A simple example would be someone ringing up and making a credible threat to murder somebody. I'm sure the US feels the same way, especially for cyber crime, wirefraud etc.

      This isn't the first time extradition has been as

      • He also was selling into the US. You no more get to do that than you get to lob rockets across a border and get away with it.

        Now if that crime was not also illegal in Ireland, you may have a case.

    • This is a complete disgrace. This is an Irish citizen. If he's committed a crime on Irish soil he should be tried in and Irish court under Irish law.

      The idea that countries, mainly America, can now extradite people all over the world sticks two fingers up at the idea of sovereign states.

      What's next ? An American being sent to face the death penalty because there's a video of them dropping some chewing gum on the streets of Singapore ?

      Sorry but this is a basic tenet of international law and has been for many many years, that you cannot direct harm in one country from another and be immune from prosecution simply because you did it from elsewhere.

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        "that you cannot direct harm in one country from another and be immune from prosecution simply because you did it from elsewhere"

        Unless you happen to be working for a government of course.

      • Sorry but this is a basic tenet of international law and has been for many many years, that you cannot direct harm in one country from another

        Okay, so show us who was directly harmed by Silk Road. The "crime" they facilitated was unlawful commerce, which does not have a victim, and thus should not be able to be a crime and consequently should not lead to rendition.

    • The idea that countries, mainly America, can now extradite people all over the world sticks two fingers up at the idea of sovereign states.

      No, it doesn't. Extradition requires a treaty and needs to meet certain conditions. These treaties are generally symmetric (the Irish-US treaty is). Such treaties have been around for a long time.

      http://www.citizensinformation... [citizensinformation.ie]

      Ireland can cancel its extradition treaty with the US any time it likes.

      But states generally like these treaties because there is little point i

  • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday August 13, 2016 @03:20PM (#52696917)

    An Irishman arrested for crime he committed while residing in Ireland (did he spend any time in the US?).

    Presumably this happened because the Silk Road facilitated crimes in the US. But does it even go the other way? Are there ever people extradited from the US because their online activities broke the law in other countries? Could any country have done the same and the FBI is just the one to have bothered, or was there something specific to the US that happened?

    • Presumably this happened because the Silk Road facilitated crimes in the US. But does it even go the other way? Are there ever people extradited from the US because their online activities broke the law in other countries?

      I don't know if it has happened specifically with online criminal activity, but Americans do get extradited to other countries.

      There was a CIA agent who was involved with some rendition during the Bush Administration who got tried in absentia in Italy, found guilty and then shipped over th

      • Presumably this happened because the Silk Road facilitated crimes in the US. But does it even go the other way? Are there ever people extradited from the US because their online activities broke the law in other countries?

        I don't know if it has happened specifically with online criminal activity, but Americans do get extradited to other countries.

        There was a CIA agent who was involved with some rendition during the Bush Administration who got tried in absentia in Italy, found guilty and then shipped over there. Let me see if I can find it...yes. Here it is:

        http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]

        That's standard extradition, she physically committed that crime while standing in Italy.

        But a website doesn't have the same kind of physical presence so the illegal act could theoretically happen anywhere the website is accessed. For instance Thailand makes it illegal to insult their dumbass of a king [wikipedia.org], but I don't anticipate myself being arrested and extradited to Thailand because someone in Thailand reads my comment.

        So did anything specific happen only in the US? If Ireland did their own investigation cou

        • But a website doesn't have the same kind of physical presence so the illegal act could theoretically happen anywhere the website is accessed.

          The internet is not a magical place where crimes committed across national borders aren't really crimes. If I'm at Niagra Falls, on the Canadian side of the border, and I use a high-powered rifle to kill someone's prized Hereford on the American side of the border, guess what? I committed a crime and I will be extradited. I can't say, "I'm on the Canadian side of th

          • by haruchai ( 17472 )

            Pick your borders more carefully. If you're on the MEXICAN side of the border, you could probably kill a police officer the size of a prized Hereford and not be extradited, unless life in prison / no parole and the death penalty are off the table

              http://www.sfgate.com/crime/ar... [sfgate.com]

          • I would think that the nationality of the crime is determined to great extent by the location of the victim.

            That's the problem here; a crime requires a victim, and yet in this case, there is no victim. The state (nation, in this case) is claiming to have been victimized by free trade.

      • Interesting. However the article does not mention if she was acting under official instruction or had gone rogue. If the administration pushed this kind of thing, they should properly take a black eye, but not give up underlings.

        • Interesting. However the article does not mention if she was acting under official instruction or had gone rogue. If the administration pushed this kind of thing, they should properly take a black eye, but not give up underlings.

          She was a CIA spook. We've both seen the movies: "The agency will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

          Nobody's accountable anymore, and that's not the worst of it.

      • There was a CIA agent who was involved with some rendition during the Bush Administration who got tried in absentia in Italy, found guilty and then shipped over there. Let me see if I can find it...yes. Here it is:

        Not quite like that. Quite a few CIA agents have been tried and found guilty in absentia in Italy. (And the person they abducted was apparently innocent, but got tortured in the country that he was moved to and then let go. So these CIA agents were responsible for the torture of an innocent man). None of them was extradited from the USA. One of them made the mistake of going to Portugal and is now waiting for extradition. And she says she went for "to clear her name" - and not quite figuring out in her mind

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        "After the snatch in broad daylight, he was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He was held for a year and released in 2004.

        De Sousa was among 26 Americans convicted in absentia for their alleged role in the operation. None of the defendants, who fled the country, has been in Italian custody"

        So a trial that convicted TWENTY-SIX CIA agents / officers and the ONLY person who's going to face Italian justice is a WOMAN born in INDIA

    • Are there ever people extradited from the US because their online activities broke the law in other countries?

      That is not sufficient; people can only be extradited if the activity is a felony in both countries. Since US laws restricting online activities are generally more liberal than those found elsewhere, that is fairly unlikely. Furthermore, the US is a prime target for foreign hackers, while other countries rarely are.

  • Remember, every country in the west is its own independent, sovereign nation and they just decide all on their own with absolutely no pressure that it is in the best interest of their domestic affairs to follow the agenda of larger nations exactly

  • Shame on Ireland for extraditing one of its citizen to a country that would certainly not do the same for its own citizen.

    That person should have been prosecuted in Ireland.

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