Topic: Silk Road Operator Ross Ulbricht to Be Sentenced Today (Read 4875 times)

... “sets up a multimillion-dollar drugs business. Uses real email address,” a reference to one of the many slip-ups which apparently led to the his arrest.

That was a message to all anonymous cryptocurrency users. Don't use your real email anywhere =)

What society believes is irrelevant. When you're making a comparison about two punishments to conclude that one is unfair, you need to have two instances where there were convictions, otherwise you're not comparing punishments. It doesn't matter what society thinks of his guilt, because that doesn't let you compare punishments handed down by a court, because in the eyes of the law there was no crime in the first instance, so there would be no punishment to follow. For all intents and purposes, you compared someone who committed a crime to someone who did not and concluded that the criminal's punishment was not fair because the non-criminal was not punished. The analogy is still invalid, and your attempts to justify it are getting more and more ridiculous. (Bribery, corrupt judge, ignorance of the fact that it was a jury trial...) Just save some dignity and stop already.

I believe the sentencing was a little harsh but they have to make an example somehow unfortunately.

I think you're talking about his book If I Did It, which wasn't a confession but a bizarre book on how he hypothetically would have done it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Did_It


Quoting another member of this forum is not a source. There are VPNs who keep logs of user activity and IPs etc will hand the details over to the police immediately when requested but there are also services that don't keep any data at all so there would be nothing to hand over in any case.

If anyone wants some more info on Ulbricht/ the silkroad you should watch the documentary 'the deep web' that aired a week ago on Epix if you havent already seen it. Found out a lot of interesting info about the darknet that i didn't know before.

so which VPN services are collaborating with the FBI ? let's make a list and show others how things stand...awareness is just as important as freedom of speach...

post some VPN services that share data with Uncle Sam or other uncles...you should post the source as well or else it will be just FUD

Here:


I am not saying that all VPN providers are collaborating with the FBI. But quite a lot of them (even those who are located outside the US) do it, resulting in users facing harassment from the governmental authorities.

The FBI can uncover the VPN cover in a matter of seconds


Any proof for this statement ? Just curious if it's a personal opinion or you have some valid arguments...

The article does not say that TOR was broken, nor that TOR is "not anonymous anymore," nor that it has been "cracked by the FBI," nor that x% of nodes are controlled by the US federal government. What it does say, in addition to that there is "no reason to panic," is that nothing is perfectly secure (i.e., vulnerabilities are expected), that the Feds may have simply piggy-backed onto CERT research that was irresponsibly done in a live environment instead of in a lab, and (via a linked document) that the actual number of real sites (as opposed to scam/clone sites trying to fool people seeking the real ones) taken down in Operation Onymous was far lower than originally claimed. The CERT research in question apparently was oriented around the already-known "traffic confirmation" model of attack, and this instance was ostensibly stopped when the CERT nodes were given the boot and vulnerabilities that enabled the attack were patched.

As for the use of public WiFi, if (theoretically) I'm using TOR via Tails on non-writable optical disc in a laptop while I sit outside a retail store with a generous WiFi presence, what are the real odds that my anonymity for that session will be broken after I power down (assuming no ridiculous behavior such as posting something in public that literally announces who and where I am)? I've never even tried this, but the idea of securing a truly anonymous connection is intriguing. I suppose that should just be a hypothetical question since this thread is about Ross Ulbricht (and OJ Simpson???) and not my curiosity.

Personally, I didn't know of OJs biography, although I suspected that he might have admitted it somewhere along the line.

The jury at his trial didn't know for a fact, so he was judged the way he was by them.

A common law loss of property suit never falls under the no-retrial clause when new evidence arises, so the family can bring suit for loss of property (Nicole), even though the government can't. It seems that they did, and OJ lost certain aspects of that case.

The point isn't really OJ. The point is Ross and the "many people" who "are sentenced to death or life without parole, with even less evidence." The innocent among these folks have not evoked corpus delicti at their trials. Or else they have agreed with the government's verdict in some way. Of course, there is corruption all over the place, so some of it is not just at all.

I agree that the system is corrupt by not informing the people of their rights, that they can require corpus delicti, and how they can avoid a contract or agreement.

The people are learning about the things that Karl Lentz is teaching. He isn't the only one who is teaching this, but he is the simplest, getting right down to the nitty gritty immediately. The biggest point that Karl teaches is the simplest. It is way too simple for most people to grasp. It is this: The plaintiff must appear.

The plaintiff must appear. Not his attorney or representative. In American law, when anyone is accused of anything and taken to court, if the defendant demands, the plaintiff must appear - and be sworn in, and take the stand, and verify under oath all the aspects of the case, whatever they may be.

In all cases where government - THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE STATE OF XXXXXX, THE CITY OF XXXXXX, THE COUNTY OF XXXXXX, etc. - brings a case, the government is required to take the oath, get on the stand, and "viva voce" express all the aspects of the case. In almost all cases where government is the plaintiff, government itself can't do this, even though it is required. No case!!!

In the event that there is some plaintiff who CAN AND DOES appear, there must be harm or injury, and it must be proven to be the defendant who did it. There are two additional things that are required for this proof. But what is said here was enough to get Ross's case thrown right out of court, if Ross had only demanded the above.

If I am not wrong, OJ actually wrote a biography later, in which he detailed on how he murdered his ex-wife (Nicole Brown Simpson) and Ronald Lyle Goldman. How can you argue that he is innocent, after all this evidence. And in the United States, many people are sentenced to death or life without parole, with even less evidence.

Here is the way the reasoning about this goes.

In America, it is better to allow 10 guilty people go free, than it is to punish one innocent man as though he were guilty. Because of this, the laws and courts are set up at their base to keep the innocent people free from punishment.

You and I may know in our hearts that OJ was guilty. However, do we know for an absolute fact that he really was guilty? I mean, is there not some slight chance that he was framed somehow? He was not held guilty because the jury thought there might be some slight chance he was innocent, even though they felt in their hearts that he was guilty.

If Ross and his attorneys had gone the route that OJ did, he may have been found innocent. If they went the route that Karl Lentz suggests, he would have been found innocent even if he admitted to guilt. Why? Because in Ross's case, there was no harmed party, no corpus delicti, nobody who was accusing Ross of harming him bodily with verifiable harm, nobody who was accusing Ross of damaging or stealing their property with verifiable property damage.

In America, if you require it, you must be judged on harm or damage (injury). By not requiring it, Ross essentially said, "I am guilty and I want to be held and punished according to statute code laws."

The "society" still believes that he committed those crimes. Only the corrupt judge thought otherwise. And why shouldn't I make the comparison? The fact that OJ bribed his way out of punishment is no excuse to declare him as innocent. I just compared two people who perpetrated criminal acts. Whether they were punished for their crimes or not is insignificant here.

The best part was: he wrote a book about how he did it.   

I guess 'everyone knew he was guilty' except the jury. So again, you're comparing a guy who was acquitted of his charges to a guy who was convicted. The analogy is as worthless now as the first time you said it because you're trying to draw a conclusion about how one guy got punished by society for his crimes vs. a guy who society decided committed no crime. I'm also certain OJ committed murder, but it doesn't make the analogy any more relevant, because you're not comparing two like things.

This is a pathetic argument. Everyone knew that OJ was guilty. He murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in cold blood and never got the deserved punishment. He walked free, as he was rich and influential. In the United States, rich people who commit murder very rarely go to prison. The same happened with OJ as well.

You're comparing a guy who was acquitted of his charges to a guy who was convicted. Not a valid analogy because in the eyes of the law, OJ was not guilty; he wasn't released in spite of his convicted crimes as would need to be true for your analogy to be relevant. Also, Ulbricht did a lot more than "merely putting up a website." That's an understatement if there ever was one!

Check this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/12/silk_road_2_0_arrests_operation_onymous_did_the_fbi_break_tor.html

Using a proxy or VPN is definitely not a solution to this. The FBI can uncover the VPN cover in a matter of seconds. And I don't think that the usage of public Wi-Fi is safe either.

Do you have sources for this? Though people shouldn't be using tor bareback either. Use a proxy or public wifi before you connect to tor and then you should be safe.