Topic: Silk Road Operator Ross Ulbricht to Be Sentenced Today - page 2. (Read 4905 times)

You should remember that the TOR is not anonymous anymore. It has been cracked by the FBI. Out of the 4,000 or so TOR relays, around 10% are controlled by the FBI and the CIA. When you log-in to Silk Road, if your entry node happens to be any of these fed-controlled relays, then the feds will be able to track your real IP address.

Silk Road: Ross Ulbricht files appeal against convictions and sentencing

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/05/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-appeal-convictions-sentencing

<< Ross Ulbricht, the man convicted of running the online drug emporium Silk Road, has appealed against his conviction and sentence, according to court documents filed on Thursday. In February, a jury in a federal court in Manhattan found Ulbricht, who went by the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts", guilty on seven counts related to the drug marketplace, including running a narcotics-trafficking enterprise, money laundering and computer hacking.

Before sentencing, Ulbricht wrote a letter to Judge Katherine Forrest begging her to "leave a light at the end of the tunnel" in sentencing and "leave me my old age". But Forrest handed down the harshest sentences possible for Ulbricht – one for 20 years, one for five years, one for 15 years and two for life, to be served concurrently with no possibility of parole. >>

Google search, which lead to a posting history where he had his real name
http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2tt0dn/the_incredibly_simple_story_of_how_the_govt/

wow, that was not well thought out by ross
Surprisingly amateurish to be honest

I get your reasoning but you could equally say the same about child porn and murder. Maybe these sorts of darknet markets may make authorities rethink their drug polices though so maybe something good will come out of it. Most intelligent people know that the war on drugs is a complete failure and an unwinable war. It's also going to be interesting to see how the police deal with decentralized markets where there's no centralized pint of attack/failure.


Exactly. They didn't. Ross was silly enough to use his own name when setting it up along with leaving many other clues. Same with the Silk Road 2.0 and Blake Benthall. If they hadn't of made these silly mistakes they might still be free and the sites they set up still up and running. The feds did claim that the captcha silk road used was leaking the forums true server IP but this has been disputed.

just google + bitcointalk

What concerns me the most in this story was how the feds managed to bust into a highly anonymized encrypted network

There are possibly lots of points. This is advertising, right? Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road is a kind of advertising for Bitcoin and other things like TOR and the Dark Web. So, why would government want to advertise? Government might.

Nobody knows for sure the fickleness of the people. This kind of advertising draws the people's feelings into the open. The people might start to use Bitcoin more than ever. On the other hand, this might scare the people into compliance. Same said the Dark Net and TOR.

This is a warning for the banking system. The banking system is near collapse. If not immediate collapse, then a slippery slope downward. The advertising is warning for the banks to get their act together, and it is a test to see how ready people are to get away from the banking system.

History has shown that if the people feel threatened, they take an "out" when they see one. Do the people feel threatened? If they turn to Bitcoin after all this advertising, then the government and the banks know that they had better change their ways, or the people will leave them behind.

Silk Road is gone, but it was replaced by other similar websites rather quickly.  What is the point in spending time and money on futile  efforts that don't even accomplish what they were intended for?

If he was such a smart and educated guy he wouldn't have got caught or made a load of silly mistakes


This is how you assess how "smart and educated" is a person ? By not getting caught...


Because he was a drug dealer from Brooklyn, you know, the ones you think aren't ever going to make anything of their life.


I don't say that, statistics and real life scenarios tend to say that. A drug dealer from Brooklyn/etc has little chances of a normal life in the long run partly because he is not educated and doesn't understand that he is being used Stats don't lie, there is little you can achieve in life without a proper education.

This wouldn't be an appeal. It would be an entire now case. Even if the contract part was flimsy, Ross's mom could claim Ross as her property, easily. since she has entered the fight already, why not do this on the side, since an appeal probably won't work?

This isn't Kevin Mitnick we're talking about -- and Mitnick spent years in prison. I'm not deeply familiar with Ross's background, but nothing I've read so far indicated he was a "master hacker" -- a hacker, maybe, but mostly somebody who used existing tools to do what others had not done (at least not as successfully) and was, at least initially, very careful about security (which does not imply being a hacker at all).

I estimate a 0% chance of this working...

not too surprised at the ruling considering the trial was a blow-out for the prosecutors. Small chance an appeal could get his sentence reduced though. 

I don't know Ross personally. But if any one of you is his friend, and you want to get him out, here's what to do.

Visit Ross in prison and obtain a signed contract from him that he is your property.

It might cost a little bit of money to get a bond on a guy like Ross, but get him bonded to the tune of as much as it would take to allow him out into the public if ever he were freed.

Then find out the man/woman/people who are holding him, and who have the control of causing his release.

Start a letter-writing campaign between these people and yourself wherein you wish, require and demand your property (Ross) returned to you. You might even say that you wish for him to do your programming for you as a legitimate excuse, or that you and he need his freedom to write his memoirs, or you figure out a ligit reason.

Once you have a sufficient number of letter denials from these people who are holding him, then sue the people personally in court to get your property back, using the letters as evidence showing that you tried on the private side.

In your letters (somewhere along the line, like the second or third letter), start requiring/demanding money, because by not giving you your property back, they are causing you monetary injury and loss, which is wrongdoing on their part, by preventing you from having your property's services.

In court, stay man-to-man with the people you are suing. Be present, not representing yourself, nor being represented by an attorney. Study Karl Lentz to see the best ways of doing this. Google and Youtube search "Karl Lentz common law."

Oh.. yeah... a highly educated guy like Ross Ullbricht should remain imprisoned for the rest of his life for merely putting up a website, while people like OJ Simpson should be released in to the wild, as he is more useful to the society when compared to Ross. Which news channels do you watch? I think that you got brainwashed by watching too much CNBC and MSNBC.

You watch too many movies. There are still armed guards watching the towers and patrolling at night. They are ordered to shoot them if they try to escape. Many prisons inmates get no access to computers. I doubt people who had millions of dollars thinks prison is cool. From what I have been told by people who went to prison is that it is incredibly boring. What if you don't make friends but enemies in prison? Life can be very long and harsh.

No, amazon4u is making an argument that people like Ross should are more likely to be rehabilated or be more useful to society which is bullshit. If he was such a smart and educated guy he wouldn't have got caught or made a load of silly mistakes, not to mention trying to have people assassinated. Most drug dealers don't even go that far but he did.


Because he was a drug dealer from Brooklyn, you know, the ones you think aren't ever going to make anything of their life.

in this day and age sneaking something into prison is pretty easy. even with a 3rd generation ipod touch you can jailbreak it and install various hacking tools (command prompt, file browsers and the hacker network known as tor) It is possible Ross might actually be able to hack his way out of prison and escape to freedom. A master hacker like Ross could do it in no time. Prisons are practically automated with all the locks controlled by computers, gards arent even really needed. A team of two to three hackers on the outside armed with camera drones to give ross eyes in the skys could easy project this onto a smuggled google glass that ross could use kind of a HUD from a video game to escape. Im sure ross could do it, if he wants to escape that is. Prison is actually pretty cool, free food, exercise and hanging out with your friends. Im sure he get sa lot of street cred for his hacking skills in the prison, whee most inmates couldnt even successfully install custom firmware on a psp...

There's this nod-nod, wink-wink concept of rehabilitation by way of prison. American prisons offer very little in the way of "fixing" "criminals"; they are purely punitive and harsh. They simply want to feign justice - the USA has the highest  per capita incarceration rate in the world. Almost every person who comes out is worse than when they went in.

The police can do whatever they want, the judges can do whatever they want. Americans are very far from free. We only get freedom when they let us.

Having said that, most people know the consequences will be harsh, so try not to do shit that will get you locked up.

where was the "race" mentioned in my response...you obviously have some race issues that affect your judgement...my question is this, again :



who is more useful to society ? an illiterate guy or an educated guy ? who deserves a second chance ? you will find that the illiterate guy who pleads guilty to all charges gets the second chance..this is not how the judiciary system should work, rehabilitation should be possible  for the ones that are capable of seizing that chance not for the ones who relapse on 99.9%



P.S - Where does Jay Z fit in all this ? This is not about race ...it is about what an individual can give back to humanity....