It is interesting to hear your perspective Kandra. Stick around a while and hopefully you can get to know everyone better and even become a part of the community that has formed here. As far as non-drug items go, it's not that surprising. This is a niche market for things you can't get more easily from places like amazon, ebay, and retail shops. There is an added cost to doing things the way we do, and at least for the time being, you're going to be able to get legal goods more cheaply and easily from these other places. Eventually, we may win out because of our advantages over these other markets (e.g. vendors don't have to pay taxes on their profits from sales here). From what I've seen, despite some problems like attracting scammers, the market has only gotten better as more people have joined in. More buyers means more competition among sellers in the form of excellent customer service, low prices, and quality goods. More sellers means an expanding array of offerings, which attracts even more buyers. So far, this is the virtuous circle that has driven growth here IMHO. More people and a diversity of opinions is a good thing, and I would be hesitant to lump our diverse community into two opposing categories. By and large, there is much more cooperation and camaraderie than conflict and I'm generally impressed with the level of discourse. Maybe you have a point, though. There very well could be a place for multiple similar markets that cater to different folks. In fact I hope that is the case. I'd rather Silk Road be the leading market in a growing industry, than trying to take on the establishment alone
I've deleted my original comment because I noticed a FAQ on the site with more info, apparently the owner of the site is not anonymous as I originally thought, so I didn't want to risk confusing other post readers.
However, have you actually read the official criminal complaint and accompanying docs?
There were transcripts of this guy's conversations where he literally was ordering a hit and mentioning he had ordered another one in the past.
I've read every word of every legal document I've found and had pointed out to me, and am probably closing in on having done so twice.
I am not convinced that the Dread Pirate Roberts cited ordering killings is the same Dread Pirate Roberts of the libertarian vision and expansive writings to that end. Reading an essay on Ross's Facebook account, I'm convinced that if he was Dread Pirate Roberts, he wasn't the only person using that moniker.
“[The Dread Pirate] Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. ‘I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts’ he said. ‘My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia. Then he explained the name was the important thing, for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley.”
Further, I seem to recall him saying explicitely that he was not the first user of the moniker and that he inherited the site... however - that is either untrue, or a false memory on my part.
I have no opinion on how realistic all the talk about ordering "hits" is or if that was all a farce, but it seems likely to me if Ross Ulbricht wasn't the "real" DPR or if there were multiple active official DPRs, the "real" DPR or one of the other active ones would have posted an online message using DPR's known PGP signature by now, either to cast doubt on the arrest, or just to thumb their nose at the government.
What makes you think they would want to cast doubt on his arrest? Let's put it this way: if there were two DPRs and one was arrested, and the arrested involved shutting down a Tor hidden service (i.e. the feds found the hidden service), would you really go around announcing that you were still walking free? Assuming that there is another DPR / SR admin / whatever out there, he or she is probably at a rifle range shooting every storage device with any SR material on it.
If I were the real DPR, my priorities at this point would be securing the commissions if at all possible, and hiding: taunting the feds with a signed message does not prove anything other than someone else had access to the key (Ross could still be the 'real' DPR), and it immediately tells the feds they left a loose end hanging. A hypothetical real DPR could have no way of knowing what incriminating evidence has been left on the server, be known by Ross (who might want to strike a bargain and maybe reduce his sentence by 1%), or available in Ross's belongings.
I'm not sure the timelines, but is the implication that Mr. Ulbricht is the original DPR (i.e. the libertarian evangelist) and not the one paying for assassinations? If so, then he can probably assist the FBI in finding the "thug" DPR, because he presumably handed control to that person, and may have some amount of corroborating evidence. That would remove the worst charges, and may mitigate sentencing for the other charges. However if Mr. Ulbricht is the one who ordered the assassinations, that is about as far from libertarian as you can get.
So by that logic he's somewhat less (potentially) guilty because there's only one (potentially real) transcript of him ordering a hit? Perhaps I'm just not understanding what you're attempting to say.
The prosecution is trying their hardest to make the case fit uniformly on Ulbrecht. One often omits facts and information that does not support a claim in court when making a criminal complaint. If we ruled only on the information provided by the prosecution, we would be a fascist society, guilty until proven innocent. Seeing as we are all presumed innocent until proven guilty, Perhaps you should not form your opinion based on the documents from only one side of the debate.
Indeed. And particularly so when the agency making the allegations has an established track record of lying in order to secure convictions. Witness:
> The history of the FBI Lab hasn't been without controversy. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. In a subsequent investigation, it was found that evidence had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had testified falsely, in as many as 10,000 cases, resulting in many false convictions. More than a decade later, cases were still being overturned because of this massive fraud.
I think I missed the part of what 'pallandt said where he was appointed judge and/or jury. I thought maybe he was just expressing his understanding of what happened.
Er, my identity is disclosed on the site, on the FAQ page and in the page footer of every blog page. My name is Mike Gogulski. Previously, I registered bradleymanning.org and co-founded the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning Support Network, among other things.
Namecheap's system screwed up when I ordered the domains and blinded the whois information. I tried disabling it, waiting a few days, and it's still blinded. I opened a ticket a few hours ago.
But yeah, you go, there, with your presumptions of guilt in your last line, and five sentences at the start showing clearly that you're way into "scam! scam!" before bothering to actually read.
There has been more than one occasion where I have wanted
to quit as well. Without going into details, the stress
of being DPR is sometimes verwhelming. What keeps me
going is the understanding that what we are doing here
is more important than my insignificant little life.
I believe what we are doing will have rippling effects
for generations to come and could be part of a monumental
shift in how human beings organize and relate to one
another.
I have gone through the mental exercise of spending a
lifetime in prison and of dying for this cause. I have
let the fear pass through me and with clarity commit
myself fully to the mission and values outlined in the
Silk Road charter. If you haven't read it yet, please do.
The language he's using suggests he suffered at least at some point from psychosis in a certain degree, most certainly caused by the level of stress he was experiencing on a daily basis and perhaps even by the potential 'substances' he may have been sampling (pure speculation though).
Unfortunately we'll most likely never know if once he starts levelling to a normal state, he starts regretting those planned hits, regardless of whether they actually happened or not. There was some speculation that the person(s) he contracted were actually FBI.
There are several key words such as 'stress' or 'overwhelming' or wanting to quit but being unable to, but what is often common to persons suffering of delusions of a manic extent (btw, I think they seized some cocaine from him as well if I remember correctly) is believing they are on a special mission to accomplish something world-changing and even expressing intent to sacrifice their lives if it were needed, zealousness, being over-invested emotionally in the 'idea' and perhaps most importantly, the unlikeness of their belief or idea actually manifesting as envisioned.
His message is very self-centered and does not mention other people (joining him or helping him reach his goal). It is not unreasonable to think/realize that his belief is/was failing to fit with his socio-cultural background, especially considering he was mostly running the op alone.
There were mentions of admins that were paid lowly sums compared to what he was making, I assume they had very limited attributions and he was the only one in true controlling capacity.
Throw in the necessity for secretiveness due to the nature of the op, the ensuing distrust and suspicion and it is a safe recipe for psychosis as a result of stress.
I don't know ... but I'm not convinced. I looks perfectly congruent with the facts that he's just incredibly passionate about his mission. I don't think it's so unreasonable for DPR to think and hope that he was changing the world for the better.
I didn't realize complete dedication and sacrifice for your ideals was indicative of psychosis. I suppose in that case many of our heros were psychotic.
Well, you could just imagine projecting the judgement onto a bell curve. Plenty of psychotic failures and psychotic geniuses, but everyone in the middle we just give the benefit of the doubt (because "we" most likely lie on that part of the curve as well). Whether the term 'psychotic' is correct I don't really know.
> (btw, I think they seized some cocaine from him as well if I remember correctly)
I haven't heard anything about that. Are you referring to the fake cocaine that the undercover agent sold to a SR employee right before arresting them?
No cocaine seizure was reported, but the Maryland indictment show federal agents delivering 1 kilogram of coke to someone, presumably the alleged "victim" in the assassination plot also referenced there. I guess the feds have plenty of that high-grade stuff just laying around...
"X {micro,milli,,kilo,mega,giga,peta,exa}grams of a substance containing a detectable amount of DRUG" is boilerplate derived from the text of the federal drug statutes. Either of us could be right, or neither. shrug
Fortunately/unfortunately, I'm not an U.S citizen, or even resident. I probably wouldn't even be allowed to clean windows for a government agency, let alone work in law enforcement.Btw, I also didn't downvote you.
The bottom line is... Silk Road is here to stay so long as there is breath in my lungs, a spark in my mind, and fire in my heart. I know many of you in this community feel the same way and is an honor to stand beside you here.
So are we to "Free Ross" because he was a great guy who had people killed? Ran a site dedicating to breaking laws? What thing are we supposed to be sad he got busted for?
My expectation is if he hadn't tried to have someone killed that it would have been deemed that SilkRoad was a better way to track dealers down than it was at promoting sales.
Normally the feds would have taken over the site, tracked its users then made 100 busts at once. I think Murder sped that up a lot.
Firstly, I'm unaware of anyone actually being killed. He "ordered hits" but it appears that no murders happened.
As far as taking over the site to make 100 busts... First, SR doesn't know the identities of the buyers or sellers. Unless you deliberately give your identity in plaintext to SR, they don't have that info. Now some lazy users may have decided to avoid PGP, but those probably aren't people the "feds" are interested in going after. Grab 100 kids for possession charges? Not too interesting. (Edit: Except maybe as a deterrent, and even then, it's really just and advertisement for PGP.)
Dealers have no reason ever to publish their info. The way to compromise them is to sign up for lots of buyer accounts, order from the most prolific sellers, then try to correlate packages back to a shipper. That'll depend entirely on the opsec of the sellers, and isn't as likely to generate the same PR that taking down SR did.
Finally, the laws he helped people break (drug laws) are ridiculous and plenty of hacker-minded people view fighting such laws to be ethical.
Edit: Also, LE can't become a big seller and try to make busts on big users (say, people buying 20 pounds of a substance at once), because they'd actually have to sell illegal drugs in significant volume to get reputation. I think they are prohibited from doing that. They may be able to get a large-scale seller to turn over their account (if they found them somehow), then accept some large orders and bust those buyers without shipping. But, it'd be hard to prove the identity of the buyer. Anyone could sign up and order a delivery for someone else.
I think we should be thankful that no one was actually killed and that apparently the hired hitmen were law enforcement.
The supposed kills were real for him though having even received (fake) confirmation from a contractor and the intent to take another person's life is not excusable or justifiable.
I also believe many people have suffered due to unjust drug laws, but this guy took his 'mission' to a whole different level. Also, I sincerely doubt he would've continued the project out of sheer humanitarian kindness if it hadn't turned out to be highly profitable for him as well. This person needs to stop being glorified.
Not saying I support him, just providing justification why a "Free Ross" concept might exist and draw significant support.
There's also the chance he knew he wasn't actually hiring hitmen, and just figured it was a good way to pretend to be really serious. Not a bright move as far as having charges on him after being caught, but I get the feeling he was operating as if he'd never get caught, or if he did, he'd be so screwed that additional charges wouldn't matter.
Yes, LE can sell drugs to catch dealers. Awesome I know.
We don't know if he just bragged that he had someone killed or if he really did have someone killed.
LE was clearly aware of things for a while if they could get enough reputation to be a Hitman, I figure they can get enough reputation to sell drugs... I mean scale of 1 to 10 which is harder?
Hah, no the complaint filed[1] shows nothing of the sort. You literally just made up the line about selling.
In this seller bust, they located some packages, supposedly by a narcotics dog, noticed they all shared the same handwriting, fake return address, and stamps. Over months, they tried to trace back who sent the packages, including asking post office workers to be on the lookout. Some post office workers remember seeing a distinct person "blonde female". From there, it was basic footwork as they watched them mail more and more packages.
The only thing the government agents did was coerce a buyer to make some purchases, so they'd have a known purchase to link "NOD" and the suspect they had. They didn't sell drugs or anything of the sort.
This just underscores what I said: It depends on the operating parameters of the sellers. If they are mailing a high volume of packages a week, it'll take some strict procedures to avoid creating the sort of profile that is noticeable.
As far as "rep to be a hitman", I've no idea what you're talking about. The supposed hits weren't placed over SR.
53 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadIt is interesting to hear your perspective Kandra. Stick around a while and hopefully you can get to know everyone better and even become a part of the community that has formed here. As far as non-drug items go, it's not that surprising. This is a niche market for things you can't get more easily from places like amazon, ebay, and retail shops. There is an added cost to doing things the way we do, and at least for the time being, you're going to be able to get legal goods more cheaply and easily from these other places. Eventually, we may win out because of our advantages over these other markets (e.g. vendors don't have to pay taxes on their profits from sales here). From what I've seen, despite some problems like attracting scammers, the market has only gotten better as more people have joined in. More buyers means more competition among sellers in the form of excellent customer service, low prices, and quality goods. More sellers means an expanding array of offerings, which attracts even more buyers. So far, this is the virtuous circle that has driven growth here IMHO. More people and a diversity of opinions is a good thing, and I would be hesitant to lump our diverse community into two opposing categories. By and large, there is much more cooperation and camaraderie than conflict and I'm generally impressed with the level of discourse. Maybe you have a point, though. There very well could be a place for multiple similar markets that cater to different folks. In fact I hope that is the case. I'd rather Silk Road be the leading market in a growing industry, than trying to take on the establishment alone
In pallandt's America, people are guilty until proven innocent.
However, have you actually read the official criminal complaint and accompanying docs?
There were transcripts of this guy's conversations where he literally was ordering a hit and mentioning he had ordered another one in the past.
Start reading with page 21 if you haven't: http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalCompl...
I am not convinced that the Dread Pirate Roberts cited ordering killings is the same Dread Pirate Roberts of the libertarian vision and expansive writings to that end. Reading an essay on Ross's Facebook account, I'm convinced that if he was Dread Pirate Roberts, he wasn't the only person using that moniker.
Part of the purpose of this documentation archive is to facilitate comparative linguistic analysis (stylometry) to demonstrate the Multiple Dread Pirates Roberts Theory (https://www.rossulbricht.org/multiple-dread-pirates-roberts-...)
“[The Dread Pirate] Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. ‘I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts’ he said. ‘My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia. Then he explained the name was the important thing, for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley.”
I believe this was from his reddit AMA?
> The history of the FBI Lab hasn't been without controversy. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. In a subsequent investigation, it was found that evidence had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had testified falsely, in as many as 10,000 cases, resulting in many false convictions. More than a decade later, cases were still being overturned because of this massive fraud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy
You probably also missed the part where pallandt said he was american, too. because it also didn't happen. odd that you didn't focus on that part.
When one is basing their understanding solely on documents from the prosecution, one is programming themselves with a bias. do you disagree?
Namecheap's system screwed up when I ordered the domains and blinded the whois information. I tried disabling it, waiting a few days, and it's still blinded. I opened a ticket a few hours ago.
But yeah, you go, there, with your presumptions of guilt in your last line, and five sentences at the start showing clearly that you're way into "scam! scam!" before bothering to actually read.
Direct link, with datestamp: https://www.rossulbricht.org/srforum/messages/20130920-1909-...
The language he's using suggests he suffered at least at some point from psychosis in a certain degree, most certainly caused by the level of stress he was experiencing on a daily basis and perhaps even by the potential 'substances' he may have been sampling (pure speculation though).
Unfortunately we'll most likely never know if once he starts levelling to a normal state, he starts regretting those planned hits, regardless of whether they actually happened or not. There was some speculation that the person(s) he contracted were actually FBI.
His message is very self-centered and does not mention other people (joining him or helping him reach his goal). It is not unreasonable to think/realize that his belief is/was failing to fit with his socio-cultural background, especially considering he was mostly running the op alone.
There were mentions of admins that were paid lowly sums compared to what he was making, I assume they had very limited attributions and he was the only one in true controlling capacity.
Throw in the necessity for secretiveness due to the nature of the op, the ensuing distrust and suspicion and it is a safe recipe for psychosis as a result of stress.
I haven't heard anything about that. Are you referring to the fake cocaine that the undercover agent sold to a SR employee right before arresting them?
And no, there has been no report of any drug seizure to accompany the arrest of Ulbricht.
Ninjac0der can correct me if I interpreted his comment wrong...
The bottom line is... Silk Road is here to stay so long as there is breath in my lungs, a spark in my mind, and fire in my heart. I know many of you in this community feel the same way and is an honor to stand beside you here.
My expectation is if he hadn't tried to have someone killed that it would have been deemed that SilkRoad was a better way to track dealers down than it was at promoting sales.
Normally the feds would have taken over the site, tracked its users then made 100 busts at once. I think Murder sped that up a lot.
I don't feel sorry for Ulbircht at all.
As far as taking over the site to make 100 busts... First, SR doesn't know the identities of the buyers or sellers. Unless you deliberately give your identity in plaintext to SR, they don't have that info. Now some lazy users may have decided to avoid PGP, but those probably aren't people the "feds" are interested in going after. Grab 100 kids for possession charges? Not too interesting. (Edit: Except maybe as a deterrent, and even then, it's really just and advertisement for PGP.)
Dealers have no reason ever to publish their info. The way to compromise them is to sign up for lots of buyer accounts, order from the most prolific sellers, then try to correlate packages back to a shipper. That'll depend entirely on the opsec of the sellers, and isn't as likely to generate the same PR that taking down SR did.
Finally, the laws he helped people break (drug laws) are ridiculous and plenty of hacker-minded people view fighting such laws to be ethical.
Edit: Also, LE can't become a big seller and try to make busts on big users (say, people buying 20 pounds of a substance at once), because they'd actually have to sell illegal drugs in significant volume to get reputation. I think they are prohibited from doing that. They may be able to get a large-scale seller to turn over their account (if they found them somehow), then accept some large orders and bust those buyers without shipping. But, it'd be hard to prove the identity of the buyer. Anyone could sign up and order a delivery for someone else.
The supposed kills were real for him though having even received (fake) confirmation from a contractor and the intent to take another person's life is not excusable or justifiable.
I also believe many people have suffered due to unjust drug laws, but this guy took his 'mission' to a whole different level. Also, I sincerely doubt he would've continued the project out of sheer humanitarian kindness if it hadn't turned out to be highly profitable for him as well. This person needs to stop being glorified.
There's also the chance he knew he wasn't actually hiring hitmen, and just figured it was a good way to pretend to be really serious. Not a bright move as far as having charges on him after being caught, but I get the feeling he was operating as if he'd never get caught, or if he did, he'd be so screwed that additional charges wouldn't matter.
Yes, LE can sell drugs to catch dealers. Awesome I know.
We don't know if he just bragged that he had someone killed or if he really did have someone killed.
LE was clearly aware of things for a while if they could get enough reputation to be a Hitman, I figure they can get enough reputation to sell drugs... I mean scale of 1 to 10 which is harder?
In this seller bust, they located some packages, supposedly by a narcotics dog, noticed they all shared the same handwriting, fake return address, and stamps. Over months, they tried to trace back who sent the packages, including asking post office workers to be on the lookout. Some post office workers remember seeing a distinct person "blonde female". From there, it was basic footwork as they watched them mail more and more packages.
The only thing the government agents did was coerce a buyer to make some purchases, so they'd have a known purchase to link "NOD" and the suspect they had. They didn't sell drugs or anything of the sort.
This just underscores what I said: It depends on the operating parameters of the sellers. If they are mailing a high volume of packages a week, it'll take some strict procedures to avoid creating the sort of profile that is noticeable.
As far as "rep to be a hitman", I've no idea what you're talking about. The supposed hits weren't placed over SR.
1: http://cryptome.org/2013/10/sadler-white-complaint.pdf
Nice juxtaposition there. Most people will agree that ordering hits is bad. Running a marketplace for selling drugs, on the other hand...