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Comment by Pheno | Hacker News Reader

I can't get over how he wasn't using full disk encryption.

He probably did. The FBI deliberately waited until he was using his laptop at the library, then tackled him while the computer was still logged on.

The way I see it there are a few possibilities:

1) He isn't the real DPR

2) He is the real DPR, but he's extremely inept and didn't get caught before due to dumb luck

3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR

4) He wanted to get caught?

5) Hubris.

5) none of us are as smart as we think we are.

Corollary: The FBI is sharper than we lead ourselves to believe.

(Not to say they are gods among men, but if you believe The Internet, the FBI couldn't sleuth their way out of a wet paper bag)

The Internet watches too much television.

There's nothing to suggest that anybody apart from him ever ran the site. The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else. He's just someone who totally didn't prepare for his adversaries, who ultimately didn't need to go to any great lengths to unmask him. I'm surprised nobody in the general public managed to do it, quite honestly.

Just not as clever as he thought he was being, essentially.

> The screw ups on StackOverflow and Bitcointalk point to him and nobody else.

Ah, so the original DPR is a true master then :P

didn't get caught before due to dumb luck

There isn't really much "before". The site was only up for about 2.5 years before shutdown, and the FBI started building a case back in, what, May? June?

> 3) He isn't the original DPR, but an inept person who took over to take the fall for the original DPR

The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.

If he was they'd either leave the computer on and retrieve the key out of the ram, or he'd hand it over within a week of custody.

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