I'm not a fan of the defendant here, but I am a fan of holding the authorities to the rules. You know it's their job to uphold the law.
And in this case, the court has never got to the question of whether the search was illegal, because the defendant's motion to suppress is not well-formed (despite the court providing the defense with an opportunity to correct that). Courts don't have much initiative in our common-law system, constitutionally speaking their function is to resolve disputes between parties, meaning the onus is on the defense to make the argument about the illegality of the search warrant and to do so in correct legal form.
Yes, evidence is inadmissible based on how it is obtained. However, there are rules and procedures for how you get evidence excluded from a trial. This is why you pay good money for good lawyers: they know the rules for excluding evidence. I recommend watching the 1992 moive "My Cousin Vinny".
Sure, this follows the rules, but it seems perverse to lose on a technicality that is easy to resolve with a "hey, prove you own the server. you did? ok."
So either a) Ulbright can't prove he owns the server (in which case he can't very well claim privacy rights in something that's not his property to start with), or b) he is not willing to, even though doing so might keep most of the evidence out of trial. Maybe that's because of some super-clever legal tactic they plan to unveil at appeal (although this seems very unlikely, as this is such a basic procedural issue) or maybe it's for some extrajudicial reason, like because it would reveal the identity of some partner in crime who would then seek terrible revenge. Or any other number of other possibilities.
I want to suggest that this phrase is potentially toxic. Ross's name has been horribly tarnished, not unlike aaronsw before him.
I, for one, think that the evidence suggests he's a pretty good dude. I have seen nothing that makes me believe there is any truth to the arranged murder allegations.
Also, having met and spent half a day in his mother's company, I can tell you that she is a warm, concerned soul and I got the distinct sense that she was telling the truth about this whole thing.
Do you have anything substantiating your claim?
PS: nevermind, I just found out your other comment further below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8441338
1) The technology and political material he published as DPR is compelling, interesting, and worth reading. This contribution is meaningful.
2) That there is nothing inherently criminal or morally reprehensible about allowing people to freely transact with one another.
...but that's not the point I was making. The point I was making was that any time the government targets somebody, we find ourselves saying, "I don't want to defend <x>, but I will say..."
But why not? Especially with aaronsw. I find it shocking that this phrase was suddenly through around so often after the indictments. We all knew what he was doing. I supported him 100% and do not believe he did anything wrong.
At the end of the day, we have to be willing to defend not only each other's speech and actions, but each other's characters if in fact they're worth defending. I think aaronsw and DPR are characters that are worth defending.
The Feds. charged both, but the thing is that the charges brought against aaronsw were largely absurd. He appeared to have broken a few misdemeanor-class laws, but was charged with wire fraud and the CFAA in ways that didn't really fit what he did at all.
The Feds. are charging Ulricht with things that he mostly was personally responsible for. He very much appeared to be engaged in narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. He set up an environment where people can freely transact with one another, but tailored that environment to narcotics trafficking, credit card fraud, selling malware, and money laundering, and chose to engage in tailoring the site specifically for those things. He was fully aware of the illegal transactions occurring through his site and not only did nothing to stop it, but enabled it and profited from it. He was also hit with a Kingpin charge that probably will stick, since he was personally involved and managed an organized crime scheme.
The Silk Road designed a site for drug trafficking and other illicit activities, recruited drug and encouraged dealers, and took a commission from the sales. Since the Feds. have the server they have a sea of evidence to show how the site wasn't running with no knowledge of what transactions were happening, but tailored itself to be effective at drug, CC, and malware trafficking.
Whatever you think morally about profiting off drug deals, malware sales, CC fraud, and money laundering, the law is really clear about it.
aaronsw was engaged in a kind of hacktivism that expanded open access to public information and contributed to the open web in many ways. Ulricht was engaged in making a profit by opening a marketplace for illegal activities and tailoring it for drug deals. There's a world of difference.
Agreed. Of course.
aaronsw is a personal hero of mine. I'm not trying to elevate Ross / DPR to that level.
I do think, though, that subverting controls that inhibit free consensual activity between adults is virtuous.
Furthermore, I'm not at all convinced that Ross did most of the things you mention. The indictment reads like a product of zeal and overreach, not a dispassionate document outlining a person's conduct and how it clearly violates plain language.
That he has been denied bail on this basis (especially when he hasn't been charged with the offenses that constituted the entirety of his bail hearing) is egregious and further suggests that he's being specifically targeted.
It depends entirely on what that consensual activity is. If the activity is selling stolen credit card numbers, then it's facilitating theft and doesn't seem virtuous at all, since it's harming a third party. If it's exchanging kiddie porn, again it's harming a third party. If its selling malware, then it's a free exchange with the intent of violating others privacy or otherwise harming them, which does't seem virtuous at all to me. But those were all services that Ulricht not only knowingly facilitated, but worked to specifically facilitate. While I don't agree with the US drug laws, assuming he was responsible for the Silk Road, Ulricht was choosing to facilitate many sorts of exchanges that while consensual between the parties involved in the exchange, were exchanged motivated by profiting off the harm of other parties who weren't consensually involved, but were either victims of crimes or were victimized by the use of the product of the transaction.
"The indictment reads like a product of zeal and overreach, not a dispassionate document outlining a person's conduct and how it clearly violates plain language."
I dunno, they laid out a pretty clear case of what the law was and how it was broken in my reading. He was pretty clearly violating various criminal conspiracy laws that were written to deal with just the kind of thing he was doing.
I think I was incorrect about the child pornography claim, though that was only one item in a list.
While we should also be looking at the Feds. who are certainly no angels, we shouldn't pretend that everyone the Feds. prosecute is a martyr. The problem is that the legal argument that the server was protected under the 4th was made poorly by the defense, and their arguments against the Feds. haven't been very strong. Perhaps there will be more time for the Feds. to ...clarify... their story of how they managed to get the IP, and if it's shown that they used illegal means then that evidence should be dismissed. So far the defense has looked as amateur as Ulricht's PHP programming, but we'll see. Their claim that since Ulricht wasn't actually engaging in the transactions personally, that he wasn't involved in a conspiracy made them look like they were, um, morons. There's even a chance that the Feds. can convict with the many other pieces evidence that they have that isn't hit by the Fruit of the poisonous tree (esp. in the pending case filed against Ulbricht in Maryland).
I'd like to see justice served on all fronts, with the Feds. nailed for their wrongdoings, and people like Ulbricht nailed as well.