Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I can't say I know every detail of the case but I don't recall anyone getting killed or even hurt by Mr. Ulbricht so in my mind the punishment does not fit the crime. IMHO the death penalty should be off the table completely (go Nebraska!) and life in prison reserved for only violent offenders. You can argue that he enabled people to harm themselves but I think that's stretching it. If people want to take drugs, even take too much drugs their going to get it somewhere. If drugs were legal and treatment of abuse the focus instead of punishment Silk Road wouldn't have existed in the first place.
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss...
I agree with you that drug trafficking is way overprosecuted, but...
Hey icelander, now you, too have allegedly hired someone to kill multiple people.
I think it's pretty much impossible to run that kind of a global darkmarket otherwise. Even if you were the world's most experienced sysadmin and could lock down your server(s) (and NSA/FBI httpd/nginx/apache 0day doesn't apply) you still have to worry about Bitcoin laundering and many other issues, you'd have to run around like Jason Bourne everyday and nobody can sustain that discipline without making mistakes. You only have to make one mistake and you're joining Ross at ADX Florence (where he's likely going, nobody convicted of the "Kingpin" charge ends up anywhere else besides supermax prisons)
Instead of imprisoning for drug usage - provide treatment and rehab. It's cheaper and has better results. One could argue culture differences in drug usage, but that looks like an attempt to "knock it before you try it".
That's without going into how broken the US prison system is! See: privately owned prisons that require a quota to be filled [0].
[0] http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/criminal-how-lock...
Even if you're against the war on drugs I don't think you should really take it as a personal slight when someone operating on this scale gets arrested. Unless you really 100% believe that distribution of heavy narcotics doesn't damage society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
Distribution and intent to sell are still illegal. I was specifically referring to the users of drugs.
That's not quite correct. The contracts do not require that a certain number of prisoners be kept in the prison. They require that a certain number be paid for. The contracts are essentially of the form that the state will pay $X to house up to Y prisoners, and $Z/prisoner for any prisoners beyond Y prisoners.
Since private prisons are only a small fraction of the prisons, the people that should be most annoyed by this are the employees of state run prisons. If crime goes down in a state and they want to close a prison to save money they most likely will make sure to fill the private prison first (since they are already paying for it) and cut staff at the state prisons.
(NOTE: this does NOT mean I'm saying private prisons are fine--just that contracts that guarantee a minimal payment regardless of occupancy are not necessarily bad. Private organizations tend to have less oversight than state run organizations, so it would not at all surprise me if the private prisons have staff that are not as well trained or as accountable as state prison staff. If I were setting up a prison system and it was going to allow private prisons, I'd probably require that the warden be appointed by and employed by and answer to the state, not the prison owner, and has the ability to fire private prison employees who are in jobs that involve direct interaction with the prisoners. I'd also require penalty clauses in the contracts that reduce payments if conditions are not at least as good as those required of state prisons.
It would be interesting to look at the strength of whatever public employee union represents state prison employees in each state, and see if there is a significant correlation between that and state use of private prisons. I'd expect weaker unions would increase the chances of private prisons.
Don't think so.
Try reading the parent I responded to once more - then my response. If it isn't clear how they correlate, focus especially on the closing sentences of the parent before reading my response to them. If still confused - press the "Panic!" button and I'll do my best to assist you.
E:
I see the "Panic!" button was pressed. Do you require assistance?
Even by the bloodiest of bleeding heart standards, contract killing isn't some victimless crime.
Because, even by the "Hang them by the neck until they are dead" gung-ho standards, you generally have to be convicted of something before being punished for it.
Oh right he wasn't. He was convicted solely for selling drugs, and sentenced for being a geek.
Make no mistake about it - the world hate us, it just tolerates us right now because we are effective and need.
(emphasis added)
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A bit of a strange argument to make in this particular case.
One of the factors in the life sentence was that evidence was presented in the trial that Ulbricht did not limit the scope of his enterprise "to only drugs", and that elements of the enterprise included trying to hire a hitman to eliminate problems.
So, I think that this case stands for exactly the opposite proposition than "hiring hitmen won't get you into more trouble than restricting your crime to just drugs".
The US War on Drugs is ridiculously harmful and shortsighted, absolutely. But the sentencing is consistent with US policy, however wrong it is. People are getting two-figure sentences for carrying small amounts of drugs themselves. Someone who facilitates the selling of an illegal product on a much wider scale should not get a lighter sentence.
The whole concept behind the War on Drugs sucks, but this sentence is consistent. If it were a shorter sentence, then it'd be similar to the legal inconsistency around cocaine: the form wealthy white people tend to use (powder cocaine) is much less penalised than the form poor and minority people tend to use (crack cocaine), because...?
I've had friends who've died from purchasing bad drugs at raves from people who were looking to make money and run. In one situation it ended up being rat poison. The guy had other drugs in his system, and combined with the poison his body went into shock. With darknet markets and independent lab testing networks, this type of thing doesn't happen.
People are still going to use drugs. I'd rather law enforcement go after the guys who are selling rat poison at raves than the guys who are setting up safe distribution networks.
It was not a harm-free marketplace. It was basically 'whichever criminal shit made him money' marketplace and drugs happened to top the list.
LOL @ getting down voted by Libertarians for a COMPLETELY TRUE statement that they wish wasn't true because it fucks up their bullshit narrative.
I'm not saying this is the case for Ross, but it's a possibility, at least for one of the contracts. Using violence to protect innocents is not something bad. It's just unfortunate he created the situation in the first place - instead of an extortionist, he may have confided in a LEO, thus hurting his users. (Which is apparently what happened.)
Anyways, the big lesson is that when your startup has major security requirements, go slow and don't break things. There's no real reason he shouldn't be retired now, enjoying his life while enhancing others. Just technical incompetence.
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It is not a reasonable argument for an individual to make to try to justify their illegal get-rich scheme.
If the law is hurting people, and breaking the law helps people, it's completely reasonable to use that argument to morally justify your illegal behavior. I'd be interested to hear your argument why it is not.
Edit: Though to be clear that wouldn't work to justify all your illegal behavior, if that included like hypothetically trying to have someone killed.
I'd agree that lawbreaking is a reasonable moral choice, but not in this case. Moral lawbreaking, in my view, is done when there is a clear benefit or reason to the lawbreaking. And by clear I mean clear to a reasonable and moral person, and not just a speculative personal opinion.
Given that frame of reference, I would argue that (1) the notion that online drug dealing would lead to harm reduction for a drug addict is speculative rather than clear; (2) the harm caused by improved access to hard drugs by more potential addicts would be tremendous and therefore likely exceed any potential harm reduction; (3) given Ulbrict's apparent willingness to hire hitmen, I find it impossible to believe he was in any way motivated by concern for others.
Whether true or not, the intention behind drug laws is physical harm and addiction. Additional harms like risk of violence or overdoses due to impurities are secondary at best.
Unless there's judicial activism going on, making that admission is pretty much just handing the keys to freedom over. Why even bother with a trial? Should have done a plea bargain.
EDIT: This argument would probably hold up a lot better if Ulbricht hadn't tried to have people killed. sigh
With darknet markets and independent lab testing networks, this type of thing doesn't happen.
"Forrest rejected arguments that Silk Road had reduced harm among drug users by taking illegal activities off the street. “No drug dealer from the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court. It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged,” she said"
>It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged
I'm unsure what this is even supposed to mean. I tried searching for a definition of "privileged argument" and found nothing. My search phrase was:
"privileged argument" -white -race -racial -feminist
If someone can explain what was meant by this statement, that would be nice and I'd appreciate it.
>“Silk Road created [users] who hadn’t tried drugs before,” Forrest said, adding that Silk Road “expands the market” and places demand on drug-producing (and violent) areas in Afghanistan and Mexico that grow the poppies used for heroin.
>“The idea that it is harm-reducing is so narrow, and aimed at such a privileged group of people who are using drugs in the privacy of their own homes using their personal internet connections”, she said.
Through its drug market Silk Road incentivized (horrific) drug violence across the US and other countries. The best you could say is that they had no effect on it.
The privilege criticism is that Ulbricht wants leniency despite the overall harm reduction being marginal. It might have been safer for him and for the dealers, but not significantly for any other group.
An intelligent, wealthy, employable person can dabble with them, have a good time, and usually get away with it. Should they get addicted and screw up their lives, they can usually get help and bounce back without permanent consequences.
People who're a little less well-off intellectually and economically aren't so resilient. Should they get addicted to hard drugs and screw up their lives, they usually don't bounce back from it - their lives are ruined forever.
Since HN is full of intelligent, wealthy, employable people, the comments on this thread don't surprise me a bit. And yes, I agree that drug policy in the United States could stand to be reformed a little. But when evaluating the harm a person's actions can cause to society, I wish people would think a little more about not just themselves, but that vast chunk of society that's not lucky enough to not be as privileged as we are.
Aside from that - let's posit that Ross Ulbricht's arrest and punishment and the shutdown of The Silk Road doesn't impact consumption and the consequent negative effects at all. I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others. Yes, there are many people in this world who do equivalent harm that we don't punish, and that's unfortunate, but that doesn't change the rightness of Ross's punishment one bit.
It seems quite likely that Silk Road was one of the safest ways to acquire these drugs. It seems likely to me that shutting down Silk Road would have two effects: reducing consumption by casual (non-addicted) recreational users who will not bother with less convenient and safe sources, and driving addicted users to less convenient and safe sources. You might argue that the first effect is slightly beneficial, but I think it is far outweighed by the harmfulness of the second effect.
> I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others.
This is just another way to rephrase the claim that Silk Road did net harm to others, which we were just debating.
I am curious what people think a fair sentence would be, given the sheer amount of drugs sold on SR. Selling over a pound of weed here in NYC will cost you 15 years, which for most people would be about 1/6th of their life.
Also, I am interested with the number of people saying he didn't actually do anything that wrong. I wonder if they are saying the same thing petty drug offenders. Maybe people do but they don't vocalize it, but I think if we saw this kind of empathy for all non-violent drug dealers, things would look very different here in the US.
Remember that the first step of the twelve steps is "admitting that one cannot control one's alcoholism, addiction or compulsion". Finding reasons why you are more privileged than others makes this step even harder.
For example: nicotine is much more addictive (has to do with the speed with which tolerance for a substance is increased) than, say, THC. Which is yet again different from LSD. There are a whole host of factors, and a spectrum of "how dangerous $DRUG is".
(disclosure: it's my pet peeve when people make lump statements about "all drugs")
I recommend you reading about the delta FOSB protein. There is promising research towards unifying all, or almost all, addictions with a single, coherent theory. In this light, drugs are really beginning to look very similar to one another.
You can't take drugs 100% safely, but their safety level does vary, and it definitely varies with wealth.
Amphetamines, for example. Rich Americans get prescriptions for Adderall. Poor Americans make meth. Or take opiates. Vicodin vs. heroin.
I guess this depends on your definition of "100% safely", and probably also on your definition of "drugs". Let's assume that "drugs" means "psychoactive drugs". In that case, I'd suggest that you can take a cup of coffee pretty much as close to 100% safely as is achievable for anything in the world that you can ingest. And coffee is psychoactive. So, it is possible to take drugs 100% safely.
Even alcohol can be taken safely: so long as you keep the dose low, and you're not someone with a special sensitivity to it (e.g. an alcoholic), you can have a glass of red wine with pretty much zero chance of anything bad happening.
That also applies to all the other psychoactive drugs in between: speed, cocaine, LSD, heroin, mushrooms, peyote, MDMA, whatever. They can all be taken 100% safely. The key in all cases is always the same: good education and moderation.
All of these drugs can also be abused. You can kill yourself with caffeine too (though unlikely in coffee form - you'd need about 50-100 espresso shots). I recall a story of someone who ate a whole pack of caffeinated candy, thinking it was normal candy, and died.
Shit happens.
Shit happens more often without good research, education and clear guidelines.
Shit happens even more often without good research, education and clear guidelines, and with dodgy suppliers who may or may not be selling you the thing you think you're buying because they're all criminals.
The real culprit in every drug death? The three branches of the government, who have failed to do the right thing on this topic for 50+ years now.
There are already millions of Americans that started their opioid adventure with oxycodone or hydrocodone, often coming from the "upper spheres". Addiction does not discriminate. Changing the name from amphetamine to Adderal will not give you more control over your addiction. You will have none, regardless of your income level.
You are right about the safety level though, this is about potential short-term complications. Prescription stuff is not contaminated, a doctor can give you some good advice, or a vial of emergency Naloxone.
1. misleading the American public into going to a series of costly wars through lies about WMDs -> not punishable
2. Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
3. Fraudulent evaluation of risk-ratings by trusted agencies for the sake of profit leading to worst financial disaster since great depression -> not punishable, actually, rewarded with billions in bail-out by tax payers
4. setting up and running a website to host underground drug trade with bitcoins -> punishable by life-sentence
Not that what Ulbricht did was right or that he shouldn't be punished... but his biggest problem was that his business didn't generate enough profit at the expense of the public. Justice might be blind, but even she can still smell money.
... even though it was well know torture does not produce useful intelligence
... and having ratified (in 1994) the Convention Against torture which includes a duty to prosecute or extradite
... and 18 U.S. Code § 2340A being amended by the "PATRIOT Act" - before the torture occured - to include clause (c) which allows charges and all punishments (except death) to include anyone who conspires to comit torture
-> not even an attempt to prosecute
/* is there a clearer, more obvious way to demonstrate how the US no longer cares about the "rule of law"? perhaps, but I can't think of anything that would top what the CIA has already done /
/* before anybody replies with idiotic claims that somehow it is ok to torture foreigners with claims relating to jurisdictional boundaries, I suggest actually read 18 U.S. Code § 2340A (b) */
2. Glass Stegal wouldn't have prevented shit. In fact the combination banks Glass Stegal would have prevented--BoA and Chase--were the banks who were strong enough to absorb the shitty failed banks--merill and lehman--that were often just investment banks.
Taking irresponsible risks isn't a crime either.
3) No evidence of fraud. These agencies trusted the financial models and those models didn't work.
Fuckups aren't punished in our society the way intentional law breaking is.
Should be guillotine every founder whose company fails?
Not meaning to go off on a political tangent, but it seems to me like there was a conscious effort not to ask such questions in an official capacity.
Imagine an alternate universe where we had Watergate-style hearings when Pelosi/Reid took over in 2007, or when the Obama administration started in 2009. In some circles, some people wanted that, and I think rightly or wrongly politicians decided it was not worth it. Easy to forget now, but it was certainly in political discourse 6 to 9 years ago.
Guillotine, probably not, but I'm okay with punishing every "founder" of a "company" that errantly spends billions of tax dollars on weaponry and uses it to kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
Debatable. The justice system hasn't found that, no charges have been filed within the justice system over them.
> Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
While again this is untested directly, the legislative privilege in the Constitution makes this pretty clearly not punishable through the justice system. The punishment that can be dealt out for this is at the ballot box, not through the justice system.
5. Apples are red
6. Oranges are orange
You're comparing facts: "Ulbricht ran The Silk Road," with your own conjecture: "Banks encouraged 'questionable' risk taking." You're making a lot of extraordinary claims that are very very difficult to prove with no evidence to back them up.
And you're using this conjecture as evidence of... something? You don't really make a point. You just repeat popular internet tropes.
A lot of people were defrauded. The economy is still trying to recover. I don't think people who lost homes or are struggling to find work and make ends meet would consider any of this to be an internet trope.
That's one of the most ridiculous claims I have seen in a while.
America, for all its prattle about freedom and individualism, is like most other societies an authoritarian collectivist state. Freedom is just a symbol, not a real thing.
You are allowed freedom within certain domains as long as you don't do anything too challenging to the "social fabric." If you do, a whole host both legal and quasi-legal options are deployed against you. Search for "cointelpro" for a good historical example. If you can't be legally prosecuted, you'll be quasi-legally or even illegally harassed and persecuted.
Alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs, but it's legal because "normal" people use it. You can't make being a hippie illegal, but you can intensely prosecute certain things that hippies do. You can't make being black illegal, but you can do the same there -- crack and cocaine are exactly the same chemical, but crack carries a harsher sentence because minorities use it while rich white people largely use cocaine.
The reason a lot of this coalesced around drugs is that the constitution has nothing to say in that department. You can't ban religions, or speech, or styles of dress, but there's nothing in there about a right to sovereignty over your body, and the regulation of trade is explicitly permitted. So drugs, being something that correlates with certain cultures, serves as a wide open legal vehicle for attacking minority populations.
But yea, I believe it is ridiculous as well, but the court needed to voice their opinion with the sentence.
If they didn't, wouldn't necessarily show anything. BMR and Sheep began picking up the drug sales slack immediately, and were around because SR1 had proven the business model worked fantastically well.
Or the same. Or more, in the form of the death penalty.
[0]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
[1]- http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/William-Pickard-s-long-s...
[2]- https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/pickard_leonard/
These were the evaluation criteria: drug-specific and drug-related mortality, drug-specific and drug-related damage, dependence, drug-specific and drug-related impairment of mental functioning, loss of tangibles, loss of relationships, injury, crime, environmental damage, family adversities, international damage, economic cost, and community harm.
Infographic: http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/or...
Original study: Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_old/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf
As a result of my "research", LSD remains one of the few recreational drugs that I might ever consider trying in the future, given the correct circumstances.
It is certainly less harmful than nicotine, ethanol, and acetaminophen. But now that marijuana is legal in some states, I expect that it will soon displace LSD-25 as the least harmful recreational drug that I know about.
If you are also curious, my conclusion was that LSD-25 is probably present in AUM at a psychoactive, but non-hallucinogenic, dose, mostly as an adjuvant for the other ingredients. It would help bridge the gap between a drug known to have powerful, positive, short-term effects and one known to cause long-term but very unpredictable changes in behavior.
But I agree that it's absolutely insane if the charges are just drug-related -- rapists get far less time than many drug dealers.
edit: this is something that vice news [0] reported that is apparently wrong.
> But despite these setbacks, Ulbricht was ultimately convicted in February on a raft of charges, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and hiring assassins to take out members of Silk Road.
[0]: https://news.vice.com/article/ross-ulbricht-convicted-master...
This is not quite true. While he was not charged in this trial with the most obvious offense that would flow from that (e.g., attempted murder, etc.), this was specifically charged as one of the overt acts of one of the conspiracy charges he was convicted of. But it wasn't the only overt act charged, and the guilty verdict doesn't include a finding on the individual overt acts charged separately. So, its not accurate to say he was convicted of hiring a hitman.
Apparently his first attempt he hired an fbi agent, posing as a hit man and his second attempt seems to have been a con-job...
He tried though. Apparently the fbi agent sent fake photos as proof.
Article from Ars Comments. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-09/us-says-si...
He was convicted of the following-
Distribution/Aiding and Abetting the Distribution of Narcotics
Distribution/Aiding and Abetting the Distribution of Narcotics by Means of the Internet
Conspiracy to Distribute Narcotics
Continuing Criminal Enterprise
Conspiracy to Commit or Aid and Abet Computer Hacking
Conspiracy to Traffic in Fraudulent Identity Documents
Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering
EDIT. Neat. -3 points for posting nothing but factual information. Cool. I'll leave you all to it, then.
I didn't know he had solicited murder (it's not mentioned in the short article linked) so I was wondering what made a glorified drug dealer middleman deserve life in prison.
I agree that "without parole" is ridiculous.
But the thing is: he wasn't even convicted for that!
Man, that is a bit of a mental stretch to blame drug ODs on the runner of a forum. He did not make the drugs, sell the drugs, or transfer the drugs, but the prosecutors faulted him in the OD of people who used those drugs?
That said, one can't help but wonder if perhaps the movement in which characters as diverse as Assange, Dotcom, Snowden, ThePirateBay and Ulbricht can be placed is too powerful to snub out with mere regulatory reactionism... particularly given the economic state of much of the educated world and the imminent environmental challenges we face as a planet.
If there's one thing that the study of complex systems teach us, it's that there is strength in heterogeneity. Perhaps it's time for America to change its tune and stop pressuring countries worldwide to overpolice their populations in myriad ways (drugs, internet piracy, IP laws). May we live to see more enlightened times, progressive approaches to state-sponsored social remediation, and less of this nationalism "my way or the highway" / "with us or against us" claptrap that Einstein so eloquently summarized: Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind.
The difference is he didn't make his black market political, which unfortunately Ross did. He also didn't try to kill anybody which although thrown out was still referenced by the sentencing judge. Still no word on what happened to the guy who was running SR 2.0 who worked for SpaceX and was busted.
I remember people peddling drugs on MindVox forums when Lord Digital ran it back in the day none of this is new except for Ulbricht trying to market his biz as a revolution. Online drug sales will continue regardless of this sentence.
Can someone help me understand why people keep suggesting that this murder-for-hire allegation was dropped? That does not at all seem to be the case.
Painting over it is their only option.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/29/technology/silk-road-ross-ul... "Prosecutors had charged Ulbricht with commissioning six murders-for-hire but those charges were dropped"
The overt act is there in the new indictment they changed after dropping the 6 murder for hire charges, guess it's my fault for trusting journalists who said nothing about it http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...
Was he convicted of this charge you speak of? No. And who really cares what the legal system decides, it is an utter farce.
So why are you convinced he wasn't convicted of this charge?
For a country that prides itself on freedom and fairness, why create a system that punishes for doing what they want with their body? What if we spent the billions we do now on a failed drug war for education, addiction treatment, mental health, job training? Why ban certain drugs and allow alcohol and cigarettes that have just as addictive properties and kills just as many people?
Fuck Russ, and fuck you for repeating the lie that SR was nothing but drugs.
This is not a good prompt for a "war on drugs is evil" rant. I sympathize with the position, but using somebody as an example of supposed injustice, when a big part of his punishment is because he hired hitmen (plural!), is not going to make your point look at all good.
And the alleging being done by someone who is himself in quite a bit of legal trouble for stealing from Silk Road and embezzling bitcoin during the course of his official duties.
It's not right, its not fair, and until the judicial industrial complex (private prisons, police forces & civil forfeiture used for revenue instead of proper tax increases) is dismantled, we'll continue to see these sorts of travesties.
We have a lot of cruft to cut from the US legal system.
Such an ignorant comment it doesn't even deserve to be commented.
His son had started abusing benzos but wanted to try heroin -- he bought some H on the Silk Road and then ODed after trying it once. When they found his body, the computer was literally open to the Silk Road page..
(There were 6 deaths detailed in the sentencing guidelines, so my recounting may be slightly off, but feel free to exchange this one for the 16-year old kid who bought LSD on the SR, had a terrible trip, then jumped to his death off of a balcony)
Making dangerous drugs vastly easier to purchase by those who had no previous source for them isn't harmless.
The more I read about the war on drugs, the sadder I become. I used to be one of those that wanted to leave everything as it is today, and I've changed my mind.
Every single government actor involved in this case is far more guilty than Ross and, frankly, they are the ones that deserve prison.
Yes, Ross should have realized you can't massively break the law and get away with it. He made a big mistake.
But the mistake he made was assuming that other people were more benevolent than they really are.
This young man viewed the world with a child-like, rosy-eyed perspective, and for that, he gets crushed by the boot of government brutality.
Disclaimer: I have no involvement with any dark nets or online drug trade.
edit: I don't know if he hired hitmen and if he did, I suspect it was in his own defense.
Legally, they do not. If you have a problem with that, take it up with (relevant to the federal laws at issue here) the Congress.
The rule of law and courts were supposed to protect such minorities (ie drug legalization through generalized privacy of Roe v Wade, and trade via the right to free speech). It's pretty fucked up that the legal system has rotted so thoroughly that the courts are harshly persecuting them while the majority of interested people dissent.
Then again, much of that rot is due to the "war on drugs" and its underlying philosophy that people exist to serve their government.
Unless you live in a jurisdiction where the purchase of narcotics is legal (Mars?) the meaning of "People have a right to buy drugs" is quite clear.
In a world where the laws you invoke are responsible for so much suffering and death, to come in with a "Well, legally" and pretend the moral dimension does not exist is... well, I've already said what that is.
As for having a right to drugs, every man has a right to do what they please with their body.
Not to detract from your point. I think he deserves life without parole for the attempted hits by themselves, ignoring every other charge. (Despite the fact that's not what he was convicted of.)
Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.
Rights are the things that we would all agree should be legally protected if we were all rational about it.
So they're a human construct, but they're still objective.
Sentence? 12 years.
Rick Ross was sentences to life. For 100kg of cocaine. Sentence was reduced to 20 years.
So, we will see what happens to Ulbricht.
My guess is that the life will stick, though. After all, this involved computers.
Is little else known about this figure, even as he is nearing completion of his prison term?
[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRel09/saran_sen_pr.html
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487038592045755264...
Meanwhile:
> Hu Wanlin was in prison for human trafficking. That didn't stop him from opening a medical practice while jailed. Once he was released after a retrial in 1997, Hu treated hundreds of patients with an herbal remedy that actually contained sodium sulphate. 146 people died of his treatments. He was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for practicing medicine without a license.
146 people dead.. 15 years in prison.
Run a website that helps people connect with drug dealers.. multiple life sentences.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan rejected Ulbricht’s claim that he was naive and impulsive when he started Silk Road as an economic experiment.
“It was a carefully planned life’s work,” Forrest told him Friday. “It was your opus.”
and:
Ulbricht, who plans an appeal, asked for mercy in a May 26 letter to the judge. He called Silk Road a “naive and costly idea” that had ruined his life.
“I’ve had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age,” Ulbricht wrote. “Please, leave a small light at the end of the tunnel.”
So much for mercy.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road-...
People should read some of the background, including haggling over the cost of a murder for hire. - http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/
Truth is, it's hard to run this sort of thing without getting ripped off, and then violence is the only way to discourage people from ripping you off. Watch Godfather movies, esp. part 2... Mafias arise out of human nature and the nature of the game.
One of the many ironies of libertarian extremists is that actions which are considered illegitimate when taken by a democratic government become OK when taken by concentrated private power to protect private property.
Huh? Libertarian extremists do not condone murder or murder-for-hire. Most libertarian extremists also support proportional self-defense and damages doctrine (Rothbard et al) so would not consider murdering someone who steals from you acceptable.
I wonder how things would have turned out without the murder for hire angle.
Ross is 31 years old, so he may live for 40 years. That mean imprisoning this man will cost the US taxpayer 1.4 million USD in lifetime cost.
This doesn't take into account opportunity cost, expenses for trial, the cost of the drug war, and so on.
[1] http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2...
Lovely.
I see an issue with treating drug users (esp. recreational drug users) as somehow "less than human" because of their choices. If a heroin user dies or contracts disease from using a dirty needle, that is a sad thing and I would applaud a dealer who hands out clean needles to his clients to prevent it. Regardless of my stance on drugs and drug users.
(And that's not even getting into the issue of whether we should be allowed to have drugs as supposedly free people)
The justice system only sees them as "less than human" until they can conveniently be used to create an emotional scene which can be used as ammo against someone the government doesn't like.
See: the poor defenseless kid who would still be alive today if it weren't for the silk road forcing him to buy drugs and take them
Ross was tempted by helping to increase supply. Maybe if we had a legal and regulated location where you could do any drugs but under the supervision of counselors we could help reduce demand and end the cycle.
I believe a church in the Netherlands did this in their basement. They provided discounted heroin that could only be used there and addicts reduced their consumption and had access to counselors.
I am not supporting what Ross did to give access to illegal drugs, I just believe because there is such demand trying to reduce supply is a losing battle where only law enforcement equipment supply companies win.
Can't help but counter this claim by stating that buying drugs via Silk Road is probably not very destructive in any sane analysis, especially compared to street level drug dealing.
There's no corners to hold, no rivals to fight with territory over, no deals to go bad, no real access by minors, and no real impedance to the function of any tangible physical location or bystander.
Seriously. The way he invokes the words "our social fabric" makes it out like Forrest was personally affected. It's easy to imagine Urlbricht rehabilitating and becoming a productive member of society but instead his life has just been destroyed. It's not justice and it's not the right thing to do.
If one person decides to put another person in a cage for the rest of their life, it's clearly a horrendous stomach turning crime. It's no less horrendous when the justice system does it. But we've decided that it's a necessary evil that society requires. We should be working as a society to minimize the necessary evil and rehabilitate people but we're not and it's a tragedy.
Just to throw out an observation: the idea that being in this business kicked off a spiral of actions which led to him being "crazy and desperate" to the point of trying to have people killed is precisely the argument that's been made by people who support the drug war, about the slippery slope of consequences that follow from getting involved with drugs.
I am not sure why someone who so perfectly embodies the other side's narrative is being held up as a shining heroic example by supporters of legalization.
Of course, liberating music was hardly as valuable to society as removing the need for bloodbaths to distribute drugs. But what are you going to do.
Just like the not-very-explicit "murder for hire" used to justify the astonishing sentence given Ulbricht.
That sounds like something from the 19th century.
1) Be careful how your promote your criminal enterprise (early bitcoin talk pages about silk road are from Ross)
2) Don't commit a crime to cover up a lesser crime (Covering up running silk road by trying to commit murder by hire)
3) regularaly check the IP of your service that is running a TOR site. Requests sent to that IP should have been blocked.
Effect might perhaps be to drive others who are or want to do this stuff to operate from Russia or other harder to reach places. It might have been wiser to keep him operating and under long term surveillance, and as such indirectly control the beast he created.
People seem to be hinging their "this is a relatively fair judgement" opinions on the fact that he attempted to/hired one or more hitmen for one or more hits...
If that's what they're prosecuting on, then there's precedent, right? Is that precedent life in prison?
While I don't agree/defend what Ulrich was doing, I think the sentence is heavy-handed. I think arguments can be made for life in prison being worse (or more cruel) than death. And if we compare his crimes to some of the things governments do (or allegedly do) behind closed doors, I wonder if this is really "justice".
I don't know if there's much merit to him "more safely distributing drugs", but I wonder if a sentence this heavy would have been issued elsewhere outside the US.
[EDIT] - Reading other posts, it seems like he wasn't actually charged/convicted for the attempted murder/hitman stuff. If that wasn't the case, then I disagree with the verdict that much more
[EDIT2] - People who are under the impressions that Snowden should have stayed in the US to face proper sentencing should also note the sentencing in this case. Circumstances are different, but, I'm pretty sure Snowden could have faced worse, since Treason is pretty high up there (and makes you eligible for the death penalty). Ironic given that we (american culture) iconize Nathan Hale ("I regret that I have but one life to give...")
Ross Ulbricht, who is tragically falsely accused of running Silk Road, is a hero for challenging the War on Drugs by definitely not selling drugs, and a nice guy.
The government said they identified six individuals who overdosed and died of drugs they purchased on Silk Road. The parents of two of those individuals—25-year-old Bryan B. from Boston and 16-year-old Preston B. from Perth, Australia—spoke at Friday’s sentencing, pleading emotionally to the judge to give Mr. Ulbricht a harsh sentence.
More people die of prescription and OTC drugs.
Great. Now that we have a solid benchmark for the minimum level of criminality possible to get a lifetime imprisonment sentence, we can finally start prosecuting those responsible for the financial fraud that caused the last recession. It was pretty destructive to our social fabric. There was a lot of bar-lowering going on, too.
Right?
Hello?
Anyone?
[mic goes dead, and house lights shut off]
I guess I'll just go home, then.
In light of the differential between the outcomes of prosecutions of highly publicized crimes, I think perhaps he was convicted for "failing to pay the minimum campaign contributions tax and lobbying tax on filthy lucre" and also got the mandatory minimum sentence for "we need to make a really big example of this guy because we are totally unprepared to handle anyone smarter and more cautious than him", with just a little shot of "X on the Internet is a thousand times worse than X in person".
This is not a surprising outcome in any way, and his use of the Internet rather than traditional methods absolves him of nothing.
edit: I also understand the point that his hiring the hitman was an overt act under one of the other charges, but, speaking as someone who is not a lawyer, it seems to me that such a weighty punishment should have to be based on a much more explicit charge than this. I sincerely doubt that they would have been able to make the case for life in prison if not for the murder-for-hire angle, and as such i think it should have been charged. This seems like a dishonest and sneaky way to prosecute someone. Of course, i have my biases.
We're in a day and age where people can cause tremendous harm to others using their mind alone, without throwing a punch or pulling a trigger. Just because he didn't personally cause physical harm to people doesn't mean he can't cause it to happen!
I think it's important for society to be protected from people with his mindset.
Punishing him for that without trying him for it seems like punishment without trial, which is bad. The alternative is that this punishment is just for nonviolent stuff, for which it seems excessive.
No attempted murder charges though.
This man is literally going to jail forever on the charge of proividing people a place to buy opium. Maybe he tried to hire hits, but that didn't make the final conviction list, though some in this thread are trying to say that "narcotics conspiracy" is a broader charge that somehow? includes murder for hire charges.
Silk road 2 has already been busted.
Some may hail this sentence as a victory for justice or some similar nonsense, but there is a deeper problem here. Civil liberties continue to be eroded at an extremely alarming rate in this country that the concept of "justice" applies in a very political context. It's pretty much a joke.
The message here is that if you attempt to live outside of this current system, you will be punished.
Certainly his actions were destructive to a social fabric, or elements thereof. However, I don't think that anyone of good sense takes too seriously the nightmarish visions of a total collapse of order that Forrest's words summon to mind if the site had been left to run. The alternatives do not reduce to the current structure of a fabric and no fabric at all.
Nor does the charge itself make any particular sense, at least in terms of ideals to hold to. Progress is always built on the destruction, partial or total, of a previous way of life. Thus, when destruction becomes impossible, the liabilities that history places upon us, both in terms of mistakes and in terms of functions which no longer match the demands of life, come to dominate all attempts to adapt society to a more fitting form.
The sentence is, at least on those grounds, a farce. Some social fabrics should be destroyed - that something better may take their place. I'm not going to advocate either way on whether that's the case here, but to imprison someone simply because they perform an act with such a function is to reduce yourself to a tyrant.
I say this as someone who just found out he's had $500 stolen from him. Of course I half blame the banks and credit card processors who allow card numbers to be passed around so easily.
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-...
"In any case, I decided to rewrite the site in an mvc framework as suggested by my benevolent hacker adviser. So, while still manually processing transactions and responding to a bigger and bigger message load, I learned to use codeigniter and began rewriting the site."
One of the greatest tragedies of prohibition (and there are a multitude), is that it transfers so much money and other resources into the hands of existing criminal organisations. It also creates criminals as these profits incentivise illicit trade and legislates users as criminals.
That being said, what Ulbricht was doing was clearly nefarious and the punishment should come as no surprise.
Narcotics trafficking, distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet, and conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identification documents, participation in narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2014/08/25/alleged-si...
> His lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, in submissions to the judge, argued that the website’s “harm reduction” ethos made it safer than traditional drug dealing on the street.
> But prosecutors, in their memo, argued that praising Silk Road for “harm reduction measures” was “akin to applauding a heroin dealer for handing out a clean needle with every dime bag: The point is that he has no business dealing drugs in the first place.”
When one side of the argument is based in real-world impacts, and the other side has nothing but an appeal to existing rules, it's a pretty good indication that the rules need changing.
It's an infuriating power play to say "you had no business doing that" if you can't come up with a good reason why not.
And the American legal conscience unfortunately has a very high shock threshold these days, as does the population in general. I mean, look at how many people cheerfully support torture despite the massive intellectual and ethical pitfalls involved. Many of those people are also indifferent to the Constitutional basis of the judicial branch and start foaming at the mouth any time a court says a piece of legislation is unconstitutional.
One side is based on a "claimed" real-world impact. Its somewhat plausible but ultimately isn't backed by real evidence.
On a side note, I do think if a heroin dealer gave away a clean needle, that would be commendable.
An act becoming legal after one has been sentenced for it generally has no effect on past sentences. Executive actions like pardon are possible, but are not in any way necessarily impacted by changes in the legality of the act for which one was convicted. (Though, the same changes in the political landscape which produce changes to the law may influence the politics of discretionary executive actions like pardons.)
It boils down to intent. If you intend to make a legitimate platform for commerce that also happens to be used for illegal stuff, (Craigslist, for example) you're in the clear as long as you aren't actively aiding them.
In contrast, if you set up your platform with the explicit intention of selling illegal goods, then you're in trouble.
* I'm sorry for using the word "disruptive".
I have the same amount of guilt you do when I use that word. But in this case I think it was probably the best word. Annoying when normal words get reclassed into buzzwords.
Context and intent are important and laws aren't computer programs.
They're not liable because a few snook through their defences. They'd be liable if they had no defences.
I hope we can change the way our society punishes it's members.
Kind of suggests he hasn't even been online since the day he was arrested, crazy!
Torture people for the government and you dont even get a warning.
How do people continue believe they live in a society governed by law? It governed by naked, corrupt power.
Another scary thing is how many people have "convicted" this guy of things that he was never convicted of, and used those things as a point from which to justify his sentence here.
Wrong, you're son would be here if you were a better parent.
For some kids better parents mean better behavior. But some kids will act badly no matter what their parents do.
It sucks to say this, but some people just have bad genes, and there is nothing someone outside can do to help.
Honestly, I don't have much sympathy for him directly (due to his complete and utter stupidity and lack of opsec), but I know this is going to hurt some people I care about, people who were good friends with Ross back in college, and I feel bad for them.
Intransigent. Set a log on fire, keep warm. Set a house on fire, get convicted of insurance fraud and arson.