It's Aaron Swartz, not Schwartz. If you're going to wave a bloody shirt, spell the name on it correctly. And I don't think he or his family would appreciate the comparison you're making. Swartz was ultimately prosecuted for actions which, right or wrong, were done selflessly, without remuneration, and in pursuit of a principle. Ulbricht made a fortune facilitating drug sales.
To add, Swartz also didn't attempt any assassinations. While I see some overlap in the way that Ulbricht was made an example of, he ultimately shot himself in the foot by resorting to such nefarious means to protect himself.
The wikipedia article for Ross Ulbricht says this:
On the last day of trial, Serrin Turner, the lead prosecutor, addressed the jury and stated that none of the six contracted murders-for-hire allegations occurred.[27] One charge of procuring murder was originally filed in October 2013 in a separate pending indictment in Maryland (which was later dismissed with prejudice in its entirety in July 2018);[citation needed] the other five allegations were never filed.[37]
Obviously wikipedia is not a valid source, etc etc. But I've heard the assassination thing before and I'm wondering what information we have about the alleged assassination attempts.
It's nice to see you are thinking about it. Yes the assassinations are not as simple as its made out to be and were used primarily for character assassination in Ross' trial and sentencing.
The Maryland case was dismissed because it was a super shaky case, and would have revealed so much incompetence that it would mess this railroading up. It was later dismissed in a way that let the government retain some integrity "with prejudice [because he was already convicted]".
With regard to 1 or 2 of those 6 murders for hire, corrupt DEA and Secret Service agents were stealing and extorting from Ross, including staging a fake assassination. They were tried and convicted.
> No mention of Carl Mark Force IV made it into Ulbricht's trial. Neither did any mention of Shaun Bridges, the former Secret Service agent charged alongside him. The spree of crimes they committed as Silk Road investigators was under the seal of grand jury secrecy at the time.
It doesn't help Ross' character, as this fake one had images and a person that played along for a lighter sentence/immunity and then Ross had additional fake assassinations carried out.
It still hurts the government having a unilateral perception of him, because nobody was EVER trying to get people murdered in this operation until the corrupt investigators created fictional drama so that they could pocket some bitcoins. So far it hasn't mattered for the government, as Ross' appeals have all failed.
Really illuminates the key areas the government can nab you: not indict you for a worse action but tell everyone about the allegations, withhold key evidence, use those allegations to deny bail, shift jury perception, and rationalize higher sentencing.
The "assassination attempts" are used to slander his character. It certainly appears that he didn't actually believe anyone was going to be hurt but rather correctly believed he was paying an extortion fee to someone larping as a thug.
> Ulbricht made a fortune facilitating drug sales.
Ulbricht lived in a tiny apartment with roommates in SF and spent his days working from the public library. It really doesn't appear like he was in it for the selfish material rewards.
Yes, you should. Everyone at the top is usually far isolated from what generates the revenues, and they have their own causes and ideals for wealth just like anyone else.
Vilifying money itself along side actual sanctions on it is a relatively new legal concept for the Federal government. So yes this has pervaded the culture of the Federal government's subjects, but is only a happy coincidence for the government to maintain support.
I don't - I'm not a drug user, but I have a lot of political ideologies that agree with Ross, and I certainly don't believe he deserves what happened to him.
i thought the harsh sentencing was because he tried to pay a hitman to kill 5 people?
edit: apparently the murder charges were dropped[0] but the evidence that he hired a hitman was deemed "unambiguous" and factored into his sentencing[1]
these facts should probably be acknowledged, even if disputed, on the freeross page, otherwise it reads like propaganda.
a related and interesting twist: it was an fbi informant he paid to be his hitman, who staged the murders. so nobody actually died, even though he believed they did. crazy.
He forgot the cardinal rule of hiring a hitman... don’t. Your probability of talking to the police or a buffoon who will get you caught is close to 100%. Actual hit men work for established criminal organizations, and don’t look on Craigslist for freelance gigs.
Agreed. Just about every “foiled terror plot” in the 00’s were people coerced into the action and provided instructions if not materials for carrying it out by the FBI.
It goes back much farther than that. It took a sawed off shotgun, a bunch of crispy children and a dude with a box truck to convince them to only entrap minorities.
The FBI and federal law enforcement more broadly has a long sad history of misdeeds.
> It goes back much farther than that. It took a sawed off shotgun, a bunch of crispy children and a dude with a box truck to convince them to only entrap minorities.
I feel like there is a story there, could you please provide a little more info?
There have been "sting operations" where cops offered somebody a ridiculous low price on some drugs, then busted them for going for it. Easy to get caught trafficking several kilos of coke when you paid $100 a kilo. Sounds like entrapment to me though.
I mean, if I'm a regular user and I can afford and obtain a big supply for 1/10th the going rate I'd seriously consider that, even without an interest for selling it on. This would be true of any shelf stable product I use regularly and could effectively store
by "wonder" i mean what actually happened, not what the prosecutor's narrative is. the agents were aggressive in taking down SR and making an example of it even before knowing anything of its operations. did agents approach ulbricht and offer to make his problems go away for a price? did they lead him to believe it was a neccessity for his own safety? etc. we may never know because ulbricht was not actually tried for these crimes.
If the government wanted to adjudicate that matter - for sentencing or any other purpose - it needed to charge him with those crimes. It didn't do that, precisely because the evidence is flimsy and most of us don't believe most of it for a second. The government's decision to use this "evidence" only as a public relations tool to justify an insane sentence reads like a fascist tendency, not the actions of the justice system in a free country.
I have a real hard time feeling sympathy for someone who was responsible for the silk road marketplace. I really do. There are better people to feel sympathy for. Bad choices can have bad consequences.
I think it's extremely likely it saved people from overdosing or taking the wrong drugs. The review system let people vet their dealers before buying.
And yeah, I was mainly thinking about street level violence. While I've never lived under the influence of a cartel, I have a hard time believing the Silk Road would make anything worse for anyone in that situation. It seems to me giving cartels the ability to directly sell their drug to people over the internet would only decrease violence. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
> I think it's extremely likely it saved people from overdosing or taking the wrong drugs. The review system let people vet their dealers before buying.
Based on what? How many OD victims never lived to give a 3 star rating "overdosed, would not buy again"?
You should watch Cocaine Diaries (http://exclaim.ca/music/article/blurs_alex_james_in_bbc_doc_...) - a documentary about a rock star, after talking about cocaine fueled parties, was invited to Colombia and met with everyone from villagers to a cartel hitman. To think that there's no violence in the _production_ alone, let alone distribution and retail, would be naive. And to think that giving the cartels safer channels to sell and increase their market would make those precursors safer is something I can't really picture.
It saved lives by giving more people access to high quality drugs, as well as having a feedback and review system that made the vendors accountable for the shit they sold.
Harm reduction is a big thing on DNM markets and forums. You have information on how to safely use drugs and places to ask for advice. I bet it saved quite a few lives.
The access will always be easy anyway. The only difference is that now people have access to high quality drugs which are much less damaging, not some shit that has changed hands ten times, with each duckhead cutting it with whatever they have nearby.
the most obvious example of harm is probably the opiod epidemic, and the deaths resulting from overdose. of course shutting down the silk road and sending addicts into the streets or to jail is probably exacerbating the risks and is certainly no solution.
I think if anything, the opioid epidemic was improved through dark web market places. I'm sure if you search on the news throughout the years, there were more overdoses related to substances sold being misrepresented or cut with something like fentanyl.
The Silk Road was bad because it circumvented the law and the ability of law enforcement to enforce the law. The law is an important thing in a democracy. The rule of law protects us, from each other and from the government. The way to change laws is through your representatives in the government, not go do your own thing. If you do go do your own thing and the law catches up to you, that is a consequence of your actions.
It would be hypocritical to be upset at politicians like our president and congress for breaking laws, but then to cheer on Ross for his breaking of the law. Justice isn't a pick and choose kind of thing.
Not all laws are just. Not all application of law is just, though it may be lawful. The Constitution even has an escape hatch built in: the presidential pardon. The framers were quite aware that sometimes the law is not just- otherwise, why allow unilateral pardons?
Sodomy laws were only overturned nationally in 2003. Was everyone involved in consensual buggery before then "hypocritical" for being "upset at politicians like our president and congress for breaking laws"?
as a practical matter civil disobedience is a pretty fundamental part of how democracies function. I don't think darkweb markets are civil disobedience! but there are many, many worse things than hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is another thing that is a fundamental part of how democracies function. Without hypocrisy you can't really have a free society.
You're earnestly comparing civil disobedience with profiting off of illegal drug trade. Some laws truly are unjust but that doesn't mean you or I can justify breaking whatever law we want because of it. If your conviction about the unjustness of a law is strong enough, then you'll be willing to face the consequences that comes with breaking them.
That's what Ulbricht is doing, facing his consequences, and I have no sympathy for him. Notice the lack of a public outcry or a huge public movement to come to his rescue. It's because the laws he broke are not unjust. The laws he broke are reasonable, he was a drug trafficker.
Again I'm not saying that darkweb markets are civil disobedience. But first you have to determine that drug laws as we know them are just before you can be sure that shutting darknets down is in the interests of justice.
For instance, drug possession is illegal, but prosecuting every single person found with small amounts to the maximum extent possible would not be just, and no appeal to the law will make it so. I am hugely sympathetic to people pulled up on minor drug crimes, even though they are technically "facing the consequences" of their actions, because they're unjust consequences. Drug possession isn't civil disobedience but that doesn't mean I'm happy when people go to jail on minor possession charges. Ditto prostitution: not civil disobedience, probably unjust to jail someone for it.
I'm not sympathetic towards him either, but neither am I particularly mad at him over his actions being illegal. Hiring a hitman is wrong regardless of the law. Profiting off drug sales, well that's a more complicated argument than simply "it's illegal." It's probably good that he's behind bars but I don't think you can just point at the statutes he broke and, without reference to anything in the outside world, say that you are certain it's a just consequence. Possibly it was. But you can't just assume that if he really is guilty (he is), the consequences are reasonable.
Meanwhile, Paul le Roux is very likely to get a light sentence due to his extensive cooperation with the government. le Roux is directly responsible for several completed murders. He sold missile components to Iran! His sentence will almost certainly be much shorter than Ross Ulbricht's. Does that serve justice or not? It's not obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
Yes, it is. That is the entire purpose of the executive branch; choosing what laws to enforce. We don't have the capacity to enforce every law. There are such a ridiculous amount of laws on the books over the last 250 years that enforcing them all is impossible. So, we prioritize things. There is a reason why most lawyers will suggest that you don't talk to the police without an attorney present[0]. If they want to get you for something, they will find something.
Also, justice and law are not the same at all. We do not have a justice system. We have a legal system. If you have more money, you will almost always have more favorable outcomes in court. I'm not saying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need some laws and law enforcement. But legality does not equal morality. You have to weigh things on their own.
Owning slaves was legal and enforced by the law at one point too. Was the underground railroad an immoral drain on society?
While not all of Silk Road was sunshine and rainbows, the changing attitudes towards marijuana legislature is proof that circumventing the law isn't always this drain on society because the law isn't always caught up to society.
>It would be hypocritical to be upset at politicians like our president and congress for breaking laws, but then to cheer on Ross for his breaking of the law.
There's a lot wrong in your comment but this is the most wrong by far. Citizens are not accountable to the government in the same way that the president is accountable to the country. The latter is a far stricter responsibility and not a two-way relationship. Citizens have no moral obligation other than the threat of force to obey unjust laws; in fact in many cases breaking such laws is closer to moral duty. See civil disobedience.
