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Silk Road Shut Down, Founder Arrested, $3.6 Million Worth of Bitcoin Seized
New submitter u38cg writes Ross William Ulbricht, known as 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' was arrested in San Francisco yesterday and has been charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing. Silk Road has been shut down and some $3.6m in Bitcoin (26,000 Btc) seized. The question is — how?"
onyxruby submitted a link to the criminal complaint (PDF; coral cache might work better). The court filing indicates that they seized the actual servers and recovered their contents, making numerous references to the private messaging system. Also according to the court filing, the Silk Road was used to sell ~$1.2 billion in illicit goods since being founded in 2011.
I think it can be argued that Silk Road practiced the use of Tor as well as anyone could have. They still got pinched. Although it may come out that an insider turned informant, it seems that the Tor system is compromised by the snoops.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
So this begs the question - Are we winning the war on drugs yet?
I just finished reading Gwern's guide to the Silk Road the other evening. If you weren't familiar with the goods for sale, or how it worked, this is a great article: http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road
But they only spy on foreign terrists. And blacks.
This guy had to convert some of the bitcoin into real $ at some point, he had to eat and live somewhere right? Money laundering investigations might have been the vector through which he was compromised instead of a computer based trace.
Or more specifically, monitoring known(or complicit) tor entry nodes, looking for quantity of activity corresponding to activity by roberts, back tracking to the origin IP address, getting a warrant for a full-on-monitoring of that address, verifying their target, then going for a bust.
Encryption and anonymyzing technology only works in as much as no one with any resources actively wants to figure out who you are. You might be able to hide your message, but you'll never hide your existence.
Yup. NSA -> FBI -> Parallel Construction Filter -> Arrest.
Tor was not designed to protect against an adversary that has a global view of all traffic.
According to the complaint, they tracked him by intercepting fake id's he sent to his actual home address. Whether they breached TOR and just set him up, or just hit the stupid mistake of a lifetime by him using his actual address I doubt we will ever know. In any case, they traced things back to him in the end it seems.
The only surprise here is why this arrest and seizure took so long. I hope all these evildoers and drug pushers realize now that they can't hide behind anonymity and the authorities can prosecute and punish these dastardly bastards.
Congrats to the FBI, DEA, and government for taking this hooligan down.
Sounds like you need a mushroom session.
I hope all these evildoers and drug pushers
capitalism is evil. selling a product to a willing and interested buyer is evil.
"Drug dealers don’t really sell drugs. Drug dealers offer drugs. I’m 30 years old. Ain’t nobody ever sold me drugs. Ain’t nobody ever sold nobody in this room some drugs. Was you ever in your life not thinking about getting high and somebody sold you some fucking drugs. Hell, no!
Drug dealers offer, “Hey man, You want some smoke? You want some smoke?” If you say “no,” that’s it. Now Jehovah’s Witnesses on the other hand. Shit. Yo man, drug dealers don’t sell drugs. Drugs sell themselves. It’s crack. It’s not an encyclopedia. It’s not a fucking vacuum cleaner. You don’t really gotta try to sell crack, OK? I’ve never heard a crack dealer go, “Man, how am I going to get rid of all this crack? It’s just piled up in my house.”"
- Chris Rock on drugs
They didn't. They used their backdoor.
So how long will it be before the Silk Road is back up and running under the management of the Dread Pirate Roberts? I presume he had a cabin boy prior to being arrested... or was that how he got nabbed?
It's an open secret that Silk Road was THE primary driver of demand for bitcoin in the beginning. Adoption by the Silk Road transformed bitcoin from a technical curiosity to a real currency backed by a valuable physical commodity (drugs).
Bitcoin has a life of its own now. Even Wall Street is involved. But without Silk Road, 99% of slashdot would have never heard of bitcoin. And the end of Silk Road is certain to impact bitcoin in a big way, even today.
Or more specifically, monitoring known(or complicit) tor entry nodes, looking for quantity of activity corresponding to activity by roberts, back tracking to the origin IP address, getting a warrant for a full-on-monitoring of that address, verifying their target, then going for a bust.
Encryption and anonymyzing technology only works in as much as no one with any resources actively wants to figure out who you are. You might be able to hide your message, but you'll never hide your existence.
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
Everyone knows the real Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired +15 years in Patagonia ... But, of course, no one would care about arresting the Dread Pirate Ulbricht.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's an excellent opportunity to see what happens when 26,000 BTC suddenly vanish from existence.
Yeah it's only the metadata. Keep telling yourself that so that you believe it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
— John Stuart Mill,
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'd like to see how he implemented his back-end. Did he rely upon tor's anonymity and get lazy in the private messaging system? Were the logs/messages unencrypted and left in RAM? The new methods of catching computer crooks basically entail that the FBI sends in an IT team and nothing is touched or powered off (meaning mounted encrypted drives are live and they can run through them at will, etc).
Also, I remember reading an article by Schneier about the possibility for a well-funded attacker to effectively add tons of nodes, exit and internal, and then DDOS the non-controlled nodes to shape traffic in a manner where a good majority of the packets flow throw their own nodes, enabling them to track and compromise users and end service locations. We know the US .gov can fund an operation that large...
Just goes back to the old saying: when it comes to gang warfare, Uncle Sam has the biggest gang of them all...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a
I didn't write it.
Link to indictment contained within too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Will the government try to redeem these bitcoins? Wouldn't that be like saying that they accept that bitcoin is valid? (Of course they could be hypocrites and say that bitcoin is completely invalid and redeem them anyways.)
It would be neat if all the seized bitcoins could be identified and recorded as being worthless now.
Just because you disagree with him on the legality of drug trafficing doesn't mean that he is brainwashed.
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
You know that he's going to have a trial, right? And that the FBI won't want him to get off because there was no warrant for the evidence the prosecution presents in that trial, right? There might very well be unconstitutional monitoring in this process, but to bring it to court and get a conviction, a warrant is necessary paperwork.
Vanish? I'm sure they'll be exchanged for cash on an exchange, and the cash will be kept by the Feds and spent as they please. Because the law says that any cash they seize when there is suspicion (not proof - suspicion!) of drugs/money laundering is theirs to do with as they please.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No. http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf has more info. DPR got extremely sloppy with keeping his identities separate. The Tor part worked fine.
It didn't stop them from abusing the crap out of the law when they got Kim Dotcom. That said, Kim might walk because there was so much prosecutorial misconduct.
I read the internet for the articles.
Using the word "evildoers" in a context other then a Saturday morning cartoon means that he is brainwashed.
Steve Ballmer: It is very strange. I have been in the CEO business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.
Ross William Ulbricht: Have you ever considered black marketing? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
that was across borders, sir. US law doesnt really apply outside the US, and im sure our govt gives no fucks, zero, about other nation's laws.
it is more likely than not that a very clear paper trail will be shown that it all happened by good old fashioned police investigation as you described.
It doesn't mean it was not obtained with an illicit program to begin with, only that they were able to cross the "t"s an dot the "i"s later.
i'm attacking the notion that because the "war" goes on forever it is invalid. you also need to take the trash out every thursday. is that an argument to end "the war on trash"? no, some functions of society are just maintenance functions that never end
i'm not defending us drug policy, it's poor tactics. and some substances need to be legal. but i'm attacking the notion that just because there's demand and supply for something, therefore it needs to be accepted
example: something like meth has a lot of supply and demand. meth also creates horrible costs to individuals and society. such that attacking the meth supply and demand chain has direct costs, and secondary costs. but if meth use is minimized to some extent because of the "war", that pays dividends in the form of less overall costs for individuals and society in regards to the harm that meth does. such that fighting meth is worth it
it's a case-by-case basis. just because marijuana is legalized (and should be legalized) doesn't mean all drugs should be. each substance has to be evaluated individually
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US Government cares, but only so far as they need to make sure they get reciprocal privileges in that country. Obviously, US power makes it easier to get things done without having to horse trade for it, but ultimately, it only works if there is not too much abuse.
It sure doesn't read like TOR was compromised. It was the Gmail account DPR left when first advertising SR on a shrooms site. The FBI (if they aren't just covering for the NSA) do seem to have caught DPR through old fashioned sleuth work. Yes, they managed to copy a server but they still couldn't get the names out of it, only link the messages and transaction dates to other events they tracked down to DPR after tentatively identifying him using Gmail, Google+ and LinkedIn. Ouch.
I find myself ambivalent to Silk Road actions when I think of the losses to over 30 million American home owners of their homes to outside factors that they had no control over. That those involved in attacking the U.S.Economy got less regulation, and squandered, then profited from it. I believe the "Robo Singers" should be in prison, with restituion for damages caused. And yet, they walk more free than everyone else.
Every incoming (or, I guess, in the case of Canada, outgoing) mail parcel goes through an x-ray (I'm not saying they actually pay a lot of attention to each one; it's kind of luck-of-the-draw.) If the inspector sees a package containing a bunch of plastic cards and something that looks like a passport, they are naturally going to wonder what that's doing being sent via international mail. It's not as if you can accidentally leave your passport at home when leaving the country.
Because customs facilities are on international borders, they don't need anything but the barest suspicion to take a peek in your package, certainly not a warrant.
But yeah, hosting SR in SanFran was not very bright. Of course, given that what he was doing would get him arrested in pretty much every country in the land, there's not really any good location for the servers. Even in Russia, you would have needed some pretty good underworld connections to keep those servers out of govt. hands.
An interesting side point that comes out of all this is that services like Silk Road wouldn't exist if there wasn't a market for them.
I'm about as far from Libertarian as you can get, but one thing I do think they have right is the idea that the "war on drugs" should be stopped. It can't be won, that has been proven. Every single defense that's put up to stop drug trafficking is worked around shortly after it comes on the scene. Drug cartels basically run large parts of Mexico and Central America. US citizens get tossed in prison for drug use and sales, which basically turns them into a wasted resource (good luck getting a normal job with a prison record) and this ends up costing more in the long run.
Prohibition basically gave birth to organized crime, simply because enough of the population wanted to keep drinking alcohol and was willing to break the law. As a result, we saw what we see now with other drugs -- the price of alcohol shot up, other ancillary crime increased, violent gangs brutally wiped each other out neighborhood by neighborhood in big cities. With drugs it's the same thing -- I have no desire to use drugs, but there are plenty of others who do. And they'll do whatever it takes to do so, and pay whatever street price is prevalent. Econ 101 -- inelastic demand (more like infinite demand) in the face of constrained supply means prices keep going up no matter what you do.
I believe drug use is a completely victimless crime -- it's the other stuff that happens alongside it (stealing to pay for expensive drugs, drunk/high driving, etc.). If everything were readily available, sold in safe doses and taxed appropriately (like tobacco and alcohol,) prices would be low and people wouldn't have to steal to pay for their habits.
The other thing to consider is that we're rapidly heading towards a sci-fi dystopian future where human labor is no longer as important as it is now. When the unemployment rate shoots up to 85%, wouldn't you rather fill their free time with something other than random crime sprees? Yes, it sounds very "Brave New World"-ish, but it's rapidly coming true. Unless society just drops the use of labor and money as measures of productivity, which will never happen, this is the inevitable future!
Wow, if people read the criminal indictment there's one, possibly even two murder-for-hires in the wings linked to (allegedly posted by / conversation with) this guy.
-Matt
Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.
Welllll, maybe...
Do you remember the recent stories about the DEA and "parallel construction," where the DEA was getting phone records from the NSA and then using them to identify suspects from which they could reverse engineer a false "lead" to let the police just happen to find other incriminating evidence to build a case on?
I'm not saying that's clearly what happened here, but as others have pointed out, it's a distinct possibility given that drugs are involved.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Yes, "drug pushers". They "pushed" TOR onto everyone's computer. They "pushed" everyone's browser to the onion URL that points to Silk Road. Then they "pushed" everyone to buy bitcoins and "pushed" them to use those bitcoins to buy contraband. Yep, "pushers" indeed!
I'm not going to cry about criminals going to jail. it's people like this that help the govt justify the NSA, etc. they need all these tools because people who use encryption / tor / bitcoin / etc are criminals! thanks silk road for ruining it for the rest of us.
it's like the shoe bomber guy who gave the gov't authority to tell me to take off my shoes, and the underwear bomber guy who convinced the govt to fondle my nuts every time I went through security (although secretly they always wanted to do that). Now because of the boston bombers NSA will be collating my online profile to look for "suspicious activities" that may make me a potential terrorist.
I think in 1984 the Goldman terrorist guy actually didn't exist, and was just a gov't front to justify their behaviors and scare people. maybe that's what's going on here?
i dont' understand your point?
Obviously. And of course he had to have fake IDs to show godaddy to rent a server. Nobody can get servers without showing ID these days, I hear it's just like renting a car.
My inner paranoia says the feds broke tor and knew who he was but couldn't prove it with real evidence so they sent some guy to canada and mailed a package of fake IDs with an "open this box please" sticker on it for the canadian mailman (and/or us customs, if the canadians were asleep) to find.
Article: 11:36am: US Government seizes $3.6 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 11:45am: US Government seizes $1.75 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 12:03pm: US Government seizes $8.3 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 12:54pm: US Government seizes $766 thousand worth of bitcoins
Update, 3:27pm: US Government seizes Eight Dollars worth of bitcoins
Update, 5:55pm: US Government seizes $15 million worth of bitcoins
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Look up "Parallel Construction". Regardless of how much they originally had on him through NSA channels or whatever, I assure they have a clean paper trail with enough to take him to trial for stuff he did after they already had warranted phone taps and e-mail, etc.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The US govt seized my bitcoins which silk road kept for me. I am not a US citizen. I have not committed a crime involving us soil or citizens. Will I be able to reclaim my bitcoins? I was actually keeping them there as a safe haven.
You will probably not be able to get your coins back. They have been seized via civil forfeiture. To get your coins back, you will need to establish proof that you are the owner of the coins and that you qualify for an "innocent owner" defense under 18 USC 983(d). Specifically, you will need to show that you "(i) did not know of the conduct giving rise to forfeiture; or (ii) upon learning of the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture, did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property."
So, can you show that you did not know that drugs and other illicit materials were being traded on Silk Road? If not, can you show that you tried to get your coins out as soon as you learned this was the case? If not, then goodbye money. You shouldn't have knowingly comingled funds with criminals.
Beyond the unlikelihood of successful recovery, I would point out that attempting to claim your coins may put you at risk of criminal charges for your own actions. I note that you specifically mention that you "have not committed a crime involving us soil or citizens" (emphasis added). If you have used your coins to participate in a crime elsewhere or have participated in activity that is legal elsewhere but criminal in the US (e.g. trade in controlled substances), you may run afoul of money laundering charges (18 USC 1956-1957) and RICO (18 USC 1961-1968).
I highly recommend you consult a real attorney first. (I am not one!) Be honest with them; you have attorney-client privilege in the US and in many other countries, and they cannot give good legal advice without all the facts. Don't be reckless, though. Since you're a foreign national, any calls to the US will most likely be monitored according to recent news, and the DEA is accused of using information they can't legally obtain to fake up a "clean" evidence trail that can't be constitutionally impeached. If possible, you may wish to seek an attorney local to your country who works with US law internationally.
Final note: I am not a lawyer. This should not be construed as legal advice, and I may be quite wrong on several aspects of the above. If you are in serious trouble, consult a real attorney and not Slashdot.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You perspective is common, but I think flawed. We need to have law and order in a civil society, even when there are great injustices also taking place. As a thought experiment, imagine that you are living in South prior to the Civil War. Women can't vote and people are actually enslaved right in your very own town. Now you find out that a guy in town is passing off counterfeit money. Do you arrest and prosecute the guy, or do you let him go because what he is doing is a trivial crime because one of the most unspeakably horrible crimes that man has ever perpetuated upon man is occurring at the same time?
Anyway, my 2 cents...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
See my other comment -- your argument holds water only if we allow the current black market to continue with the criminal penalties removed.
If someone were able to walk into a store and buy absolutely pure meth (for example) the following costs disappear:
- Many of the health costs (ingesting a pure substance synthesized by a drug company vs. one contaminated with very toxic solvents)
- Many of the criminal costs -- (1) it would be cheaper, meaning you might not have to steal to feed your habit, (2) transactions would be in the open, not controlled by organized crime or random drug dealers, (3) you wouldn't have to waste resources throwing people in jail.
- Random houses out in the country getting blown up because of a poor understanding of organic solvent extraction chemistry
Yes, you're going to have other consequences, but they're all better than what we have now. And, they can be counteracted. There are plenty of rehab facilities for people who want to get clean, and funding those beats funding prisons to warehouse people that will just keep coming back.
Treat every drug like alcohol and tobacco -- regulate it, tax it, and use the proceeds to clean up the rest of the problems associated with its use. We already fund methadone clinics for heroin addicts -- that's not just for fun; it's a cost we've chosen to take on in exchange for more controlled addicts and a lower rate of IV drug-borne diseases.
Now, onto how he got caught... An agent involved in the investigation ("Agent-1"), found the first few references to SR on the internet from somebody only identified as "altoid", attempting to promote the site in its beginning days, in January of 2011.
In October of the same year, a user also going by the name of "altoid" made a posting on Bitcoin Talk titled "a venture backed Bitcoin startup company", which directed interested users to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com".
That email address is what led to DPR's downfall.
---
After identifying "altoid", they started connecting the "DPR" identity to Ulbricht pretty quickly.
Ulbricht's Google+ page and YouTube profile both make multiple references to the a website dubbed the "Mises Institute". DPR's signature on the SR forums contained a link to the Mises Institute.
DPR cited the "Austrian Economic theory" along with the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, all of which are closesly associated with the Mises Institute.
Server logs show that someone logged onto the SR administration panel from San Fransisco around the same time that Ulbricht was staying in San Fransisco.
Multiple fake IDs were intercepted by U.S. Customs & Border Patrol while on their way to an address which Ulbricht was living at the time.
These IDs all carried photos of Ulbricht but had false names and details. This was around the same time that DPR stated in a message that he was acquiring some fake IDs to buy new servers.
When questioned by Homeland Security about the fake IDs, he refused to answer any questions but then stated that anyone could purchase such things using "Silk Road" and "Tor".
The address which Ulbricht was staying at was being rented in cash and he was living with housemates who knew him under a name which corresponded with one of the fake IDs.
He posted on StackOverflow using his real name, inquiring about how to use curl/PHP to grab things off Tor, before quickly changing the name to "frosty" (with a fake email: frosty@frosty.com)
Thought my money is on NSA and parallel construction.
One of the more significant recent revelations is that the govt uses "parallel construction" in building a cae. If possibly illegal surveillance is used to catch you, they -- after the fact -- construct a legal scenario for how they MIGHT have caught you that will pass muster w/ a judge.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
This is what they claim. You might remember from the NSA documents that it appears standard procedure to cover the source of information by creating a plausible lie.
Of course they would never tell if they have enough metadata and surveillance to identify Tor users and hidden sites. It would be in their interest to keep us using a network they can penetrate.
If the feds have Silk Road's wallets, they now know every bitcoin address they ever used - as well as every bitcoin address used by Silk Road's clients.
Since most Bitcoin users are dumb and don't use shared wallets, it should be simple to follow the blockchain back to people who bought drugs. Everyone has to cash into or out of of Bitcoin somewhere, so it's a matter of looking for transactions from known exchanges, subpoenaing them, getting banking information and fingering the buyers.
Silk Road should really have functioned as a massive shared wallet with no records.
I wonder what Atlantis knew when they shut down?
If he's an ally in the fight against slavery, you're damned right you don't do anything about it. And in this case, what we're talking about is a modern equivalent to the underground railroad. DPR enabled the oppressed to live freer at great personal risk. That's worthy of respect.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
that isn't a grammatical error. we aren't talking about mis-conjugating a verb.
widespread misuse of words and phrases reduces the value of a language. if we allow "taco" to become "divine right of kings" or ignore things like "for all intensive purposes" we are basically saying that all words and phrases are allowed to equal all meanings and definitions. the result then is that no words or phrases carry any meaning. this is the complete destruction of the value of the language.
lazy capitalizations? poor spelling? grammatical errors? none of those actually attack the very basis for the purpose of language.
THL phish sticks
> So if they exchange Btc for USD, they are legitimizing Bitcoin as a currency.
Law enforcement routinely sells bicycles that have been abandoned or stolen. Does that make bicycles currency?
Selling bitcoins == selling bicycles. Selling something doesn't turn it into currency. Accepting it as payment would be using it for currency.
As soon as you can pay fines and government fees in bitcoin, that's when the government will be treating bitcoin as currency.
Really? I'm having trouble swallowing the concept of abandoning law and order in the face of evil. Society becomes impossible, IMHO.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What value does law and order have to the slave? Law and order is nothing more than a tool, and when that tool is wielded by evil, it serves evil. A society where injustice is enforced by the government and cheered on by patriots is no society that is worth having.
Think about it, if you were the slave in your scenario, would you really care that an abolitionist had counterfeited currency? Hell no! If you thought that counterfeiting would lead to your freedom, I bet you would run the presses yourself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
On or about March 29, 2013, ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT, a/k/a "Dread Pirate Roberts," a/k/a "DPR," a/k/a "Silk Road," the defendant, in connection with operating the Silk Road website, solicited a Silk Road user to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site.
It's interesting that they're not charging him for the murder-for-hire scheme; the criminal complaint describes it in lurid detail. http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf (The detail starts at point #31/page 21.) Ulbricht allegedly tried to pay ~$150k to have a supposed blackmailer assassinated. He claims to have had an earlier "clean hit" done for around $80k.
Contrast the murder-for-hire move with the following (allegedly) hypocritical drivel from his LinkedIn profile:
I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.
Funny, but "could care less" is actually considered correct in the US (or at least it's still in dispute)
When it is used incorrectly, it's considered incorrect, even in the US. There's no dispute about that.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's pure BS.
Since the eighties, everybody knows that Roberts is not one man, but a series of individuals who periodically pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor. Everyone except the successor and the former Roberts is then released at a convenient port, and a new crew is hired. The former Roberts stays aboard as first mate, referring to his successor as "Captain Roberts", and thereby establishing the new Roberts' persona. After the crew is convinced, the former Roberts leaves the ship and retires on his earnings.
My example wasn't from the slave's perspective
Yes, those who preach law and order tend to be unable to empathize with the oppressed.
For example, a slave that is currently lashed every night and raped by the master might love it if the counterfeiter ruins the master's day a little.
Whether I'm a slave or not, I am completely in favor of the assassination of such a monster. Law and order is worthless if it allows atrocities to happen.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Kim might also walk because of that little detail of him NOT BEING IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM UNDER THEIR JURISDICTION.
And if all he gets is to walk, but not compensated for the billions of dollars in losses he suffered by having his business stolen by jack booted thugs with no legal process whatsoever in effect, it'll be a gross miscarriage of justice.
And no, he's not my favorite person. But if this kind of shit can happen to him just because he's not everyone's favorite person, then we may as well entirely give up on that whole rule of law concept entirely and stop splitting hairs about it.
This guy, Ross Ulbricht, made a number of critical mistakes irrespective of his use of TOR. For example, he posted on the shroomery.org forums using the user name "altoid" and then again a few days later on bitcointalk.org with the same user name. The court documents aren't clear on whether or not he was using TOR at the time he made those posts or when or how he created those accounts in the first place. Apparently, these were some of the earliest public posts promoting what would ultimately become the Silk Road. Eight months after that, the "altoid" identity was used again on the bitcointalk forum to advertise for an "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" to hire for a job with a "venture backed Bitcoin startup company". This was critical because the email address for the job posting was rossulbricht at gmail. So this guy used his real email address (which contained his real name) posting as "altoid", the same account that had earlier promoted the Silk Road concept on both shroomery and bitcointalks: epic fail. . From there it was proverbial cake for the authorities to monitor his Google accounts and trace the IP address of his logins to an Internet cafe in San Francisco. They also found that he had an account on the Mises Institute website (an Austrian Economics organization) under Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road website also linked to the Mises Institute website. Yet more evidence, albeit circumstantial, that Ulbricht was the one behind Silk Road. Game, Set and Match to the the 3 letter agencies and the USSS. Have a nice day.