Ross Ulbricht Faces New Drug Charges

Alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht now faces additional drug-related charges. Ars Technica gives a run-down on the run-down, and shows an array of driver's licenses that can't look good to a jury: According to a 17-page amended indictment filed late Thursday night, the government introduced one count of “narcotics trafficking,” of “distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet,” and of "conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents." Previously, Ulbricht was indicted in February 2014 on four formal criminal offenses: narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Ulbricht pleaded not guilty to the previous charges, and he seems likely to plead not guilty to the new ones as well.

Comments

Guilty

[digsbo]

Of facilitating voluntary transactions between consenting adults.

Re:Guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

Of facilitating voluntary transactions between consenting adults.

Consent cannot be given if one of the parties is mentally impaired and under duress due to the well-documented effects of drug addiction. It would be one thing if Silk Road had been only a marketplace for non-addictive substances like cannabis or hallucinogens, but in fact trade in heroin, cocaine and addictive painkillers was a major part of the site.

That said, I think that a government policy of offering drug users medical treatment would be better than the current policy of criminal prohibition, but let's not pretend that Silk Road was all sunshine and rainbows among people of sound mind and body.

Re:Guilty

[digsbo]

Last I heard, all our surviving presidents and most of Congress are walking around free, dude...

Re:Guilty

[Jahava]

Of facilitating voluntary transactions between consenting adults.

The illegality of those transactions is the only reason they are massively profitable, and that is likely the only reason he engaged in them.

Whether or not you agree with that illegality is irrelevant. By profiting from facilitation of illegal activity, Ulbricht leveraged an unfair market position to get ahead of the rest of the world. Anyone can break the law for disproportionate profit. He's That Guy, and if you live within the system (as most of us do), you need to support stamping him down. The alternative is that everyone break the law for profit, which consequently becomes non-disproportionate with a few other side effects.

Re:Guilty

[Charliemopps]

According to the federal government, Cannabis and Hallucinogens are in fact addictive.
http://www.justice.gov/dea/doc...

It's all lies to keep the war on drugs alive and well... but hey, when did the truth matter?

Re:Guilty

[ArmoredDragon]

What's wrong with prostitution? Ugly person A wants sex. Hot person B wants money and will tolerate and/or even enjoy a willy inside them. Person A pays person B for sex. Both get what they want. Damn those evil people, how dare they offend God! Why...sex is ok, but only if somebody doesn't get paid damnit! (Except the god described in the old testament. He's cool with it so long as you burn incense and sacrifice a lamb or two in his name.)

And I don't see anything wrong with selling your own organs either so long as it is done with the same stipulations that are already in place for donation. This is actually what Iran does and...surprise surprise...they're the only country where very few people die while waiting on organ transplants...Oh and people get paid to save lives in the process. What a backwards civilization those Iranians are, amirite? AMIRITE BRO?

As for the slavery part; in some respects people already do that.

Re:Guilty

[Megol]

Yes. Psychosis is induced more often by weed than alcohol, smoking weed can give a lot of troubles with the lungs and cardio vascular system (mostly caused by carbon monoxide poisoning) which in turn can lead to other problems. Eating weed have less harmful effects but still can trigger psychosis.

Alcohol is a poison but if used in reasonable quantities have fewer side effects than reasonable use of weed. Yes it is well documented. No I won't google it for you.

[expecting to get downvoted by weed fanatics that think it is a harmless "natural" drug]

Re:Guilty

[limaxray]

[Citation Needed]

Outside of government propaganda, I haven't seen much supporting the case that drugs like cocaine have a higher rate of abuse than alcohol. Furthermore, alcohol is the only drug that I'm aware of with withdrawal symptoms that includes death.

At the end of the day, violently throwing people in cages at gun point for getting high on substances you don't approve of is far more harmful to both the drug user and society as a whole. This whole argument of which drug is more or less dangerous is stupid because the drug prohibition has done far more damage to our society than recreational drug use.

Re:Guilty

[sacrilicious]

yeah! It's "for all in tents and porpoises"... an historical reference to those who lived nomadically or disguised as intelligent sea creatures.

Chokehold

[Tokolosh]

Is it just me, or is everyone against the War on Drugs at the same time opposed to the tobacco industry?

Re:Chokehold

[digsbo]

Nope. I'm opposed to the war on drugs, and I have no problem with Big Tobacco, so long as they do business honestly. In my opinion, as long as they don't lie, I don't even think they should be prevented from various advertising, or need to have safety warnings on their cancer sticks.

Re:Chokehold

[Canth7]

Exactly. Do I have a problem with Big Tobacco? Yes - because they lie about their products and refuse to disclose the ingredients cointained within their products. Otherwise, I have no problem with multinational companies that want to sell tobacco, cocaine or heroine.

Re:Chokehold

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Your friendly neighborhood drug dealer is at least more honest in not claiming that snorting will make you look young and sexy like a hunk or supermodel. I really can't understand why big tobacco isn't banned while most countries will send you to death or to jail for a very very long time if you're caught with even a few grams of the stuff.

Define torture

[AK Marc]

Torture is violence or the threat of violence to extract a result. Prison is violent, so threats of prison are threats of violence.

Adding on more charges is to play the game of "we'll get you on something, so if you don't confess to this small list, we'll send you away to prison for a long time." That's threats of violence to get a result. So this is all a game of legal torture.

Cause harm and threaten harm until you get a confession, regardless of the guilt of the people involved. That's the American Way.

Re:Define torture

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you define it that vaguely, I guess any sort of punishment at all is torture, and I am guilty of some kind of war crime if I ground my 13 year old daughter.

Re:TOR

[guruevi]

Why not? The whole proof beyond reasonable doubt comes into play here (criminal charges). If the prosecution can't prove anything, he walks. If he used TOR in order to hide suspected illegal activities, then they'll have to prove that, using TOR in itself is not a criminal activity.

Re:More litigants!

[arth1]

If they knew of quality problems that might be a danger and failed to inform you in order to make a profit, yes, absolutely.

Re:TOR

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not going to look good if you funnel your money through multiple companies to hide the real source.

Oh, you mean not unlike American companies who funnel their money through offshore arms of the org to avoid paying taxes on it?

Yeah, somehow magically that bullshit isn't called tax evasion.

The double-standard just bruised your face you fell down so hard. Sorry 'bout that.

Re:TOR

[BitterOak]

He also can't disprove any allegations relating to what he's done over the Internet because he's purposefully removed all traces.

He doesn't have to disprove anything. In America it's up to the prosecution to prove that he did what they accused; it's not up to him to prove his innocence.