Silk Road Lawyers Poke Holes In FBI's Story

wiredog points out an article from Brian Krebs about the court proceedings against Ross Ulbricht for his involvement in Silk Road, the online drug marketplace that was shut down (at least temporarily) by law enforcement last year. Ulbricht's lawyers have demanded information from the FBI in the course of discovery, and the documents provided by the government don't seem to confirm the FBI's story. For starters, the defense asked the government for the name of the software that FBI agents used to record evidence of the CAPTCHA traffic that allegedly leaked from the Silk Road servers. The government essentially responded (PDF) that it could not comply with that request because the FBI maintained no records of its own access, meaning that the only record of their activity is in the logs of the seized Silk Road servers. ... The FBI claims that it found the Silk Road server by examining plain text Internet traffic to and from the Silk Road CAPTCHA, and that it visited the address using a regular browser and received the CAPTCHA page. But Weaver says the traffic logs from the Silk Road server (PDF) that also were released by the government this week tell a different story. ... “What happened is they contacted that IP directly and got a PHPMyAdmin configuration page.” See this PDF file for a look at that PHPMyAdmin page. Here is the PHPMyAdmin server configuration.

Comments

Perjury

[MacDork]

So does this mean they go to jail for perjury?

Re: Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

No no. This means the judge could go to jail for perjury. His decisions might not match the FBI's statements and so he may be going to lie in court. Better watch his back or else justice may need to be served in him.

Re:Perjury

[i kan reed]

No. Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court. Failing to provide evidence for your points is merely a justification for acquittal.

Re:Perjury

[Virtucon]

No, they're the government's witness. If agents committed perjury themselves on the stand that's a different matter. That's why we have judges and ultimately they can exclude testimony/evidence based on the credibility of the witnesses or evidence that they affirm is true. What frosts my cornflakes is that the Prosecutors have a conflict of interest here in seizing and selling assets that were DPR's, the bitcoins, before the trial even commenced. The proceeds of which wound up in the government coffers supporting the prosecution. That alone should have been prohibited by the judge in the case so it remains to be seen how these holes in the evidence trail will be handled. IMO this guy is still fucked.

Re:Perjury

[spiritplumber]

Perjury is saying false things INTENTIONALLY while under oath in court. If I am called to the witness stand and say that to the best of my knowledge the guy accused of scamming really IS a Nigerian princess, and I genuinely do believe that, it doesn't make me guilty of perjury, it just makes me a very derpy individual.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO this guy is still fucked.

Completely unrelated to the trial. He was fucked the moment law enforcement decided that he was a bad guy.

Re:Perjury

[i kan reed]

A. That's not a conflict of interest. The prosecutors are always supposed to represent the state's interest. It'd be like saying "conflict of interest because the defendant is paying his lawyer". It's kinda silly.
B. Once you're in a federal case, you're fucked as far as money goes. They're going to dump tons of money of proving your guilt. There is never a money shortage for prosecuting a federal case. If you're going to be accused of breaking a law in the US, be accused of breaking a local law.
C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.

Re:Perjury

[i kan reed]

Yeah, sorry. That's even more accurate, but what's relevant in this case is that it has to be provable(like any other criminal charge).

Re:Perjury

[kelemvor4]

So does this mean they go to jail for perjury?

That's not how it works in America. Only citizens take that risk of actually being punished for a crime. Government agencies are free to do what they want.

Re:Perjury

[msauve]

Failing in your parallel construction, and telling the court you discovered evidence in a way you couldn't have, seems to me to be perjury.

Re:Perjury

[Virtucon]

Yes but there still has to be the right to defend yourself. If you take away the means by which I can pay lawyers, my funds, then I can't get the best legal representation. Therefore the prosecution is already convicting you before the trial even commences. This was already addressed by SCOTUS earlier this year and it's sad that it went the way it did. It's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and I could see seizing them after trial but not before or at least the judge allowing the guy to pay for his defense. In this case the judge already allowed the bitcoins to be auctioned but there's the sense here of convicting before any adjudication has actually been done. That really needs to be fixed in the legal system.

Re:Perjury

[jythie]

On (C) at least, I think the frustration is they seized and liquidated the evidence before the case is settled. It is part of a larger problem with law enforcement lately where police can bring charges against the assets themselves and keep them. In some regions it is a serious money maker to the point finding too much cash in a random traffic stop funds the department.

Re:Perjury

[ray-auch]

C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.

Is selling the evidence off before the trial (which it was seized to be used in) also par for the course ?
What happens to seized evidence after a not-guilty verdict - or do certain people already know that is not a possibility ?

Re: Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of fools! Committing perjury. If perjury is the act of lying in Court while under oath, then all you have to do is testify while standing up. Problem solved!

Re:Perjury

[i kan reed]

Oh, the selling part is made up wholesale by Virtucon. I guess I missed that part.

Re:Perjury

[Gr8Apes]

C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.

Seizing evidence is one thing, seizing evidence and selling it for money is perfectly legal, after the trial, conviction, etc. Doing so before trial is an entirely different thing, and will probably lead to some problems down the road, especially if DPR is not convicted. At that point, it's going to be a very very interesting case.

Re:Perjury

[suutar]

So this is part of a collective hallucination?

Re:Perjury

[arth1]

He was fucked the moment law enforcement decided that he was a bad guy.

Keep in mind that the law enfarcement deciding that someone is a bad guy doesn't imply that he isn't a bad guy.

Re:Perjury

[dmbasso]

Does that apply even if you're scratching your head while saying the false things (or the "least untruthful things") intentionally?

Re:Perjury

[TheCarp]

Actually, this is the US, the selling of the evidence and even its seizure is independent of the trial, in fact, it would be handled in a seperate civil trial under a much more leniant standard of evidence, allowing for all of his assets to be seized and kept EVEN IF HIS TRIAL RETURNS A NOT-GUILTY VERDICT.

He can actually be found not-guilty, let free, and they still get to keep his stuff.

Re:Perjury

[Fnord666]

Yes but there still has to be the right to defend yourself. If you take away the means by which I can pay lawyers, my funds, then I can't get the best legal representation.

You have the right to legal representation regardless of your financial standing. Do you know what they call the guy who barely passed the bar exam by one point? Your state provided legal representation.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

C. Like it or not, the bitcoins represent evidence. Seizing evidence is par for course in any criminal case.

GP's post wasn't about seizing evidence; it was about liquidating the evidence before the trial.

Re:Perjury

[Virtucon]

Well there's a difference between seizure and forfeiture and regrettably the 6th amendment is inadequate in allowing you to use your assets wholly to defend yourself. Thus you're right, you'll get the public defender who often opts for a plea deal rather than a rigorous defense.

Re:Perjury

[Uberbah]

Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court relevant to the case at hand. If the prosecutor asks you if you watch porn while prosecuting you for marijuana possession, it's not perjury if you lie because it's not relevant.

Re:Perjury

[demachina]

It could also be considered obstruction of justice if they are intentionally withholding evidence.

Re:Perjury

[canadiannomad]

Actually, this is the US, the selling of the evidence and even its seizure is independent of the trial, in fact, it would be handled in a seperate civil trial under a much more leniant standard of evidence, allowing for all of his assets to be seized and kept EVEN IF HIS TRIAL RETURNS A NOT-GUILTY VERDICT.

He can actually be found not-guilty, let free, and they still get to keep his stuff.

I just want to be put on the record saying: "That is completely insane."

Re:Perjury

[Wycliffe]

Failing in your parallel construction, and telling the court you discovered evidence in a way you couldn't have, seems to me to be perjury.

Not admitting to parallel construction under oath is perjury. You're just stating how you get caught. The act of parallel construction
is "almost" lying and denying it under oath is definitely lying. The only way to prevent perjury with parallel construction is to make
sure that the people who know about the parallel construction don't ever testify. One way to do this is with anonymous tips which
at least gives plausible deniability but unless the new investigation is unaware of the previous investigation then there are still
people who know about the parallel construction. It would be interesting for lawyers to start calling the primary investigators to
the stand at every trial and asking the simple question "are you aware of any parallel construction?" Basically force investigators
to give up the practice, admit to it, or commit perjury.

Re:Perjury

[ihtoit]

if it can be proven that their lying under oath was intended or tended to pervert the source of justice, then they damn well should be jailed. Problem is they're Federal agents, all they'll get is an "Oops" and a sideways promotion.

Re:Perjury

[Terry Pearson]

It is part of a larger problem with law enforcement lately where police can bring charges against the assets themselves and keep them...

Just to add to your statement to help clarify what is happening... I believe the RICO laws passed many years ago (1960's) were basically designed to drain the funds of mobsters so they could not higher big name lawyers to defend themselves. The promise at the time was that this would only be used for mafia like criminals. People agreed because the mafia was the "bad guy" and needed to be stopped at all costs.

The statutes use some legal tricks to define an inanimate object (currency) as a "person" or entity. Then they charge the entity with a crime. The targeted mobster, smuggler, etc. would then not be able to sue because they lack "standing". This basically means that they cannot sue to receive their money back because the money is the victim (because it was redefined as a person) instead of the accused being the victim. A person cannot sue if they do not have an interest in the offense (i.e. being a victim). Therefore, they have created a wall of red tape and legal definitions that allow them to take the resources from the accused and deny recourse to get them back.

Police departments got greedy and prosecutors wanted a shortcut to get tough on crime, so they started doing the same to those with drug offenses and other crimes. It is much easier to prosecute when the defendant is stripped of methods of defending themselves.

As a side benefit, that dealer's Ferrari looks pretty good parked next to the other squad cars.

Re:Perjury

[BringsApples]

That would be the case if the FBI was manned by one person, and that person told a judge, "I discovered evidence..." and then later was exposed to be a lie. But since FBI agent #1 does some work, FBI #2 other work, they manage to get what they think (probably due to misunderstanding how things work on the web) is valid discovery, they go to FBI #3 who then tells the judge, "We discovered..."

To steal a funny word from spiritplumber, it just makes them derpy people.

Re:Perjury

[Chas]

He was fucked the moment law enforcement decided that he was a bad guy.

Keep in mind that the law enfarcement deciding that someone is a bad guy doesn't imply that he isn't a bad guy.

Once law enforcement labels you a "bad guy" nowadays, the difference between being mislabeled and actually BEING a bad guy is pretty much academic. They're going to do their absolute best (and worst) to fuck your life up as much as possible.

Re:Perjury

[FlyHelicopters]

I just want to be put on the record saying: "That is completely insane."

Yes, it is... We have a rather broken legal system in the US because of this and many things like it...

Sadly, too many people are blind to it because it doesn't affect them in their day to day lives...

Re:Perjury

[sribe]

Perjury is saying false things INTENTIONALLY while under oath in court.

The "intentionally" part is necessary, correct. But the "in court" part is not necessary. Perjury applies to intentional lies in all sorts of official proceedings and documents.

Re:Perjury

[i kan reed]

Hm. I made a pretty inaccurate statement there. I was going to go on about the end of the article and how they were talking about how it might be a sting and the coins are still in the governments' position. But then I realized that was pointlessly defensive and the simpler reality is that I was wrong.

So how does that wrongness interplay with the rest of what I was saying? I'm not sure.

Re:Perjury

[ncc74656]

That's not how it works in America. Only citizens take that risk of actually being punished for a crime. Government agencies are free to do what they want...

...until we decide that they aren't, and take action to stop this abuse of the public trust.

Re:Perjury

[PRMan]

Actually, they sold the Silk Road money-laundered (mixed) bitcoins which nobody (even DPR) would claim, since that would be an easy admission to felony money laundering. Since they were unclaimed, they were sold.

DPR's PERSONAL bitcoins have still not been sold.

Re:Perjury

[PRMan]

Which is unconstitutional.

Re:Perjury

[ShanghaiBill]

Perjury is saying false things INTENTIONALLY while under oath in court.

Nitpick: Even that is not necessarily perjury. To be guilty of perjury, you not only have to intentionally lie under oath, but you have to lie about something of material significance to the case. For instance, if you lie about having sex with an intern during a deposition about an allegedly corrupt real estate deal in Arkansas, that is not perjury if the intern had nothing whatsoever to do with the real estate transactions.

Re:Perjury

[PRMan]

Again, it was the unclaimed money-laundered Silk Road bitcoins which were sold (which, if claimed by anyone, would be an admission of a felony since it's well-known that they are mixed with drug money). DPR's bitcoins have not yet been sold. They are being held.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence? What was sold was not evidence in this case. DPR's bitcoins were not sold, just the ones that were in the accounts of users at silkroad.

That's not evidence. That's like the cops raiding a crack house and finding a stack of 100's. Courts have ruled time and time again that since that money was found during the course of a raid, you can't return it, nor can you prove it has anything to do with the crime that precipitated the raid, so the money gets seized and sold for its value. Same rule applies with police auctions and the like.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although forfeiture laws have existed in the United States since the colonial period, they have not always been favored. Early cases of forfeiture usually involved extraordinary circumstances, such as the seizure of pirate ships or warring ships. After the Civil War, forfeitures were used for tax-revenue violations, but government-imposed forfeiture was a rarity.

In 1970, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act (21U.S.C.A. Ã 881), also known as the Forfeiture Act. The Forfeiture Act authorized federal prosecutors to bring civil forfeiture actions against certain properties that were owned by persons who had been convicted in federal court of dealing drugs. This act was seldom used because it limited forfeiture to the property of persons who had been convicted of participating in continuing criminal enterprises.

In 1978, Congress amended the Forfeiture Act to allow the forfeiture of anything of value used or that was intended to be used by a person to purchase illegal drugs (Psychotropic Substances Act of 1978 [Pub. L. No. 95-633, tit. III, Ã 301(a), 92 Stat. 3768, 3777 (codified as amended at 21 U.S.C.A. Ã 8821(a)(6))]). This change expanded the Forfeiture Act to allow the forfeiture of all proceeds and property that were traceable to the purchase of an illegal drug. Under the 1978 amendments, the federal government was authorized to proceed in rem against property. In rem forfeiture actions are taken against the property itself, not against its owner. In such proceedings, the guilt or innocence of the property owner regarding any criminal activity is irrelevant. Thus, under the Forfeiture Act, the government may remove property from persons it suspects of a crime, without ever charging them with a crime. The basis of this kind of forfeiture is traced back to the deodand doctrine of the English common law."

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/forfeiture

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

So when do they sell off the assets of Wachovia and HSBC for their money laundering for international drug lords?

Re:Perjury

[Archangel Michael]

Our system is designed to prosecute that which can be proved, not an examination for the truth.

Re:Perjury

[SuricouRaven]

Something of a trap was laid. The coins were siezed from silk road - but the accused's defense is that he is not actually DPR, but rather an innocent person who was caught up in the investigation. If he admits to possessing the coins, he effectively admits his guilt.

It's not that uncommon for the government to sieze and sell assets they can demonstrate to be proceeds of or used in committing crime, even when they can't actually secure a conviction. It's a procedure much loved by law enforcement agencies, as in many countries including the US it can be done through a civil case rather than criminal, which makes it a lot easier for them to win. Iowa has a particular reputation for using this on out-of-state drivers - pull them over, find a pretext to search the crime, and if they find anything that could be considered a crime they seize the car and anything carried in it. No criminal charges needed - though they'll be sure to file some if the driver dare contest.

Re:Perjury

[SuricouRaven]

The task of public defenders is to make their boss look bad. Any who is too good and manages to actually get their clients found not-guilty will be quickly shunted to another department in favor of one more eager to talk them into plea bargains. They are also kept deliberately over-worked and under-funded.

Re:Perjury

[Bartles]

Sure, and if you lie about said intern and don't commit perjury with said lie, you won't be disbarred by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot decide whether "law enfarcement" was intentional or a typo. It's a pretty good name for what the Holder Crime Syndicate does, however.

Re:Perjury

[TechyImmigrant]

>No. Perjury is saying demonstrably false things in court. Failing to provide evidence for your points is merely a justification for acquittal.

It's perjury if you say "X is how we found him" but in fact X is a parallel construction built on warrentless snooping by the NSA, who work hard to compromise TOR.

Re:Perjury

[sjames]

Silly rabbit, jail is for peons!

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this is another of those instances where the NSA dragnet found information (illegally) that was passed along to the FBI for actioning. If the FBI had to fabricate the story of how they legally obtained this info that would explain why their story is full of holes.

Re:Perjury

[Chas]

Since when has The Constitution ACTUALLY stopped runaway law enforcement from fucking someone over?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=police+falsified+evidence

Re:Perjury

[Yakasha]

It would be interesting for lawyers to start calling the primary investigators to the stand at every trial and asking the simple question "are you aware of any parallel construction?" Basically force investigators to give up the practice, admit to it, or commit perjury.

Jack Ryan: Who authorized this?
Ritter: I'm sure they'll ask you that.
Jack Ryan: Who authorized it?
Ritter: I have no recollection, Senator.

Re:Perjury

[nedlohs]

Right, whether you actually are or are not a bad guy has no influence on the amount of fuckage that will be rendered.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is selling the evidence off before the trial (which it was seized to be used in) also par for the course ?
> What happens to seized evidence after a not-guilty verdict - or do certain people already know that is not a possibility ?

Drug money? Yes. I'm not quite sure it should be, but the alternative is that if your crime is lucrative enough you can buy your freedom. That's not exactly fair either, is it? After a not-guilty verdict, you file a motion to return your property.

DPR was caught arranging to hire a hitman. I wouldn't hold my breath on a not guilty verdict here. For that alone, he deserves to do hard time.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

The willful assertion as to a matter of fact, opinion, belief, or knowledge, made by a witness in a judicial proceeding as part of his evidence, either upon oath or in any form allowed by law to be substituted for an oath, whether such evidence is given in open court, or in an affidavit, or otherwise, such assertion being known to such witness to be false, and being intended by him to mislead the court, jury, or person holding the proceeding.

Law Dictionary: What is PERJURY? definition of PERJURY (Black's Law Dictionary)

When you say "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," that is what you must do. He could/should have plead the 5th.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd also have the option of pleading the fifth, as the search and seizure of information without warrant is a crime, and you can't be forced to testify against yourself.

Also, they could claim state secrets, and sit through a closed hearing about weather or not what they don't want to tell you is really a state secret.

Re:Perjury

[FlyHelicopters]

Maybe... I'd question if that is a good design... but putting that aside, the fact that you can have your stuff taken away, be acquitted, and not get it back, is wrong and immoral.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

But if a woman is suing you for sexual harassment, and her attorney questions you about your other sexual abuses of your power with subordinates in order to establish a pattern of behavior, and your sworn answers are intentionally false, then that's not perjury either because vast right wing conspiracy.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in my jurisdiction:

Whoever, in a trial, hearing, investigation, deposition, certification or declaration, in which the making or subscribing of a statement is required or authorized by law, makes or subscribes a statement under oath, affirmation or other legally binding assertion that the statement is true, when in fact the witness or declarant does not believe that the statement is true or knows that it is not true or intends thereby to avoid or obstruct the ascertainment of the truth, is guilty of perjury. It shall be a defense to the charge of perjury as defined in this section that the statement is true.

21 O.S. 491. Not a word in there about relevance. Can you find a statute that does apply only to relevant questions?

(Also, it goes far beyond statements in court.)

Re:Perjury

[alvinrod]

If he would have had other money in a different account that couldn't be directly linked to the enterprise, they probably wouldn't be able to touch it. However imagine if it were a more typical drug bust and they had seized a pile of cash at a warehouse, etc. All of that would be held as well and wouldn't be useful to the defendant to pay legal fees, unless there were a lawyer willing to accept a promise of payment based on the assumption that the money would be returned on a non-guilty verdict.

The moral of the story: If you're going to do something illegal, don't keep all of the money in one place.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

lucky for them, there's tons of other evidence the moron was the guy running the show...

Re:Perjury

[Uberbah]

Easy cheesy.

• The common-law crime of perjury is now governed by both state and federal laws. In addition, the Model Penal Code, which has been adopted in some form by many states and promulgated by the Commission on Uniform State Laws, also sets forth the following basic elements for the crime of perjury: (1) a false statement is made under oath or equivalent affirmation during a judicial proceeding; (2) the statement must be material or relevant to the proceeding; and (3) the witness must have the Specific Intent to deceive.

The reason for this should be obvious: so the state cannot turn a prosecution into an open-ended fishing expedition, a la Ken Starr. Okay, so it looks like you might be innocent of meth possession, so we'll ask you how much you weigh, and charge you with perjury if you give what we say is a false statement. Or if you've ever been in a fight. Or if you've bought porn. Or if you've ever cheated on your taxes. None of which has anything to do with what the suspected crime was in the first place.

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

But since FBI agent #1 does some work, FBI #2 other work, they manage to get what they think (probably due to misunderstanding how things work on the web) is valid discovery, they go to FBI #3 who then tells the judge, "We discovered..."

objection hearsay

Re:Perjury

[Jane Q. Public]

There also has to be a "chain of evidence". That is what appears to be a problem here.

The FBI can't back up its "chain" of evidence. It SAYS it went from X to Z via Y, but has no records of Y. Oops... that's a fuckup.

This smells from miles away as "parallel construction" which is ILLEGAL. The government does not have authority to lie to courts in order to obtain a conviction.

Re:Perjury

[HeckRuler]

the search and seizure of private information without warrant is a crime,

Re:Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll let you be the one to commit suicide in the name of defending the constitution. I'd certainly do everything short of that... but reality is there aren't enough people willing to risk life or financial standing to change things. It's all an academic battle and the best we can hope for is to physically move ourselves into a region with few people, with like-minded people, and with similar principles, and change local (ordinances and state) law. It doesn't stop the federal government, but it should stop (in theory) a lot of the bull shit that goes on at the local level.

The Free State Project has actually succeeded at putting people into the state legislature and after several years is getting very close to attracting 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire. I haven't 'committed' yet (which entails agreeing to move within 5 years of the project hitting 20,000 signatures), but am planning to move, and to sign/commit (even though I could already do so technically, and that's two people actually, myself, and my partner).

https://www.freestateproject.org/
http://www.porcfest.com/about/

Re: Perjury

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. The legal justice system is based on the adversarial conception of right, that two parties compete as hard as they can, and the party that is in the right will win with the assistance of God. That is the historical conception of it, dated as it may seem.

Now, the comedy show that is today's legal system is the result of a bunch of historical quirks combined to form an inherently unpredictable whole, and a legal profession made up of morally unsound individuals.

In short, if you're not in on the racket, you're fucked like the rest of us.

Re:Perjury

[TheCarp]

Well that is pretty much how they got away with the drug war for so long, keep the enforcement to the poor minority communities, and let all the white suburban kids off with a stern talking to and treatment options.....has worked wonders for years.

Its perfectly ok to stomp your jack boot down as long as it lands on the poor, and preferably the dark skinned poor, but, this is America, we are pretty equal opportunity about that too, I have seen plenty of poor white people find themselves known by the system, but, its almost never anyone who works in suburbs or has any money, they always have outs.

Hell, I two friends. One of them poor, one of them owns a company and makes decent money. Both of them got arrested trafficing large amounts, one had 70 lbs, the other had 24 lbs. One of them got a few years of probation, the other actually did some time and was on house arrest.

Wanna take any guess on which one had more pot and which one did more time? Little hint: it was the guy who could afford a lawyer.

Re:Perjury

[scarboni888]

Unless you're Keith Alexander. Then it apparently does not apply at all.

Re:Perjury

[sribe]

Unless you're Keith Alexander. Then it apparently does not apply at all.

Perjury laws are enforced extremely rarely except for cases like Martha Stewart where you're a suspect for something else they can't prove. They are almost never enforced against anyone in government, nor against expert witnesses. (BTW, I personally think is wrong. I'm not arguing for it, just stating what is.)

Re:Perjury

[Mex5150]

>DPR was caught arranging to hire a hitman
Was he though? Odd that it didn't appear on his charge sheet if that was what actually happened.

Re:Perjury

[Bite The Pillow]

"while under oath in court" does not relate to discovery. You might be informative, but you are misleading everyone with your information.

You have some idea of the topic, and your limited experience led you down the wrong path.

Re:Perjury

[Bite The Pillow]

I didn't read all of the documents. But where was the under oath part?

Telling the court how you uncovered the evidence is part of discovery, not the "under oath" swearing of individual witnesses. Or am I wrong here?

Re:Perjury

[Ziest]

The government does not have authority to lie to courts in order to obtain a conviction.

The government may not have the authority to lie to courts _BUT_ unless someone hold them accountable then it is a moot point. A law that is not renforced is essentilly a law that has been rescinded. America is quickly reaching a point, if we are not there already, where their are two systems of law; one for the wealty, the privledged and the corporations and one for the rest of us. Guess who is getting fucked hard ?

Re:Perjury

[Bite The Pillow]

It's true because I'm ignorant.

Re:Perjury

[Jane Q. Public]

America is quickly reaching a point, if we are not there already, where their are two systems of law; one for the wealty, the privledged and the corporations and one for the rest of us. Guess who is getting fucked hard ?

I'm not going to claim I disagree with you, but whether we agree is not the real point.

The only answer to being fucked hard is to fuck back. You don't have to enjoy it, you just have to make sure THEY enjoy it a lot less.

Then, when the worst offenders are too sore to continue, you can work on building societal justice.

Re:Perjury

[doccus]

When's the last time anyone ever saw an FBI or CIA, DHS, y'know, whatever, recieve a conviction for perjury? Ever? Even once? MAybe in political witchunts, yeah, like say, Ollie North, who was just acting under orders anyways, and I don't think he got convicted of perjury anyway,Sadly, it's just all the higher ups who were involved that shoulda got it but didn't. Lower level agents, though, routinely seem to be able to perjure themselves with impunity in order to obtain a conviction. Just ask any one of a thousand prisoners that got put behind bars up with "cooked up" testimony. Sad.

Re:Perjury

[redlemming]

Sadly, too many people are blind to it because it doesn't affect them in their day to day lives...

Totally incorrect. Unethical practice of law, which is ultimately behind all of these abuses of government authority, or which allows those abuses to happen, is something that affects everybody, in their day to day lives.

We have laws that contradict each other, and laws that are overly complex, and laws that are ambiguous. If people can't easily understand the legal system, that creates an artificial demand for the services of legal professionals. Contradictions in the laws allow government entities to pick the version that favors them in any given situation!

Many of the laws we have either infringe fundamental rights directly, or allow those rights to be infringed indirectly. This creates a demand for legal professionals to protect people from their own legal system. It's a lot like an organized crime protection racket.

Unethical practice of law affects what can be in the contracts you sign, and what limitations can be placed on property you own, creating all kinds of interference with reasonable conduct. It creates quasi-governmental organizations such as HOAs that are immune to any standards of ethical behavior that might be expected of a government, and not subject to respecting the Bill of Rights, but effectively function as yet another layer government, creating enforceable rules and regulations (often really stupid ones that clearly violate fundamental rights).

Unethical practice of law raises the costs of every good or service people buy. It affects what people can build on their property, and how many bureaucratic hoops people have to jump though to get permission to build (and whether they need that permission in the first place). It massively increases the complexity of the tax system, and the amount of taxes people in low income jobs have to pay (overly complex tax codes lend themselves to the creation of a wide variety of taxes, which in turn results in regressive taxes such as sales taxes). It affects the ability of people who do creative work, as they always running the risk that some otherwise indecipherable patent will turn out, with an appropriate translation, to create ownership by somebody else of one's own ideas.

The right to ethical government can be asserted under the 9th Amendment (which would prevent the government from benefiting from abusive seizures), but since the right to ethical practice of law can ALSO be asserted under the 9th Amendment, and the US legal profession is terrified people might eventually figure this out, they pretend the 9th Amendment doesn't exist! This in turn creates all kinds of additional problems, that affect ordinary people in their day-to-day lives. For example, the right to travel and the right to roam certainly arise under the 9th Amendment (even backwards England recognizes the right to roam!), but property owners are allowed to block the exercise of the these rights since the 9th Amendment isn't respected (typically they do this because of fear of lawsuits, resulting from unethical practice of law in the tort system). This in turn means people can't hike in many places where they should be able to hike.

I could go on, but that's enough!

Re:Perjury

[Sciath]

Without "truth" where is "justice" found?

Wait, what?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

So you're saying the FBI made shit up? That's... that's... inconceivable!

Re:Wait, what?

[spiritplumber]

See this is really the problem.

Whenever a private company does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and customers.

Whenever an elected official does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and votes.

Whenever a law enforcement does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and... then what? It's not like they can be voted out and it's not like they have competition, so why should they bother changing anything?

I don't have a solution, other than "don't fcuk the police". Meaning: if someone belongs to an unethical unelected bureaucracy, don't talk to them, don't date them, don't sell them groceries, refuse to interact with them unless they force you to at gunpoint.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they made anything up. They were probably doing a reconstruction following notes from another agency that should not have been doing that work. Its probably why they 'dont know' as they didnt know what they were doing in the first place.

Its like if I hand someone who has no idea what a computer is and tell them what to click on to install and properly configure a linux apache web server farm. It may be setup correctly. But they will have no idea why/what they were typing in the vi command to edit some configuration file. They would be hard pressed to know the details of 'why' the configuration file was changed the way it was. They would probably only know what they did not why.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or kill them? So seditious. Much subversive. #JUSTICE

Re:Wait, what?

[IamTheRealMike]

Maybe so, maybe no. The SR forums had people panicking because they discovered IP address leaks several times. It's not exactly unimaginable that SR did indeed leak its own IP address, especially as a comment on the Krebs blog suggests the nginx config was busted.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying the FBI made shit up? That's... that's... inconceivable!

The FBI is a law-abiding organization. If it's illegal to tell the court where they got the evidence, the law may demand that they make up a story whereby they got the evidence. It being illegal to tell the court about the source of the evidence is a subtly different thing than merely getting the evidence by illegal means.

(The FBI didn't have to do anything illegal to get the evidence. Maybe they just picked up the phone when it rang. There's No Such Agency capable of the sort of skullduggery required to get the evidence by using methods that would be (a) illegal if the FBI did it, (b) legal if NSA did it, and (c) illegal for the FBI to tell the truth to the court about it.)

The problem with the NSA domestic surveillance programmes and parallel construction is that even if it was good old-fashioned police work (and a lapse in attention to detail on the part of the defendant) that brought down the Silk Road, there's a lot less reason for a judge or a jury to take the FBI at their word.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bad idea.

Re:Wait, what?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

They made up how they found out. In your analogy, the person following the script then went to court and *swore* that he set up Apache on his own by reading the manuals.

Re:Wait, what?

[itsenrique]

"Whenever a private company does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and customers." But if they are a large enough business (even if not a "monopoly", take Wal Mart for instance) does it really matter? The U.S. government has lost reputation lately, and if you count international business deals as "customers" they've lost that too.

Re:Wait, what?

[flu1d]

You keep using that word. I don't think that means what you think it means...

Re:Wait, what?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Whenever a law enforcement does something blatantly unethical, they lose reputation and... then what?

And then you end up with a society where the reputation of law enforcement officers is such that "fuck the police", "don't snitch", etc., become popular sentiments, and respect for the rule of law is replaced by a hatred for the agents of an oppressive state. The failure by the police to police their own (blue code of silence, etc.), entirely expected (and deemed inevitable) by many, has gotten us to where we are today. Where we go from here is anyone's guess.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

#YOLO

Re:Wait, what?

[mrjimorg]

Quote: But if they are a large enough business (even if not a "monopoly", take Wal Mart for instance) does it really matter
Yes. I occasionally shop at WalMart. I wish they paid their employees more, but they're not "evil" by my standards - if someone gave you the option of getting $10,000 or having that money given to a WalMart employee, what would you choose? If you would choose the employee then I would call you a hypocrite - you always have the option of walking into a WalMart and giving money to employees.
If WalMart did something offensive to me I would shop elsewhere. I have a choice as to whether or not I want to give them my business/money. Contrast that with the government which forces itself on me and takes my money without my consent. If I chose to deny them my wealth they would send people to collect it by any means necessary up to and including killing me to get it.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight; you find it offensive that "the government which forces itself on me and takes my money without my consent." but you don't find it offensive that Wal Mart then siphons that money off the government (by, for example paying their employees non-livable wages)?

Re:Wait, what?

[ultranova]

Contrast that with the government which forces itself on me and takes my money without my consent. If I chose to deny them my wealth they would send people to collect it by any means necessary up to and including killing me to get it.

Last I checked, it was legal to emigrate from the United States. If you choose to stay in the country, it's hardly unreasonable to demand that you pay your share of its maintenance. How long do you think "your money" would hold any value without anti-counterfeiting laws, or stay yours without police and courts? How would you get to work to earn it in the first place without roads? Especially since you'd need to stay home and guard your house against boarders without real estate registry and its enforcement.

People like you want all the benefits of civilization yet stick someone else with the bill. It's all your rhetoric really reduces to.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you emigrate from the USA, the government continues to assert the right to tax you. This is even though you are living in another country, derive no benefits from the taxes you are paying, and do not vote.

The only country in the world so arrogant.

Re:Wait, what?

[ShanghaiBill]

I don't have a solution

Here's the solution: You know those flyers you receive in the mail before election day from politicians saying they will "get tough on crime" and have the endorsement of the police chief and/or police union? Whenever you get one of these flyers, vote for the other guy.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. And my prediction is that we are going to see a significant escalation of domestic "terrorism" as a result. Entirely distinct from superstition-inspired terrorism.

Re:Wait, what?

[Tokolosh]

My unconstitutional trumps your FBI illegal.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

#YOLO

Is that really the best you can do? Hashtags? Sigh. Go back to twitter until you learn how to write prose.

Re:Wait, what?

[sjames]

It doesn't work that way. It is also illegal to make shit up in court. Their only legal option at that point is to not testify at all. If that means no prosecution, so be it. That is what the law actually demands.

The reasoning is simple. The NSA is the actual accuser which the defendant has a right to face. The FBI's testimony is merely hearsay which is not permissible.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That came about in 1966 when rich people were renouncing citizenship purely as a tax dodge. It could use a reform, sure, but it's not a matter of being "arrogant."

But hey, let's not let that get in the way of random USA bashing, right?

Dick.

Re:Wait, what?

[omnichad]

Bonus points for the fact that nobody noticed how your pop culture reference was actually relevant.

Re:Wait, what?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

From today's headlines: Fuck, cops kill a sleeping 7-year-old girl during a botched raid and Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismisses manslaughter charges against the triggerman.

Another no-knock warrant served after midnight, cops all SWATted up, flashbangs a-flying'. Sure sounds fun.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm Isn't every side doing that? I haven't honestly paid attention, but even if I did, what makes you think the other side didn't do it too, but just didn't send one to you?

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seeing just that happening in the election for the local county sheriff. One candidate is endorsed by the police union. The other is the incumbent sheriff, and is seeing about 80% approval in the polls -- mostly due to his "get tough on police misconduct" actions.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Last I checked, it was legal to emigrate from the United States.

Last I checked it is expensive and hasslefull to do so, not buying from some company doesnt cost anything.

So are you willing to pay the relocation costs of everyone that dont like your pet thugs that go around demanding taxes.

Just because you live in spefic geographical area doesnt mean that you should tolerate the local gang that calls it goverment.

Oh and a note on the maintenance, of infrastructure, tort law and contract law and such, nothing to little seems to be have been done.

Posted as AC because this post should stand on its own merit and not behind someones name like yours.

Re:Wait, what?

[MakerDusk]

Like the Person of Interest fictional organization Vigilance? Domestic Privacy Terrorists using computer skills (on the organization level) and varied member skill sets (on the operational level) to insert themselves temporarily into high ranking corporate, and governmental, positions to: gather information, expose ongoing criminal activities, and to 'deal out justice'

hmm... slashdot...

hmm... computer skill and varied skill sets...

It's sad that there a need, and that the people needed to found such an organization can be recruited here. Next thing you know, there will be American Revolution book ciphered /. posts detailing operations to take back our freedom. Only for the subsequent discovery that we were in fact being manipulated by a government intelligence agency, seeing as they have much more experience in hidden espionage/financial manipulation/assassination operations along these lines.

Re:Wait, what?

[Sciath]

Frankly, they can be held accountable by their agency. For example, there were at least two Secret Service people fired over the prostitution scandal a couple years ago (or so). Others were reprimanded and given demotions. In fact, it happens all the time that government employees are fired and prosecuted for criminal acts. You just don't hear about them. Of course I'm referring to peons, the average civil servant for the most part. The biggest problem is that very few in top administrative government positions are held accountable other than being forced to resign or on rare occasions removed from office.

Methinks that

[Anonymous Coward]

parallel construction wasn't done properly this time.

Re:Methinks that

[anagama]

Exactly. And now the government must be stoked that it will have a test case to bring to the Supreme Court so that the Supreme Court can twist out some "logic" to say parallel construction is OK. They say that bad facts make bad law, and Ubrecht is fairly unlikeable, what with the attempts to find a hit man. From a "destroy the 4th" perspective, this case is even better than Smith v. Maryland: http://www.google.com/url?q=ht... (*). The Feds must be creaming their pants in anticipation of having parallel construction deemed constitutional.

(*) This is the grandfather of our massive indiscriminate surveillance policy. The short summary is that the police were too lazy to get a search warrant that would surely have been granted, simply had the phone company set one up. And although it dealt with a single individual, with specific facts sufficient for a warrant, and covered a specific and short time period, the Third Party Doctrine took on a different character after that, being applied to all people, in the absence of any evidence, for all time.

Re:Methinks that

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a scary thought.

Parallel Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Re:Parallel Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. Someone mailed fake IDs from canada to his home address and the mounties just happened to open the box.

How does this matter?

[ReekRend]

I'm confused.

Re:How does this matter?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

It matters because it means the intelligence/evidence was gathered some other way, that the government doesn't want to admit to, and so they made up this story to cover how they supposedly found out this information. It's called "parallel construction", and it basically means that the NSA (or some other spooks) tipped off the FBI, whose job it was to come up with a plausible story as to how they found out.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence not legally collected won't be admissible, so if the defendant's lawyers can call BS on some of the legally obtained evidence and have it excluded, what's left might not be enough for a conviction.

Re:How does this matter?

[pla]

How does this matter?

Well, because the US has a set of requirements for defining the circumstances under which the government can search private property, and the scope of that search if allowed.

The FBI has effectively just admitted that they had no legitimate way of knowing that they had probable cause. This means one of two things - They broke the law to obtain that evidence (the police can't search you to get the evidence they need to get approval to search you); or more likely, they lied about the real origin of their evidence (ie, the NSA told them "go here and do this, and make up a good cover story").

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It matters because if the FBI gathered their evidence illegally, a judge could throw out the majority of the evidence collected.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the United States, this indicates that the information used to arrest the accused was potentially obtained illegally and is inadmissible in a court of law.

Re: How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter. No judge will disallow evidence obtained illegally.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It matters because it is the difference between you being a criminal that "only" broke 10 federal laws today before lunch, and you being a criminal that broke 12 federal laws today before lunch and will be imprisoned for things you never did that weren't and aren't currently crimes.

Some of us, unlike you, still feel the government should have a pretty good reason for imprisoning an innocent civilian for life. I'm sorry you don't see it that way however.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It matters because if the FBI can't come up with a legitimate way they obtained the information, then the exclusionary rule may be invoked. The FBI's evidence would be inadmissible and Ulbricht would walk. Maybe.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this matter? It matters because now Ross Ulbricht will go to jail for using a junk language: PHP - it's a fractal of bad design.

“What happened is they contacted that IP directly and got a PHPMyAdmin configuration page.”

Re:How does this matter?

[Aram Fingal]

We also know that this Parallel Construction process really does happen. Thomas Tamm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Tamm/, one of the many pre-Snowden leakers, was a lawyer at the Justice Department whose job it was to prepare warrants for the FISA court. He had cases where the basis for the warrant, the "probable cause", was based on illegal warrentless surveillance by the NSA. He knew that this was illegal but it was up to the FISA court to deny the warrants. They didn't. Instead they granted many such warrants and the decisions were never open to public scrutiny. After seeing too much of this, Tamm leaked the story to the New York Times in 2005. The Bush administration was able to dismiss the story, more or less as just allegations. This and similar treatment of other leaked stories was the reason that Snowden released he had to leak hard evidence and lots of it. The PBS Frontline documentary, The United States of Secrets has a good summary of these events.

Re:How does this matter?

[ReekRend]

Thanks!

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Einstein, I bet his lawyers never thought of that.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence not legally collected won't be admissible, so if the defendant's lawyers can call BS on some of the legally obtained evidence and have it excluded, what's left might not be enough for a conviction.

Additionally, all evidence is supposed to be able to be examined by the defense. If the FBI didn't preserve the drives that evidence is no longer available for examination, which invalidates any copies made by the FBI.

Re:How does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It matters because it means the intelligence/evidence was gathered some other way, that the government doesn't want to admit to, and so they made up this story to cover how they supposedly found out this information. It's called "parallel construction", and it basically means that the NSA (or some other spooks) tipped off the FBI, whose job it was to come up with a plausible story as to how they found out.

It doesn't have to be the NSA. Chances are just as likely that the FBI are running their own TOR Exit nodes. At which point, what they say is true: "We found the CAPTCHA page by looking through plain text traffic." Because, for them, it would be. (Assuming that the CAPTCHA was not https encrypted.)

The FBI probably doesn't want to admit that they run exit nodes because they'd rather everybody believe that TOR is this magical secure, anonymizing network that LEO can't get into.

Re:How does this matter?

[AdamThor]

Likewise for that xbox to the feds thing on /. the other day.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

Holy Shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea that PDF could do that.

Parallel construction

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the FBI made up a shitty story; that's how they get to use NSA-collected domestic wiretap data without entering that data into evidence in a court room. (Captcha: travesty)

Parallel Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm feeling like this might turn into a case of parallel construction using data the government shouldn't have had on this guy.

If I recall correctly, wasn't this guy intercepted by Canadian customs when leaving Canada? It is absolutely not standard procedure to talk to Canadian customs when leaving the country.

All signs point to PRISM

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we now know the "captcha gave me the server's IP" story is bullshit it's clear that they had some other way of tracking down the server. Of course, it's trivial to find anyone on tor using metadata, all you have to do is fire off your packet to the first router, then watch for the correct sized packet leaving the first hop a few ms later to the second router, where a few ms later it leaves for a third router. Eventually you see a response packet come back, and you verify that you're watching the right packet when the response pops out on your tor client. Easy-peasy. Even tor's authors admit that it has no defenses against this level of ability.

Whaa?

[JohnFen]

Silk Road had their servers configured so that the PHPMyAdmin pages were accessible from the internet at large? Sheesh. No wonder they got brought down.

Re:Whaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and he tried to hire random people to secure it using his real-life actual alias, his name and contact info. Torible thinking.

Re:Whaa?

[freeze128]

But yet the IP address in the Krebs PDF file shows a 192.168.x.x address....

Non-plumb walls

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so they used a low-bid contractor for the parallel construction and the walls didn't come out quite straight. I'm sure the structure is still sound, right? Right?

speculating

[tacokill]

Maybe someone working at the Iceland data center discovered the SR server and tipped off the FBI? It doesn't have to be the NSA ya know. Occam's razor.

Re:speculating

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

... the NSA (or some other spooks)...

I thought I touched that base. Meanwhile, the NSA is still the most likely source.

Re:speculating

[Anonymous Coward]

If that were the case parallel construction wouldn't be necessary. Parallel construction is used when you get the information in a way that itself would not be admissible in court (generally illegally).

Re:speculating

[Fnord666]

I thought I touched that base. Meanwhile, the NSA is still the most likely source.

My personal front runner for this is the DEA, but that's just my $0.02.

Re:speculating

[sjames]

If thaty was the case, they could just say so in court. It's not illegal to accept a tip from random people who stumble upon a crime.

Lawyer is wrong, no holes in FBI story

[tomhath]

Silk Road said they blocked requests. But their attempt to do so was incorrect, it allows any php request through. Think about how secure that server was...

So..

[Severus Snape]

FBI: We got the evidence through illict methods, so here is a nice little story we made up that is designed to be difficult to argue against.

Snowden leaks: NSA data now used by DEA, others.

[kbonin]

Great link: http://www.alexaobrien.com/sec...

NSA programs PINWALE, MARINA, NUCLEON are now used to share their collected data (that isn't actually "collected" under new legal redefinition.) with DOD and who knows how many other agencies.

"Parallel Construction" is used to hide sources.

This is what happens when checks and balances decay in a system that has no honor or respect for what once made it great.

Re:Pay your fair share! Give this gov't MORE money

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you please SHUT UP KOCHSUCKING FAGGOTS as this isn't even about TAXES, goddam!

Buying a leak

[fulldecent]

What if DPR offered a $10 million bounty for someone at the NSA to leak proof of illegal collection / parallel construction -- the proceeds coming from the return of his money.

------------

If you had access to this proof would you take the offer?

Re:Buying a leak

[Anonymous Coward]

What if DPR offered a $10 million bounty for someone at the NSA to leak proof of illegal collection / parallel construction -- the proceeds coming from the return of his money. If you had access to this proof would you take the offer?

$10M? Nowhere near enough.

What good is the promise of $10M when the act of reporting is virtually guaranteed to get you locked in a dungeon, possibly done quietly without actual police involvement and without due process.

$10M is not much money in the modern world. Even if they delivered the money and let the info-leaker walk free, initial taxation (yay taxes!) would drop it by about half. Whoever reports it is going to need their own lawyers (plural) to help defend them for multiple years from government attacks and retaliation, so most of whatever money wasn't spent on taxes would likely be spent paying a good legal team.

The idea is good, but you are missing too much to make it attractive.

Start with a guarantee that you can contact then first to immediately gain qualified immunity to collect and report the evidence from your organization as it is almost certainly protected by government secrets and getting caught preparing the report could result in prison, AND guarantees of unqualified immunity for any and all legal consequences relating to the leak and the leaked material once it is reported, including consequences from reporting it, from being the person involved in the recording, collection, or other parts of the process, so we don't end up in jail because the whistleblower was also the collector or other person 'doing the deed', AND a guarantee of no retaliation from all government agencies since "disappeared people" are a real problem and other forms of retaliation exist, AND a guarantee of fully paid witness protection to a location my choosing for at least five years because non-government people will want to retaliate, AND a guarantee of a fully funded legal defense team of your choice until any resulting issues are resolved because the person is going to need it and defense is normally a laughable thing. (Most people who do get a public defender have someone who gets a few minutes to read over the case, you might get a few minutes of legal defense. For a more extreme example look at the Boston race bomber, he had about 15 government lawyers on the prosecution and yet still struggled to get the judge to assign him a second defense lawyer. They reluctantly agreed, since the risk of being thrown out due to inadequate defense was pretty big.) THEN throw on the extra non-taxable $10M, and you might attract a few people.

Re:Buying a leak

[Ken McE]

fulldecent (598482):
What if DPR offered a $10 million bounty for someone at the NSA to leak proof of illegal collection / parallel construction

They would end up in a cell just down the hall from Mr. Snowden.

So they can't prove their methods of discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

“You simply would not have been able to get the CAPTCHA that way, because the server would refuse all requests.”

And they didn't record their access, because that would involve recording things that DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN THE WAY THEY JUST SAID IT DID. Fuckers.

Parallel construct some honesty and replace the FBI, this sabu shit is out of hand.

Re:So they can't prove their methods of discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

“You simply would not have been able to get the CAPTCHA that way, because the server would refuse all requests.”

The server didn't refuse all requests - it was configured wrong. All the FBI did was a GET for PHPMyAdmin and the server told them Silk Road's IP address. No parallel construct needed or used.

Re:So they can't prove their methods of discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I just did a GET on my PHPMyAdmin page and it didn't tell me where the silk road IP was. Maybe it only works on the Silk Road server, which begs for someone to ask "how did they know to do a GET against this server"?

What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

So-called "parallel construction" isn't illegal or unconstitutional, and even IF -- and that's a very big if -- the initial tip came from "NSA", keep in mind that there has been a decades-old exemption for things like international terrorism and international narcotics trafficking when discovered during the course of legitimate foreign signals intelligence collection.

So, while you may not like it, nothing that is illegal or unconstitutional occurred here, and it is not the result of post-9/11 laws, or "new ways of interpreting the law", or anything else.

The simple fact is that legitimate foreign intelligence targets, to include terrorists and US adversaries who are mostly non-US Persons physically outside the US, share and use the same systems, networks, services, devices, software, tools, operating systems, encryption standards, and so on, as Americans and much of the rest of the world.

This is a simple, undeniable truth, and the only thing differentiating such traffic in the digital world is the status of the person(s) in communication -- i.e., whether they are or are not a US Person. That's it.

And guess what? The communications of US Persons WILL be encountered, and always have been, and we have a legal construct for how to deal with that, and that legal construct factually includes exemptions, again, for things like international terrorism and international narcotics trafficking.

And all of this is even IF it was "NSA" that tipped off anyone; it still could just be FBI somewhat clumsily protecting its own sources and methods...it doesn't have to be "spooks". In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW, not the capability, that is paramount.

And speaking of the law, the only person doing anything illegal here -- under our system and body of law, whether anyone agrees with it or not -- was Ulbricht.

Re:What does it matter?

[kilfarsnar]

...it doesn't have to be "spooks". In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW, not the capability, that is paramount.

What about in the United States? ;-P

Re:What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

Parallel construction isn't only about the NSA...it is any alternative construction of evidence to conceal a sensitive source or method that may have led to and/or assisted in the investigation. It's very old, and the only thing some legal experts say about it is that it MAY -- key word being may -- run afoul of evidentiary rules and discovery procedures. It's a very old concept, and as long as the alternate chain of evidence is completely supportable and nothing illegal occurred* to initiate the investigation in the first place, there is nothing at all wrong with it.

* Even IF it was NSA collection that led to the FBI tip, the incidental discovery of international narcotics trafficking, when discovered, is exempt. Furthermore, it doesn't necessarily need to be an NSA "tip"; it could be that they also brought an NSA (or other IC/DOD agency) resource to bear on the issue, and don't want to reveal that because it would reveal a sensitive intelligence capability, technique, source, or method. That, too, is not illegal. So while it's an interesting story, it is just that.

Re:What does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it isn't illegal to withhold all sources of evidence from the accused in a court of law then you have no legitimate legal system to speak of.

Re:What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

But you can never "know" the discovery was incidental, under any construct, because you can always assume the government is lying -- with or without the Snowden disclosures. And we didn't learn from Snowden how collection is defined in a SIGINT context; electronic collection has been defined that way since at least 1982. I agree that the FBI (or any government agency) cannot engage another agency/country/etc. in order to skirt US laws...and I didn't say they should be able to, nor do I believe they did.

Furthermore, metadata is not content -- and even that data is only queried for specifically articulated counterterrorism purposes, which means it would have nothing to do with this case. Even now, no one has ANY idea whether NSA or any other agency was involved...the FBI could be hiding its own sources and methods, or could have even omitted information or made a mistake.

And the program has been challenged, and may ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court, which may decide that technology has changed so much since 1979 that this interpretation of the Smith v Maryland ruling is no longer a valid interpretation in the context of the Fourth Amendment. But unless and until that happens, it is factual to say that phone call records, as a "business record" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy and are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. That's not a value judgment, or an opinion, it is a legal fact.

And it's not NSA's job to second guess its own legal authorities (even though it extensively does that); its job is to conduct its missions, in what I would hope would be the most aggressive way possible within the law. Its mission isn't to figure out ways around the law, or the Constitution, or to spy on Americans without warrants. Its mission is to conduct FOREIGN SIGINT against US adversaries, nearly all of whom are non-US Persons outside the US, and the reality is that these targets coexist with innocent Americans and everyone else in the global web of digital communications. There is no way to avoid this reality.

Re:What does it matter?

[HeckRuler]

Wow, you're a real true believer, aren't you?

So do you understand the concern here? That with parallel construction, the 4th amendment is all but violated in name. When they have a complete panopticon and know exactly what everyone is doing at all times, and in a legal system where the typical person arguably* commits 3 felonies a day, it doesn't matter if they don't publicly admit to violating privacy. And that without the basic right to privacy, democracy is all but doomed.

(*You don't have enough wealth to afford a counter-argument)

I mean, we have historical accounts for this. What happens when an intelligence agency is given this much power. Check out Hoover's COINTELPRO.

it still could just be FBI somewhat clumsily protecting its own sources and methods

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the police not presenting the evidence they have for a legal case. I don't particularly care if it makes their job harder by revealing how they spy on people.

In a free society governed by the rule of law, it is the LAW, not the capability, that is paramount.

If you think we live under the rule of law then why the fuck hasn't James Clapper being charged with perjury yet?

Re:What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

If you think we live under the rule of law then why the fuck hasn't James Clapper being charged with perjury yet?

Because it's not as simple as you appear to wish it to be. And this is from a longtime crusader against government secrecy who is on "your side".

Re:What does it matter?

[HeckRuler]

Dude, have you read that article?

It is of course wrong for officials to make false statements, as DNI Clapper did when he denied that NSA collects “any type of data at all” on ordinary Americans. But did the DNI actually “lie to Congress”?

Yes, that's pretty much the definition of "making false statements". He lied. He was asked say it again, and he correct "not wittingly". All the while, he knew damn well that YES, the NSA does "collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans". The senator saw that someone was feeding him a load of bullshit and he called him on it.

Now hey, sure, I actually do understand how something like the NSA could "unwittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Those tidbits really add up. But if it's unwittingly, and just tidbits of information, then sure. That's understandable. But that's the the case. They most certainly did collect quite a lot of data on hundreds of millions of Americans. And James Clapper, the man in charge of the NSA and fully knowledgeable about it's programs, DAMN WELL DID KNOW HOW THEY WORK.

[it's not lieing] because the true answer to Senator Wyden’s question was already known to Senator Wyden

Are you fucking with me? It's not lying because, hey, in a hearing for the select committee on intelligence, where a senator asks you a question, gets an answer, and then asks if you're sure, pft, well he should have known differently and I don't feel like using the "classified" excuse. And this whole "official record" thing is really annoying, so fuck it.

Here's the exchange: (or hey, GO LOOK FOR YOURSELF)
[At defon] Clapper: "Those who would want to weave the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people, is absolutely false From my perspective, this is absolute nonsense."
[in the hearing] Senator Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
Clapper: "No, sir."
Wyden: "It does not?"
Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."

Let me make this clear for you. If a senator knows something you said in public was bullshit, and then hauls your ass into a congressional hearing and asks you point blank about it. And then catches you in a lie, and asks you AGAIN. And you choose to double down and commit to the lie... THEN YOU HAVE COMMITTED PERJURY.

Listen, this is politics. The article goes on about rhetoric and maneuvering and all that jazz. And yeah, Clapper was indeed in a difficult position where he was directly asked about a classified program. Clapper tried to defend his program using a blatant lie and Wyden caught him on it. Clapper wanted the controversy and rage to die down, but telling the truth about the program would inflame the rage and cause more controversy. Wyden probably wanted those flames, so people were pissed, so that he could you know, gain that political capital to try and fix an obviously broken system. Or hey, maybe he was just being a dick and tightening the screws. Or simply doing his job ON THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE.

I was hoping that your link had some sort of additional information that shed insight into the problem at hand. But no, it's just a mental backflip blaming the person asking the question.

Hey, it's great that you think you're "on my side" against government secrecy. But you seem to be sucking the cock of government secrecy pretty hard.

Re:What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

Dude, do you know who Steven Aftergood is? You might want to look into his background. He's the Director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy and the last person who is going to inappropriately defend government for trying to keep something secret. And yes, Sen. Wyden was trying to get the DNI to reveal currently and properly classified information in open session.*

The fact of the matter is that for at least the last 35 years, phone call records, as a "business record" provided to a third party, do NOT have an expectation of privacy and are NOT covered by the Fourth Amendment. Unless and until the Supreme Court reverses Smith, that is the standing, factual law of the land.

Furthermore, the entire purpose of the BR FISA metadata collection isn't to "spy on Americans" -- it is to "collect the haystack", so to speak, that may LAWFULLY be collected, in order to have access to it when searching for bad foreign actors who may be physically operating within the US on US wireless carriers. And every query against that data requires a reasonable, articulable, and specific foreign intelligence nexus, with its own separate FISA order.

It's not NSA's job to second guess the law or its authorities. Its entire purpose is FOREIGN signals intelligence, and the fact that some people simply can't accept that won't be changed by any amount of commentary in forums like this. Foreign targets now exist in the same sea of global digital communications as you and everyone else â" there is no way to have the technical capability to target the one without having the same capability to target them all.

Which is why, again, in a democratic society based on the rule of law, it is what the LAW says that is paramount.

* For what it's worth, my own personal view is that Clapper wasn't even thinking of the phone metadata program when asked that question. He was thinking more broadly in terms of the foreign intelligence collection missions of 17 IC agencies, which can, do, and always will sometimes encounter the communications content of Americans during the execution of their duties. And the fact is, no matter how many little pissant isolated examples of someone intentionally abusing something, there is no systemic, policy, or enabling environment to illegally spy on Americans. If you want to believe there is, then there won't be any useful discussion between us. Is there room for improvement and transparency on some fronts? Sure. But intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, even in free and open societies.

Re:What does it matter?

[HeckRuler]

I don't care if he's the grand fucking pumba of the EFF, his rational in the article was laughable bullshit.

there is no systemic, policy, or enabling environment to illegally spy on Americans.

Did you forget what article you're posting under?
The policy of using parallel construction is a systematic abuse of illegal spying on Americans.

That is, in fact, the current issue at hand.

And every query against that data requires a reasonable

Every official query. Agents are allowed to search through that data at their whim. This was detailed by Snowden.

Foreign targets now exist in the same sea of global digital communications as you and everyone else â" there is no way to have the technical capability to target the one without having the same capability to target them all.

Yes, the capability they want against the terrorists is a complete panopticon of all activity. And the simple response is that no, they are not allowed to have that capability when it comes to US citizens. As per the constitution.

Re:What does it matter?

[daveschroeder]

Every official query. Agents are allowed to search through that data at their whim. This was detailed by Snowden.

False. That is categorically, 100% false. That was people interpreted Snowden's claim to be, and that's not how it works. If you look at the nuance of Snowden's claims, even he himself has made various statements to the effect of, "Even if it's not being abused today, it could be in the future." Wow, no shit, Captain Obvious: ANY government power "could" be abused. And? I mean, really? That's why in a democracy we sort of have this thing called the "rule of law". And yes, we're imperfect, in all manner of ways. Again: And?

In the case of the phone call metadata, it has been approved and reauthorized every 90 days by all three branches of government -- the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress, two different presidential administrations (which you could only believe are "the same" if you're one of those crazy libertarian types), and a total of 17 different federal judges, who have variously sat on the court whose single purpose and reason for being is to protect the rights of Americans under the law and the Constitution in the context of FOREIGN intelligence collection. (I know all the protests: no, FISC is not a "rubber stamp" court; it is simply not an adversarial court, and armies of lawyers IC agencies don't even waste their time bringing forward requests that are likely to be denied.)

Only 22 people, in total, even have query access to the database, and this data has only been queried around 300 times. Each of those queries requires its own FISA order (to demonstrate the target is not a US Person, or if it is a US Person, that an individualized warrant exists for a legitimate foreign intelligence purpose), and EVERY query of any kind of SIGINT collection, of any kind, has a layer of daily audits. Every query. Ironically, the only people who had theoretical access to data without oversight -- if they wanted to violate their oath, their trust, the law, and the Constitution -- was system administrators. And now, because of Snowden, sysadmins can only conduct sensitive duties (such as entering datacenters or having physical access to anything beyond normal workstations) with another sysadmin (two-person integrity).

Yes, the capability they want against the terrorists is a complete panopticon of all activity. And the simple response is that no, they are not allowed to have that capability when it comes to US citizens. As per the constitution.

There is no way to have technical (or any) capabilities to collect against "only" the foreign targets without having the capability to collect against any target that is using the same systems, networks, and tools. The only distinction now is the US Person-status. That is the fundamental issue in the digital world, and the source of the fundamental misunderstanding of the United States' foreign SIGINT capabilities.

You're vastly oversimplifying the situation, beyond the fact you don't understand anything about SIGINT law, governance, or policy. Where, in the Constitution, does it say the government cannot have a CAPABILITY that COULD be used against Americans? (Hint: ANY government power "could" be used against Americans.) What is the difference, from a Constitutional perspective, of a foreign counterterrorism target using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, etc. (which they do), and an American using those same tools? Do you see the problem, here? It's the PERSON, not the TOOL.

Your "solutions" -- which you don't even need to enumerate for me to guess -- would basically mean that all a foreign target has to do to subject himself to the same Constitutional and warrant protections that are reserved only for US Persons is to ENSURE his communications enter, touch, or traverse a US system or network. Right now that happens incidentally, or because US adversaries still find them to be the easiest methods to communicate, even if their comms might be using a US service, or a US-designed or -ow

Re:What does it matter?

[HeckRuler]

Every official query. Agents are allowed to search through that data at their whim. This was detailed by Snowden.

False. That is categorically, 100% false.

Uh, LOVEINT? These are crimes of convenience. It's right there, a tool to use as part of their job. Or do you think that Agent Smith requisitioned a permit from his manager to see what his girlfriend was up to?

And most of the instances of them catching this sort of abuse has to be self-reported. Meaning that there's no system in place to catch them. If there are logs of what they search for, those logs are not checked.

So... 100% false? Really? And this is what I get for talking to a true believer. Nothing really has the power to penetrate that nice thick layer of TRUE BELIEF.

ANY government power "could" be abused. And?

AND this abuse has no system of checks or balance. The part of the government that was supposed to place a check on them, the judicial branch in the form of the FISA court, which performs no actual oversight. Via the Snowden and Glennwald: "As but one typical example, The Guardian has obtained an August 19, 2010, Fisa court approval from Judge John D. Bates which does nothing more than recite the statutory language in approving the NSA's guidelines."

If you know this, why don't you believe it?

For the rest of the government, except the CIA, there are checks and balances which... well... keep them in check. The fact that this abuse is free from any oversight and out of the public's view means that potential abuse, their half of the parallel construction, will not have any negative consequences. Ever trained a dog? If they get away with that shit, it's going to get worse.

Where, in the Constitution, does it say the government cannot have a CAPABILITY that COULD be used against Americans?

Nowhere, but recording all the communications IS a violation. This bullshit doublethink where it's not a seizure of personal papers if they never look at it is blatantly unconstitutional. The sort of shit we had out of Dick Cheney during the Bush admin. Kinda sad.

here is no way to have technical (or any) capabilities to collect against "only" the foreign targets without having the capability to collect against any target that is using the same systems, networks, and tools.

What?
"Hey Verizon, gimme everything you got for number X, we think he's a terrorist. Since you're on US soil, and we like to follow US law, here's the warrant detailing the exact place and information we hope to find."

Oh yeah, they're asking US firms on US soil for private information and the US firms have no real way to distinguish the nationality of the target.
At least, they WOULD be asking under the old conditions. Now it's a wholesale dragnet of all traffic. What's funny is that this is the crux of the warrant-less wiretapping controversy from 2007 that people like you vehemently dismissed the possibility of, but now it's just taken as obvious fact and must be perfectly legal.

You want to error on the side of catching those commie bastards, I want to error on the side of protecting the rule of law.

How about they only have a dragnet on the data that enters or exits US soil? You know, physically. It's one of those bullshit technicalities that doesn't really solve the problem, but at least it would limit their ability to spy on all of our politicians. It would make for a lot of largely meaningless work, but sillier things have been done in the name of legality. A compromise. What do you say?

Re:Pay your fair share! Give this gov't MORE money

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like someone forgot to put <tard></tard> tags around his post

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Re:Snowden leaks: NSA data now used by DEA, others

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. It hits the nail squarely on the head. The comment deserves it's own special link

Re:Pay your fair share! Give this gov't MORE money

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Its pretty simple

[Stan92057]

Its pretty simple, the FBI got its evidence by warrantless illegally spying. On the other hand if I can go to silk road and buy drugs why wouldn't the FBI be able too?????

Modding Sadly Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

[sigh]

The War on Drugs (TM)

[ThatsNotPudding]

The first fatal casualty in The War on Drugs (TM) was an honest justice system, with someone in the back screaming 'She's got a gun!' while bursting through the front door of a knock and announce.

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FBI Had VPN Access

[BaronAaron]

My guess is the FBI is covering up that they somehow got VPN access into the Silk Road's internal server network. The same VPN access Ulbricht used to administer the servers from his local coffee shop.

They had already been tipped off about Ulbricht when he tried to order fake IDs from Canada. Then they figured out he was spending a good amount of time using the local coffee shop's wifi. They then sniffed his wifi traffic directly or just ordered the coffee shop / ISP to allow them to do the same. They couldn't decrypt his VPN session but they could see the destination IP which either lead to his server host provider or a 3rd party VPN service. Either way they just pressured the company that runs the service to give them the keys. Now that they have access to the server network they could collect what ever information they needed to build a case.

The key to my theory is the PDF of the PHPMyAdmin access. Notice it's an internal IP address. No way they were accessing that from anywhere but the server network.

Is the link dead? Blocked?

[flopwich]

I cannot open the first link in this story, to the FBI documents. I've tried pinging the site. Timed out. I've tried to open it in Firefox and in IE. No joy. I've re-booted and tried again. No joy. I tried just linking to krebsonsecurity.com, without the rest of the URL. Nothing. Anybody have any ideas what's going on?

Re:Is the link dead? Blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, I haven't checked the reddit forums yet, but something is definitely up with http://krebsonsecurity.com/

Or CNN.

[dtmancom]

Either the government has to declare you to be the bad guy, or CNN does. https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:Or CNN.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. It wasn't CNN that did it. The first result in your link is CNN reporting on NBC doing it.

The Poisoned Tree

[JimSadler]

This was one issue in the OJ Simpson case. It is not the fruit of the poisonous tree but the entire tree that is discredited. If the FBI has lied or hidden evidence then all utterances from the FBI lack credibility and the entire case should be thrown out. Not only will the TRUTH set us free it will also cause liars to be beaten and tossed in a ditch.

Re:Is the link dead? Blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/krebsonsecurity.com

Says it's up for everyone, just down for me. Still can't get a connection.

Re:Is the link dead? Blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brian has tweeted noting the outage, looks like the site was completely slashdotted today https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/518055187895029761

Eventually it should be back up...

Re:Snowden leaks: NSA data now used by DEA, others

[Vitriol Angst]

Often, I see TV shows that dramatize the hindrance of proper procedure to convict a "bad guy". But what threat does Silk Road represent versus government agencies that use illegal data collection and secret information to convict people? More people die from legal prescriptions than illegal -- but regardless of what anyone believes about Silk Road's activities, they bypass laws that are designed to protect people (whether they do or not). While the justice system is bypassing it's own rules, or eroding legal protections.

Look at it this way; if all data is collected, and there are so many RULES we can break - then with enough data mining, all people at some point are breaking a RULE even if it does no harm to anyone else. Everyone is guilty. Enforcement then becomes merely a process of picking and choosing where you bother to enforce the law.

Silk Road isn't the "little guy", nor the big bad guy -- but I don't like the idea of secret information in any court case. It's the end of free expression because anyone who offends the system is already guilty. The trial is merely a formality.

Re:Is the link dead? Blocked?

[niado]

It's up right now for me.

Parallel construction

[cjonslashdot]

The FBI probably got surveillance data from the NSA, but cannot admit that, so they concocted another explanation, and the concocted explanation is falling apart.

FBI is primarility ran by Mormons

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you didn't know that? That the FBI is primarily ran by Mormons for Mormons.

Pro Tip of the day.

Re:Pay your fair share! Give this gov't MORE money

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, my tax dollars at work, coming to arrest me.

PHPmyadmin's history of bugs and problems

[xiando]

I see nobody has mentioned that if they for some reason suspected/knew that server was the SR server (how? that is another question) then getting access to PHPmyadmin might have been almost as good as getting root access to the box.. http://www.cvedetails.com/vuln... The screenshot in the article does not indicate exactly what version of PHPmyadmin was used, so we do now know if they used a known security hole or not to get at it. And we can only guess how they knew that they should visit that IP in the first place. It could of course be that someone (NSA?) scanning the internets for /phpmyadmin/ found that it was exploitable and looked at what was there and noticed it was the SR. Who knows. One thing we can know for sure is that anyone who has a public-facing webserver can grep for /phpmyadmin/ in their log (regardless of what is actually there) and see dozens and dozens of access attempts daily.

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parallel construction

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they are using parallel construction