Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal"

First time accepted submitter apexcp writes Trading blows with the prosecution, defendants for accused Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht continues to press for the exclusion of evidence seized during what he says is an illegal hack an awful lot like the one that got Weev 15 months in prison. "The government posits two standards of behavior: one for private citizens, who must adhere to a strict standard of conduct construed by the government, and the other for the government, which, with its elastic ability to effect electronic intrusion, can deliberately, cavalierly, and unrepentantly transgress those same standards. Yet neither law nor the Constitution permits rank government lawlessness without consequences."

Comments

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

[Tokolosh]

"To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution."

"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

Re: Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

[Tokolosh]

The US did the same for AT&T and the rest.

https://www.eff.org/cases/hept...

Go Ross, Go!

[Anonymous Coward]

Silk Road Kingpin or not, I'm rooting for Ross here. The fact of the matter is that the Government has made a habit out of adopting these types of double standards and ignoring the civil rights that are guaranteed to us as citizens of the United States. If Ross' legal team can bring the government down a notch or two, I'll be forever grateful to them.

Re:Go Ross, Go!

[davydagger]

I'm rooting for the Silk Road, not because I agree with it, but because its lesser of two evils between them, traditional drug cartels, and the street pushers, who enforce their reign with viloence.

So the Silk Road offered a good alternative to street gangs, measurablly better in every way. Better product(less chance of killing/hurting people with impurities), less violence, Less domination, control and indimidation on the streets. Less hiearchy.

Sure the street gangs and cartels could also sell on the Silk Road, but that would make them adapt to its culture and end most of the endemic problems with violence associated with them.

Re:Go Ross, Go!

[davydagger]

you don't need to be in an altered state of mind to see that the war on drugs has failed misrably, and that the biggest problem with drugs are not the drugs themselves but the problems that arise around manufacture, distribution, and the type of people that manufacture and distribute them, as well as the people who enforce the laws.

There is nothing so bad about any drug to include heroin(which I think is downright terrible), that is in the same leauge as the abusive authority of the DEA, which has for the past 30 years, ignored any and all constitutional safeguards and protections, to include due proccesss(civil fortieture), and habeus corpus(parallel construction), to virtually fail at its goal of keeping drugs off the streets. Giving up our rights did not do anything for us.

You don't have to be high to see that. You need some common fucking sense.

Re:Go Ross, Go!

[davydagger]

>We'd eliminate overnight the drug gangs

No, its going to be a long slow proccess eliminating gangs. Cutting off their *easy* source of income is the first step. The next is breaking them up before they find something else as lucrative, because they will try something else.

Re:Go Ross, Go!

[TheCarp]

You mean the people who entered into an underworld business agreement where the stakes were known to be very high and attempted to blackmail a kingpin threatening the safety and very life of both him and his various other, honest associates?

Yes, lets pretend they had no part in bringing that upon themselves.

I have far more sympathy for him than them. Blackmailers are scum. They are such scum that even the state generally agrees they are criminals even when what they threaten to reveal is crime.

Re:when the president does it

[ArmoredDragon]

You are absolutely fucking wrong. Literally.

Hmm...So what's the right way to fuck?

These guys are really stretching...

[NicBenjamin]

The whole point of the first bit of Article II Section 1 is to give the President and his appointees powers ordinary schmucks don't have to execute the law. These powers are somewhat restricted by the law enforcement Amendments, but are still a whole hell of a lot broader then the rights ordinary citizens enjoy. Which means if you're a criminal defendant, and you're telling a Judge that evidence should be thrown out because it would have been illegal for someone who isn't the government to do it, that ain't gonna work. Weev and other hackers have Rights, but they don't have powers, so what they are allowed to do is totally irrelevant to what the government is allowed to do in a criminal case. They're intentionally wasting the Court's time.

If they were making a Fourth Amendment Argument that could get interesting because the data belonged to an American; which means the Feds should have had a warrant. However, the Supreme Court has created something called a under a "good faith exception," which allows the government to use it's search and seizure powers on anyone it reasonably suspects of not being American, and I sincerely doubt that most Icelandic webservers are rented out to dudes from Peoria.