Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested

An anonymous reader writes With the Ulbricht trial ongoing in a case over the original Silk Road, Homeland Security agents have made another arrest in the Silk Road 2.0 case more than two and a half months after the site was shut down. This time they arrested Brian Richard Farrell who went by the moniker "DoctorClu." From the article: "Homeland Security agents tracked Silk Road 2.0 activity to Farrell's Bellevue home in July, according to an affidavit by Special Agent Michael Larson. In the months that followed, agents watched his activities and interviewed a roommate who said Farrell received UPS, FedEx and postal packages daily. One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, Larson said. That led to a search on Jan. 2 that recovered computers, drug paraphernalia, silver bullion bars worth $3,900, and $35,000 in cash, Larson said."

Comments

Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist

[troll -1]

One day the world will be liberated and people will be free to trade. Right now we live in a Kafkaesque dystopia.

Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist

[blue trane]

What's the real problem with heroin? It's the warlike conditions under which it has to be obtained and used, because of the laws. Many heroin users can be productive and would not turn to crime if they could get it legally.

If someone OD's, and they had all the information they wanted about dosage, etc., then they wanted to die or didn't care, and you should have intervened before they OD'd instead of paying lip service to "human tragedies" etc.

Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist

[Harlequin80]

You have forgotten the financial costs on society. If you have a society with any kind of social system, welfare, social healthcare or similar heroin cost society are large amount of money. It was why it was banned in the first place. Currently the US estimates that it spends $5 Billion on health care costs associated with heroin use. In addition it is estimated that heroin costs about $11 billion in lost productivity.

People ODing is also not a black and white situation. You take too big a dose and collapse, do we leave you to lie there till you die? Or do we take steps to save your life? Ambulances, doctors, nurses, treatment etc. Or lets say you have died. Then what? Do we leave your body there to rot, how do we deal with your assets? Your debts?

It may come as a surprise but when you live in a group your action effect the others in the group. That means your actions have a cost to the people around you. In some instances society as a whole decides the cost of an individual activity is too great for the group to accept and that activity is banned. If you as an individual do not like that you, as the individual, have to leave that group.

Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist

[Mullen]

All of the financial costs related to heroin use comes from enforcement and criminalization of heroin, hardly any of the damage comes from use of heroin.

All crime related to heroin addiction comes from the cost of getting heroin. If it was legal or could be purchased if the buyer could be proven to be an addict, then the cost would be lower and the addict would not need to steal. All of the violence from addiction comes from the ability to not get heroin legally.

OD'ing comes from heroin purity not being controlled. If all legally sold heroin was the same purity, then addicts would OD a lot less.

AID's and the spreading of disease of heroin users comes from sharing needles and lack of access to medicine. If heroin was legal or medically dispensed, then addicts could also have access to clean needles.

Addicts are forced to operate in the shadows and out of the eye of government and medical professionals. If you made heroin legal or medically accessible, then addicts could start working on getting clean or at least not getting worse.

Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist

[Harlequin80]

Nalaxone will prevent ODs in a lot of cases and counter act the immediate effects of opiates. However it does not prevent the long term damage.

I am also aware of taxes that attempt to pass the cost of an activity to the people involved. The problem with them is often the tax required is too high so you have the effect of either subsidising it from general tax revenue OR pushing the cost of something so high you are effectively criminalising it via price and people move to finding illicit sources. You see this in the current cost of cigarettes.

As for the rights. I agree. I am advocating that peoples rights are curtailed in a society. In the same way that I am not allowed to have my stereo playing at 1000db at 2am on a Saturday night. Or to burn off my garbage in a bonfire in the back yard. Or to drive my motorcyle at 200kph. Or any one of a million other laws and by-laws that make our society function.

You may feel that legalising heroin would have a net benefit on society, I may believe that legalising heroin would be a net penalty on society. These are obviously differences in opinion but the fundamentals of having an individuals rights curtailed for the benefit of society as a greater whole is already there and I'm sure that there are many many cases where you agree with curtailing an individuals rights.

I am also aware of the concept of if a government has the power to ban all the things I don't like then it will also have the power to ban the things I do.

As an aside I live in Australia which has a universal health-care system and a universal welfare system. It is not as socialist as say a northern european country but compared to the US you would find it very left wing. If you are ill you are looked after to the best of our ability irrespective of whether you can afford to pay for the care or not. Many of the arguments around rights and what people can and cannot do in the US are settled questions here. Abortion and gun control being the two most obvious ones.

One of the biggest differences you notice when going to the US from Australia is the disenfranchisement of so much of the population. The obvious poverty and the feeling that they see no way out is actually quite shocking. You can wander around any Australian city at night and feel safe and while there are homeless people the numbers are small (Brisbane has a homeless population of 50, in a city of 2 million). http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au...

So perhaps that helps explain where I am coming from when I sit in favour of restricting an individuals rights to something like heroin. I believe that it would be a significant net cost to society to legalise it and the only way for it to not be a net cost would be for society to abandon those who become victims of it. Something I am not willing to advocate.

Sorry for a ridiculously long rambling post.

Always presume parallel construction

[Anonymous Coward]

The stories about how these people get caught are usually "convenient", but I'm guessing it's parallel construction derived from classified capabilities (most likely that Tor is fully penetrated by the NSA).

Defense in depth, people.

Yes, sometimes people get caught due to stupid oversights, such as being the only dorm room's network node on campus that is connected to Tor at the moment that the bomb threat was emailed. That's why god invented VPN gateways running on VPSs and so forth, though.

Perhaps...

[fahrbot-bot]

One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, ...

... the guy just has a LOT of anxiety. Wouldn't you if Homeland Security was after you? :-)