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Irish Court Orders Alleged Silk Road Admin To Be Extradited To US (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A 27-year-old Irishman who American prosecutors believe was a top administrator on Silk Road named "Libertas" has been approved for extradition to the United States. According to the Irish Times, a High Court judge ordered Gary Davis to be handed over to American authorities on Friday. In December 2013, federal prosecutors in New York unveiled charges against Davis and two other Silk Road staffers, Andrew Michael Jones ("Inigo") and Peter Phillip Nash ("Samesamebutdifferent"). They were all charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. After a few years of operation, Silk Road itself was shuttered when its creator, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested in San Francisco in October 2013. Ulbricht was convicted at a high-profile trial and was sentenced to life in prison in May 2015.
This is a complete disgrace. This is an Irish citizen. If he's committed a crime on Irish soil he should be tried in and Irish court under Irish law.
The idea that countries, mainly America, can now extradite people all over the world sticks two fingers up at the idea of sovereign states.
What's next ? An American being sent to face the death penalty because there's a video of them dropping some chewing gum on the streets of Singapore ?
Fucking cunts.
My thoughts exactly, especially the life sentence of Ulbricht. That is simply insane considering the harm reduction SR offered to people who were going to buy their dope anyways. 10 years max, plus 10 for each attempted murder for higher would be much more just and sane.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
An Irishman arrested for crime he committed while residing in Ireland (did he spend any time in the US?).
Presumably this happened because the Silk Road facilitated crimes in the US. But does it even go the other way? Are there ever people extradited from the US because their online activities broke the law in other countries? Could any country have done the same and the FBI is just the one to have bothered, or was there something specific to the US that happened?
I stole this Sig
By moving the drug trade online, and away from street corners and school yards, SR was certainly reducing harm for the public, but it was also a challenge to the police state, the prison industry, and the politicians that service them. Crime in America is a fraction of what it was 25 years ago, yet we have more police, and more prison inmates than ever*. The public needs to wake up and realize what is happening. We need to vote for drug legalization, and we need to stop voting for the pro-police candidates. This November, look for the candidates that are endorsed by the police/prison-guard unions, and please vote for someone else.
*No, the prison expansion did not "cause" the decline in crime. The fall in crime was well underway before the prison buildout started. Some states expanded prisons far more than others, yet had no greater fall in crime. The fall in crime happened throughout the developed world, yet only America had a prison expansion craze.
The allegations about murder-for-hire were never proven in the court or even charged iirc. He was basically convicted for being in a criminal enterprise by running the marketplace. There are plenty of violent criminals who got far lighter sentences than Ulbricht for basically acting as an online middleman for illegal transactions.
IMHO, you could probably imprison the CEO of Ebay for being the biggest fence of stolen goods under the same theory.