Silk Road head Ulbricht sentenced to life
Ross Ulbricht received a very heavy sentence for his creation of the black market internet site Silk Road:
Ross W. Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a notorious online marketplace for the sale of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other illegal drugs, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by the judge, Katherine B. Forrest, for his role as what prosecutors described as “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.”…
Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin, and Mr. Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, took in millions of dollars in commissions, prosecutors have said. They said Mr. Ulbricht had “developed a blueprint for a new way to use the Internet to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions,” and that his conviction was “the first of its kind, and his sentencing is being closely watched.”
Judge Forrest echoed that message. “What you did was unprecedented,” she told Mr. Ulbricht, “and in breaking that ground as the first person,” he had to pay the consequences. Anyone who might consider doing something similar, the judge added, needed to understand clearly “and without equivocation that if you break the law this way, there will be very serious consequences.”
If you want to know more about Silk Road and what was sold there, see this.
In the comments section to the article in the NY Times, I noticed a lot of people who consider Ulbricht to be a libertarian hero/martyr, just trying to foster liberty and get away from big bad government. These commenters tend to compare what he did with selling liquor, and (paradoxically, I think) many say that the real criminals who should be in jail are big business’ exploiting capitalists.
The thing is, what Ulbricht did was illegal, and heroin is quite different than liquor. Sure, both can kill and both can destroy lives (and do, quite regularly), and both are potentially addictive. But liquor is a substance with a long long societal history; heroin is a relatively recently synthesized substance. Liquor is used by the vast majority of people and most of them suffer no ill effects from it and are not addicted to it. Heroin is used by a far smaller segment of society and most of those people are greatly harmed by it and are addicted.
In other words, the modes of use of the two substances are different. Liquor has a lot of redeeming social importance, and heroin has virtually none. What’s more, as previously stated, society has decided to make one illegal while the other (except for a brief and failed experiment with outlawing it) is legal.
Ulbricht knew that when he began Silk Road. He also profited greatly from the site. So he needs to take the consequences.
Where I part company with the verdict (and think it is somewhat too harsh) is that I am not at all sure he should be blamed for inventing a method that others with even more evil intentions have used—that is, for (as the judge said) “breaking that ground as the first person” to do this online. I think that Ulbricht should be responsible for what his own site did and punished for that (would 30 years not have been enough?), not for what others did or will do in the future with the tools he developed.
What happens when opiates are made synthetically?
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bioengineered-opiates-dont-require-poppy-plants
Federal judges have to follow a very complicated sentencing regime. And they have to supply reasons. People may not like the sentence but the judges are very rigorous in sentencing.
And the sentence is subject to review as being too excessive.
Cornhead:
I think it might be reduced somewhat on review.
The sentence is hugely disproportionate. I agree, it will be reduced on appeal.
Don’t bet on a sentence reduction. Trial judges hate to be reversed and are very diligent on providing sound reasons for the sentence. As long as it is within the guidelines, it should be affirmed. You should see the book on sentencing. Complex like the Internal Revenue Code.
This guy will spend a fortune on appeal, but what other option does he have?
Of the many libertarian types, it seems to come down to just a few groups. Those who want their stuff, whether it be pot, coke, heroine, they want it all and they want it now. Those who would like to sell, but only if it is legal… not realizing that would scrap the reasons most of these people think they want to go into sales. Scrap the risk, you also scrap the profit margins. You can’t tell pot heads and general stoners much though. And, finally, the middle aged and older, who think the availability of these drugs would grant them access to teens, sexually. Oh, I suppose there is some mix and match, but mostly that is what I have seen.
There are some cheerleaders for the cause, who I suspect are just trying to run the numbers games for the dimmer youth, to coral their enthusiasm and vigor for politics. Doesn’t work well… attention spans. Dems say they did this, but not so much. They just used polls as a backdrop while they rigged elections. Libertarians, as a party, don’t seem to have realized that, or aren’t going there (yet). Bleh.
(I mean the groups that are for legalization. In the first paragraph. Not all libertarians are for it, such as the partial libertarian stance I hold on some things does not include this.)
And the defendant said he was empowering people to make choices? Add another 10 years for that!
And face it: NYT readers are liberal drug users. They would like it for Uber drivers to deliver smack to their Upper East Side flats.
My libertarian inclinations believe adults should suffer the consequences of their actions… including death. Those who make dangerous choices should suffer with no assistance from society at large.
Judge Jeanine Pirro – Opening Statement on ISIS – Fox News – May 30, 2015
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/05/judge-jeanine-pirro-opening-statement.html
ps. Link Exchange with CC?
Drugs are bad, and nobody should use them. But the drug war is WORSE, and it causes more misery and death than drugs ever did – just as Prohibition caused more problems than alcohol.
But with Prohibition, there was a Constitutional Amendment that made it legal to ban booze – and there’s never been a Constitutional Amendment banning drugs. There isn’t ANYTHING in the 18 Enumerated Powers that would give the federal government any authorization to ban drugs.
I live in Colorado where marijuana both medicinal and recreational is legal. It’s legalization has one great improvement to society: I don’t have to listen to the type of people who talk nonstop about marijuana legalization.
I don’t smoke weed, but I wouldn’t overturn the legalization. I don’t drink either, but want to reinstate Prohibition.
I don’t think we should be that hot to legalize heroine, though. That seems to mess just about everyone up. There are plenty of people who can use alcohol responsibly. There are those who can use marijuana responsibly and even cocaine. I never heard of anyone who did not get messed up on heroine.
A few thoughts.
1. I don´t think libertarians suggest that what he did was not illegal, but that it shouldn´t. What they debate it´s not whether the sentence is legal, but whether the sentence is morally right.
2. I have lived in Nederland (Holland), so I have experience about how a legal-drug society works. And, in my experience, dutch people have less drug problems than any other country I have seen.
The difference is that among dutchs, drug is socially penalized. That provides seveeral advantages:
– Less social problems.
– More freedom.
– More taxes.
– No people jailed because of a pot.
3. One big problem I can notice in modern conservatives is how tight they hang on the written law. And written law is not an optimal solution. US is overjudicialized while, at the same time, social mechanisms are vanishing. It seems that social order is going away there, so people try to fix everything in the court. A kid makes a mischief? Let´s call the judge! Something that has been always fixed by the father telling off (and perhaps some spanking in extreme cases) now goes to court.
Overlegalizing drug issues is just another symptom of a society that overlegalizes everything.
And that´s not sane.
I don’t care about the prosecution’s allegations. I care that it was trial by jury, and trust the evidence was sufficient in quality and quantity to justify the guilty verdicts.
Ulbricht is a very smart and well-educated dude. His Silk Road business makes a case that he is functionally (if not by definition) a sociopath. In that case, life without parole seems appropriate. All sociopaths belong in prison. Maybe he’s an Asperger syndrome, too, pretending to have emotions!
It’s the bit coins that the state wishes to control, far more than the heroin.
Frog:
The jury found him guilty, but the judge decided on the length of the sentence. She had discretion to give him anything above 20 years. She gave him the most severe possible sentence.
Sounds like his biggest crime was not being a Clinton.
Pour encuorager les autres, I should think.
Yann,
Things I have been reading lately about the Netherlands is that foreigners have been using the lax marihuana laws to smuggle it back home, and that they were also hanginging outside coffee shops and pushing harder drugs. As I understand it now, they are working to tighten laws to prevent foreigners from making coffee shops into crime centers (including forced prostitution). Lots of the problems seem to come from eastern Europe.
The problem is that a rather small country in which most people adhere to the social norms is much different from a large country with “diverse” local and immigrant populations. If I remember correctly, the prohibitionmovement was strongly pushed by people who worked with immigrants and felt that something had to be done about immigrant fathers who drank up their whole paycheck on Friday night and left their kids with no food for the week.
Our biggest problem today is the lefty groups who denigrate social standards and try to push all issues into the legal arena. God forbid that they should grant any “prudes” a say in how people should act in a civilized society.
They said Mr. Ulbricht had “developed a blueprint for a new way to . . . to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions.”
They can say the same about Hillary and Bill.
expat, Yann:
You are correct, expat, that comparing a country like the Netherlands to a huge and hugely diverse one like the US is very much apples and oranges.
But with that caveat, I will say that Netherlands most definitely has its own drug problem, centering more on the drug trade:
@expat
>> “Things I have been reading lately about the Netherlands is that foreigners have been using the lax marihuana laws to smuggle it back home”
That’s true. Foreign people go to Amsterdam to get stoned and get weed. In general, dutch people look down to them. While in the rest of Europe, being stoned keeps some “being cool, being rebel, doing something illegal and risky” halo, in Nederland getting stoned is definitely frowned upon and considered a loser feature.
>> “I understand it now, they are working to tighten laws to prevent foreigners from making coffee shops into crime centers (including forced prostitution). Lots of the problems seem to come from eastern Europe.”
No idea. Hard to say since numbers about forced prostitution in Europe are not exactly reliable. Lots of problem seem to come from eastern Europe? Hard to say how much of this is true too… the BIG elephant in the room is the huge muslim inmigration which is taboo. Are easterns that dangerous or are they just a scapegoat for the rising criminality? (since blaming easterns is not considered racism so it’s not taboo)… Honestly, I don´t know.
>> “The problem is that a rather small country in which most people adhere to the social norms is much different from a large country with “diverse” local and immigrant populations.”
Well, among the germanic center of Europe, Nederland is likely to be the less rule-oriented area. If you can enforce a social norm in Nederland, you can do it in any other area from central Europe, and same with Scandinavia.
Mediteranean countries? UK? Eastern Europe? That would be another debate.
>> “Our biggest problem today is the lefty groups who denigrate social standards and try to push all issues into the legal arena. God forbid that they should grant any “prudes” a say in how people should act in a civilized society.”
That is predictable. Basically, you have two ways to enforce social rules: written law and social pressure. Usually leftish like the first one, conservatives like the second one. Personally, I like balance and middle points (but that’s only my opinion).
The problem is that nowadays the whole society has shifted to the written law side, and that’s speeding up western decline. But the BIG problem here is that it’s VERY difficult to go back from there. Non written social rules are transmitted from father to son. If one generation skip it and lose them, the whole process breaks.
@neo-neocon
What you say it’s a different and non related issue.
Dutch people are reckless when it comes to business. If they’re a market for it, they’ll do it, no matter whe’re talking about drugs, prostitution or whatever. They developped this kind of character to survive surrounded by France and Germany and that’s how such an small country become a world power. And that’s the reason because Nederland (and UK-Ireland) are the two tax haven inside European Union.
I’ve long asked why the use and selling of drugs is illegal in the first place. Victimless crimes create and foster criminality and all of its consequences. If we weren’t fighting the war on drugs and pursuing other crimes we call vices, we’d have a lot of resources for better uses and we probably wouldn’t have any more drug use or participation in so called vices than we do now
Yann:
It’s not unrelated that the demography of the 2 countries, and their sizes, are completely different. Comparing apples and oranges when you look at drug use in the 2 countries.
And while drug trafficking is different than drug use, it’s not “entirely unrelated.”
Phil U.:
Certain drugs are illegal because they are not considered “victimless.” The only victims are not the users. The idea behind drug laws is that society is harmed the more people become addicted to certain powerful drugs, and that society is protecting itself (for example, opium addiction became so rampant in China it undermined the entire society).
In general (and I don’t have time to research this fully right now) states and municipalities tend to ban the use of drugs, because they have more power than the federal government to do that sort of thing. The Feds tend to ban the sale and manufacture of drugs under its power to regulate interstate commerce.
See this:
Neo, I understand the argument that society is a victim when addictive drugs become epidemic, but I believe resources would be better spent trying to dry up the market as opposed to criminalizing them. As long as there’s a lucrative market it will be filled, illegal or not.
Phil U:
You said you didn’t understand why drugs were made illegal, and you called drug use a “victimless” crime.
My point is that it’s easy to understand why they are made illegal, and they are not “victimless” crimes. You counter by saying that you understand why they’re made illegal but disagree with the method. That’s a different argument. It may solve one problem by creating different problems.
I think drug use (including softer drugs like marijuana), especially among teens (particularly marijuana) in this country has caused more problems than we know, in terms of loss of motivation and mental sharpness.
Some of the problems with legality for adults can be seen occurring right now in Colorado. Not just decriminalization, but legal sale, as in Colorado.
Neo, I said I understand the argument about society being considered the victim, but I didn’t say I agreed with it. I really haven’t followed the situation in Colorado.
My original comment was conceptual in nature.
Temazepam in Holland? It’s a benzodiazepine, a cousin of Valium and Xanax. Wonder why temazepam is such a hottie, getting specifically named. Probably because its onset of action is quicker.
Neo wrote:
I’m kinda’ on Phil’s side on this. Have you considered that soft drug use by teens is a response to the “loss of motivation” (I would call it a lack of hope) rather than the cause? Perhaps it’s a lack of character, but lots of folks turn to alcohol to ease the pain of seeing no way to get out of the mess their lives have become. (Disclaimer: I’m not trolling your former liberal self here.)
snopercod,
Today we expect kids to get good grades and go to college. I don’t think this motivates all kids. I think many need to have the feeling of concrete satisfaction from actually accomplishing something in the real world. Kids used to help in the garden becaus they saw that the potatoes they dug helped feed the family. Today, many kids don’t help mow the grass because they have soccer practice. This is probably also why we have so many young people commiting themselves to all sorts of “causes.” They have been allowed to live their lives without doing anything.
Expat, the devil and idle hands.
I’m a conservative, not a libertarian.
One of the main reasons why is because I do not have faith in the rationality of my fellow man.
I don’t have faith in the goodness of government either, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking people will behave themselves if left alone.
Drugs reduce agency; as in, the ability to act independently. The US is already a deeply unserious nation. I don’t think legalizing any recreational drugs will make that better.
snopercod:
No, I’m actually referring to something physiological, the effects of drugs on the still-maturing adolescent brain. See this.
People left unguided and alone make terrible decisions/mistakes, organic and psychological. Solitary confinement is terrible punishment for that reason.
Ulbricht’s trial began on 13 January 2015 in Federal Court in Manhattan.[40] At the start of the trial, Ulbricht admitted to founding the Silk Road website, but claimed to have transferred control of the site to other people soon after he founded it.[41] Ulbricht’s lawyers contended that Dread Pirate Roberts was really Mark Karpelé¨s, and that Karpelé¨s set up Ulbricht as a fall guy.[42] However, Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that any speculative statements regarding whether Karpelé¨s or anyone else ran Silk Road would not be allowed, and statements already made would be stricken from the record.[43]
This kind of shit pisses me off. If I was on the jury, I would immediately have refused to convict.
Expose the fucking claims, and let the FUCKING JURY decide what’s the truth and what’s a lie.
That’s the principle of the freaking damned jury system, and this “some stuff is allowed, and some stuff is not” notion is absolutely crap. It’s a perversion of the English system of jurisprudence.
“Come the Revolution”, one change needs to occur is to remove all this bovine excreta hiding Truth and Justice from the legal process, and put in place rules preventing it from being re-enabled.
The courts should be about Truth and Justice, not JUST “The Law”.
>:-/
Smock Puppet:
I don’t think you understand what was going on here. This was not some arbitrary decision on the judge’s part, and that kind of ruling is very basic to our system of jurisprudence and is designed to assure that idle speculation is not part of a trial, but that evidence is evidence.
Did you go to the source cited there? Here it is [emphasis mine]:
The following evidence was then presented:
The rules of evidence are not arbitrary; they are in there for a reason. Some stuff IS allowed, and some is not. Opinion testimony is allowed by expert witnesses based on evidence they have examined combined with their knowledge, not just speculation. Witnesses can’t just say “well, I think it’s so because I think it’s so.” Would you like a whole bunch of people to be allowed to testify in a trial that they just happened to suspect (not based on anything in particular; just to suspect) that so-and-so is guilty of something? That would not be justice; that would be a travesty of justice.
Here is the rule on speculation:
I have no idea why you call this “shit” or why it “pisses you off.” It seems highly reasonable to me. In fact, the exclusion seems necessary if you want to aim at fairness and justice.
if they put him in jail for facilitating such things, why not the congress in jail for making open borders that facilitate the trade they just put this guy in jail for?
oh… yeah… cause going after the actual criminals is harder than someone who has a website that facilitates things… and congress is untouchable if doing the same thigns as we no longer have equality before the courts as feminsts won the you have to treat people unequal to have equal outcomes.
this is all part of the states concept that people who run businesses are responsible for what customers do – not the customers themselves.
so if you own a bar, and someone deals some cocaine in the room, your responsible… close the bar, and the state saves money investigating the thing.
you can go far back on this leftist concept to the laws that southern dems made that forced blacks to be at the back of the bus, and then forced bus drivers to be police of that law – which the black blame the bus companies not the dems in state.
same with the TSA in which over 90% of explosives being smuggled in succeeded in tests, while they are busy trying to search you for drugs… i guess its all part of their buy drugs locally not nationally program of the greenies nad local business. eh?
the point here is that the citizens, unlike police, have no ability to do anything towards what they are responsible for… the bar owners who throw out a minor dealer who does a transaction can be killed and does not have the freedom to carry a weapon like police doing the same job. they dont have threat of arrest, and they are fully responsible for taking over what is the states job and what the state takes taxes to pay for.
but then again, when and where does it say that taxes are for the control of peoples behavior, not paying bills? and where does it say that its ok for state officials to see hookers, go to casinos, and horse tracks withthe taxes that they say they dont ever get anough of?
Romanian analyst Anca-Maria Cernea who referred to a conference “by an excellent Polish analyst, Prof. Przemyslaw Zurawski vel Grajewski, who was saying that whatever the Russians were about to do, in terms of advancing to war, it was probably going to happen before Obama’s second term is over. So it’s going to be now, or quite soon, or never….”
Satellite images reveal Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border
Nato images show fighter planes, helicopters and troops which officials say could be ready to move in 12 hours
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/satellite-images-russian-military-ukraine-border
neo has the opportunity to discuss the war before it starts rather than after and through all the propaganda that will change how and what happened in the history books…
Newsweek-May 28, 2015
Russian troops amassing heavy weaponry on Ukraine border
http://europe.newsweek.com/russian-troops-amassing-heavy-weaponry-ukraine-border-327904
The news comes as global thinktank the Atlantic Council launched a report, based on publically available information, demonstrating the sudden appearance of Russian soldier camps on the Ukrainian border, the movement of Russian armed kit into Ukraine and personal information of soldiers missing or dead as a result of the conflict
china is also moving to start a conflict, as the japan islands and korea is in play…
lets go back to a lone drug dealer we cant do a thing about, and ignore the comming world war!!!!!!!!!!!!
“This is quite a simple fact, yet people have, for some reason, not assimilated it. Even if they do not necessarily watch Russian propaganda, many people still believe that in Ukraine, it is Ukrainians fighting Ukrainians, which is not true.”
the minute a conflict starts its Obama and Biden running things…
imagine replacing eisenhower with obama and then imagine the future…
Swathes of land near the Russian border towns of Kuybyshevo and Pavlovka appear as regular farmland in these satellite shots from 2013. However by summer 2014, after the Maidan protests in Kiev, both sites show a clear and intricate country road system, camp facilities and, in the case of Pavlovka, what appears to be an artillery firing position.
lets keep ignoring the things that MATTER for the things that are curious… cause thats how the cat got killed…
“What we are saying is that you can locate this information too if you don’t trust others’ methods. You come to the same conclusion if you just follow the evidence in front of your eyes.”
go look yourself..
if a war starts are you ready for it?
or has neo helped distract us (unintentially) from preparing for the conflict people knew would come given hat russia and china may no have such an ideal chance again in 70 more years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is there somethign about women that makes them hide and ignore the unpleasant future in favor of frivolity and distraction? it fit our old idea of women before feminist bs… it could be why women were negated from government participation historically…
cause they cant accept sucha reality, they pretend such a reality is not going to happen and wont discuss its eventuality… deeming to prefer believing its not going to happen…
but the preparation signs can be seen over the past 20 years… from ignored treaties, to making new equipment, to negating our equipment and public abilty, disarming our ability to produce (imagine a war and we have no factories and the furgeson people are in charge of our defense)
Go here to see images of before and after on the buildup…
http://tinyurl.com/pdekkek
remember blitzkreig without opposition will mean countries will fall in days and hours not weeks, and that the US will not be able to deploy as obama has been removing experience, putting equipment out of play, and disarming unilaterally…
Russian military jets and US destroyer clash in Black Sea ‘posing danger to stability’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-military-jets-and-us-destroyer-clash-in-black-sea-posing-danger-to-stability-10287303.html
Russia’s state service for international news, quoted a military source as suggesting the US ship had turned away following the incident, and boasting: “It seems that the Americans did not forget the April 2014 incident when one Su-24 actually shut down all equipment on the new USS Donald Cook American destroyer with anti-missile system elements.”
yeah… being able to shut down american military equipment during conflict is not bad, its helpful. if they forget to save green power, the russians can help make sure things are turned off and save energy…
What frightened the USS Donald Cook so much in the Black Sea?
The State Department acknowledged that the crew of the destroyer USS Donald Cook has been gravely demoralized ever since their vessel was flown over in the Black Sea by a Russian Sukhoi-24 (Su-24) fighter jet which carried neither bombs nor missiles but only an electronic warfare device.
On 10 April 2014, the USS Donald Cook entered the waters of the Black Sea and on 12 April a Russian Su-24 tactical bomber flew over the vessel triggering an incident that, according to several media reports, completely demoralized its crew, so much so that the Pentagon issued a protest
The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) is a 4th generation guided missile destroyer
As the Russian jet approached the US vessel, the electronic device disabled all radars, control circuits, systems, information transmission, etc. on board the US destroyer. In other words, the all-powerful Aegis system, now hooked up – or about to be – with the defense systems installed on NATO’s most modern ships was shut down, as turning off the TV set with the remote control.
The Russian Su-24 then simulated a missile attack against the USS Donald Cook, which was left literally deaf and blind. As if carrying out a training exercise, the Russian aircraft – unarmed – repeated the same maneuver 12 times before flying away.
thats ok.. russian stuff is very old, doesnt work, and so on
but how hard is it to take out a blind dead destroyer once you negate its electronics?
how long would a naval battle last if all the ships in it were turned into dead targets taht could not fight back?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Salutin’ Putin: inside a Russian troll house
Former workers tell how hundreds of bloggers are paid to flood forums and social networks at home and abroad with anti-western and pro-Kremlin comments
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
Paid as a Pro-Kremlin Troll: ‘The Hatred Spills over into the Real World’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-ex-russian-internet-troll-lyudmila-savchuk-a-1036539.html
Lyudmila Savchuk recently went public about her experiences working for a Russian Internet propaganda factory in St. Petersburg. In an interview, she describes how clandestine workers are promoting the Kremlin’s message.
Lets hope Neo is not in the first strike area, that way we can here her comments after things start, otherwise we will have to just remember her fondly…
after all, ignore the conflict, and what happens?
if such happens, guess who has total control over the US And can negate the constitition and even give up and sign a treaty putting russia in control…
anyone want to discuss this stuff, the new equipment, our failed development, the stolen stuff, the amassing troops and equipment, the lack of ability of the citizens to fight, the ignoranve of immigrants who dont know us law requires them to fight in a war, and on and on
i will come back later to find out if i am wasting my time putting lights in the old north church and running around screaming the war is coming the war is coming… be prepared…
if not interested and i am wasting my time, i will just give up…
Humanity’s greatest enemy is itself. Thus a person’s greatest enemy is them self or something very very close to them.
Statesmen talk about geo politics because they are responsible for changing geo politics. The people at the bottom obeying orders, what will they gain by prioritizing geo politics over their own domestic situation?
The enemy is a lot closer than people would like to think.