Lawyer for alleged Silk Road kingpin wants all evidence thrown out The lawyer for accused Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht claims the government's evidence against his client should not be admissible in court because it was collected illegally, in violation of Ulbricht's constitutional rights. In a 100-page Memorandum of Law (PDF) filed with the US District Court of the Southern District of New …
I kinda agree with his lawyer. There have been too many bad apples brought to light, too much talk of being trained to construct "artificial" evidence trails for them to be worthy of trust, especially if things actually are rather vague about the circumstances under which all this was uncovered. It's much, much too close to the shenanigans that China and other such countries pull with their fully monitored networks.
Nope.
The assertion that the evidence was not obtained properly is not tied to his assertion of innocence. Before the second can be tested, the first must be resolved, because the evidence is what must be used to test the assertion of innocence.
Or to put it more simply, the fact that evidence was obtained from a person, legally or not, does not mean that that person is guilty of something.
In a society ruled by law it is imperative that the ones sworn to uphold it are held to at least the same standards as everyone else. If the agencies responsible for collecting the data they are prosecuting him with have ignored, broken or even just "bent" the laws then the entire case needs to be thrown out.
I don't care what this guy did. If our society is hell bent on prosecuting people without following the rules then we don't have much of a society.
So essentially the lawyer is saying "he's guilty, but I'm going to try to get him off on a technicality" - looks like an admission of guilt to me!
To compare it another way: imagine someone standing over a dead body, knife in hand, victim's blood all over them. They would be charged with the murder. If they then argue "nobody saw me do it, so maybe I didn't", would that sway judgement? How about if there was an illicit video recording of the murder?
Anyway, surely the way they found the servers was obvious - every computer ever made has a GPS receiver built in that encodes location in TCP headers. How else would the various geoip databases work? That even includes computers made before the GPS satellites went up. Is it obvious enough that this is sarcastic?
> imagine someone standing over a dead body, knife in hand, victim's blood all over them.
> They would be charged with the murder
Yep, but it's up to the prosecution to prove they did it, not the defence to prove they didn't. The argument would be perhaps "I found the body", it's up to the prosecution to find forensics, witnesses etc. to show they killed them.
> How about if there was an illicit video recording of the murder?
You mean the killer recorded himself doing it? It would depend how the police got the video. If it was the result of an unwarranted search (e.g, they dug through your phone during a traffic stop) the video would be excluded - that's the "fruit of the poison tree" thing.
It's not a "technicality" (IMO), it's the rule that says police can't just wade in because they feel like it, they have to have evidence you did something wrong.
Let's say it was caught on the neighbors video camera. And let's say the Police then broke into the neighbors house and took the video. No search warrant, no notification to the owner. The owner comes home to see his door smashed down.
Now, should that evidence be admissible? No because it was not properly obtained. The entire point of those "technicalities" is to ensure that those enforcing the law are behaving correctly. If it was admissible then the police could, at any point, decide to break down your door and search your house just looking for something to charge you with. There is a reason these rules and laws are in place.
The fact is that technology will always outpace the law makers. It has too, because those within the legal system are not now, nor have they ever been, our finest minds.
Once you accept that, a certain amount of lattitude is needed when applying old laws to new technology that could not be envisaged by those writing it.
If that means drug peddling, contract killer hiring, no-marks are inconvenienced by well deserved lengthy jail time then, I just don't care.
@silent_count
If they were on trial for running a wholsale drug distribution business and for paying hitmen, I'd allow rather a lot of lattitude.
The odds that RA isn't DPR are vanishingly small. Especially given that he conceeds that he is, but claims he's just not the original guy. He isn't arguing innocence, merely fighting over legal technicalities. Were he my child I'd be hoping that a spell in chokey straightens him out, because lets face it, his parents don't appear to have done a first rate job of things.
I realise "25 to life" must be difficult to come to terms with - there'll be no kids or grand kids, he may well not actually live long enough to get out, and he's almost certainly going to end up someones prison bitch. It could be worse - tough though American jails are coupled with lenthy stretches for drug smugglers, he could have been caught in Thailand or Singapore, which would have been a much worse outcome for him.
@ AC
"If they were on trial for running a wholsale drug distribution business and for paying hitmen, I'd allow rather a lot of lattitude."
Thankfully for the rest of us, you are not in a position to exercise such latitude. Please alert us if this status ever changes, so we can prepare accordingly to expatriate.
I'm arresting you for running a wholsale drug distribution business and for paying hitmen. These are serious offences so I'll see you at Guantanamo bay tomorrow morning. Please bring your own towel as water may well be involved in your interrogation.
Just how much latitude do you want to give me?
"I'm arresting you ....
Just how much latitude do you want to give me?"
Well, when you find my servers (and I accept that they are mine) rammed to the rafters with incriminating evidence, and you follow the money trail all the way to my own accounts (which again, I don't deny), and the basis for my complaint amounts to "But you didn't knock and say please before you kicked the door in!", feel free to ignore it entirely and send me for trial.
You're imagining a situation where this happens to an innocent person who has done no wrong. That isn't the case here. Even RAs lawyer isn't pretending that is the case, and they never have.
His defence so far amounts to "You can't send me to trial because I was paid in something that wasn't money", and "You can't send me to trial because I don't know how you accessed my servers". To date he's not claimed "You can't send me to trial because I've done nothing wrong"....
If you don't see the difference between that, and the situation you're imagining, then it is solely because you don't want to see it.
Well, that would depend on what they were accused of and whether or not I figured they were guilty. Fact of the matter is, I've rarely heard anyone arguing about these things who wasn't guilty. Someone I know keeps getting his son out of trouble for smoking dope. Stories always show the kid is involved and he's gaming the system so his kid won't have a record. The kid should do his time. It's the only wake up call he's going to get.
Another friend of mine has a sister who was pulled over for erratic driving. At which point they found meth in her car. He and his family knew she was a user, figured it was hers but worked to try to game the system so she wouldn't have a record. Cops were willing to cooperate with her gaming the system because they want her to testify against the guy who was in the car and is a known meth distributor. Sister was late for her hearing. Other members of the family bought her a car, and set her up in a rental home they owned. As events have turned, she's not merely using meth, she's cooking it. She needs to go to jail ASAP. As long as she's out there she's a danger to society. And my friend will tell you that point blank about his sister.
This post has been deleted by its author
Good point. I was wondering how the proceeds of crime were seized and auctioned before a conviction was obtained. Maybe the two are independent - i.e. the coins were provably the proceeds of crime but he is yet to be tried for that crime? Did he fess-up to them being his or were they seized from wallets found on the silk road servers i.e. what bits are irrefutably silk roads (servers, coins etc) and what bits are up for debate? If he admitted the coins were his and they were seized and auctioned then isn't that tampering with evidence?
"I was wondering how the proceeds of crime were seized and auctioned before a conviction was obtained. Maybe the two are independent ..."
I'd not be wholy suprised to learn that the feds were playing both ends of the game.
"For the purposes of this trial, your honour, we regard BitCoin as a currency. For the purposes of disposal, we do not." Possibly?
Film at 11?
I imagine his hundred-page argument took at least a hundred hours, at at least $300 an hour, to research, write and deliver. He doesn't much care that it's going to be shot down.
If the worst comes to the worst, and the judge demands to know how the Feds located Silk Road's servers, surely there's a procedure for that evidence to be presented in-camera so that secrecy isn't breached. Assuming, of course, that the procedure was kosher...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
