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My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

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Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#51

Post by jessaustin »

emodendroket wrote: post #46
jessaustin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. I haven't followed this trial closely enough to know exactly what happened here, but despite the sanctimonious, performative "I'm-a- good -person" denials you're getting in respo…

Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.

Sure, we could draw the line at allowing law enforcement to kidnap a suspect's family, but should we? To the contrary, I think we've given our employees in law enforcement entirely too much leeway already.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#52

Post by untog »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #26
api wrote: post #21

"I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy." As an aside, that's a sad little bit of commentary on the tech sce…

What an absurd statement by the author. These people were interviewing for an apartment in a notoriously tough housing market - they were probably just "posturing" (mentioning their good jobs and money) because they thought it would help them get the apartment. He sounds like an outlier of a landlord who prefers a sketchy semi-employed roommate to one with a guaranteed salary.

He's not really a landlord if he's looking for a roommate. I mean, technically he is, obviously, but it's not a traditional landlord - tenant relationship when you're living in the apartment together.

And I'm not sure in what world talking up how much money you make or the vacations you take would endear you to a potential roommate - it'll just make you sound pompous.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#53

Post by nsnick »

emodendroket wrote: post #46
jessaustin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. I haven't followed this trial closely enough to know exactly what happened here, but despite the sanctimonious, performative "I'm-a- good -person" denials you're getting in respo…

Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.

What you are describing is extortion not entrapment. Do you know what entrapment is?

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#54

Post by [deleted] »

emodendroket wrote: post #46
jessaustin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. I haven't followed this trial closely enough to know exactly what happened here, but despite the sanctimonious, performative "I'm-a- good -person" denials you're getting in respo…

Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.

[deleted]

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#55

Post by [deleted] »

Retra wrote: post #50
lamuerteflaca wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a new law is born: La muerte Flacas' law: Try to use a valid NAZI reference and a clueless bastard will mention Godwin's Law. The Laziest form of counter argument.

"[Godwin's law is] an endlessly tiresome way of feigning moral indignation" -- Kevin Drum

[deleted]

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#56

Post by Retra »

erhardm wrote: post #13
mootothemax wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. I'm not sure what's more horrific: - Someone who orders murders. - Someone who orders murders and doesn't think that seriously about it .

Doesn't matter. The condition will short-circuit at murder:)

But... AND is a commutative relation.. :(

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#57

Post by darkhorn »

pakled_engineer wrote: post #42
burger_moon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to would-be terrorists who get honey potted by the fbi. They find people wiling to put bombs in a car and blow up a city block and they sell them the fake bombs/ equipment and then arrest them after they attempt to detonate it, some times not even getting that far.

Conspiracy to traffic narcotics cases are the same. A CI tells a tale of being connected to some cartel and offers to import a bunch of invisible cocaine and if you agree to it and show up with payment you're convicted without any actual drugs existing. The overt act does not even need to be completed, any action done by the accused to further the conspiracy agreement is good enough to get life in prison.

Whoaa!!! This is the USA? Fucked up. I don't know such things done by the police in European Union.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#58

Post by Retra »

q7 wrote: post #4
chatmasta wrote: post #2

"Sure, we wanted Ross to go free. We wanted him to be innocent, to be a hero: the poster boy for privacy in the Information Age." That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. If you read the chats he had, he sounds completely out of his league, and probably never would have…

Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him. There was never any harm done to anybody. Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. He hasn't lost my goodwill yet.

"Roberts was upset that one of his employees—records show these employees were paid between $1,000 and $2,000 a week—had stolen from Roberts and eventually managed to get himself arrested by dealing with an undercover agent. Roberts wanted the employee tortured so that he would return the missing Bitcoins. Not knowing much about hitmen, Roberts ended up talking to the very undercover agent who had helped bust his employee.

On January 26, 2013, Roberts asked that the former employee get "beat up, then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back." A day later, afraid that his former employee would squeal to the police, Roberts asked if it was possible to "change the order to execute rather than torture?" Roberts said he had "never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case." The agent offered to do the job for $80,000."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took...

I'm not seeing the entrapment here...

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#59

Post by emodendroket »

nsnick wrote: post #53
emodendroket wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.

What you are describing is extortion not entrapment. Do you know what entrapment is?

The practice of law enforcement officers inducing a person to commit a crime he otherwise would not likely have committed. I have a hard time seeing why my extreme example couldn't be found to be entrapment if any law enforcement official were foolhardy enough to try it.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#60

Post by pakled_engineer »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #45
chatmasta wrote: post #2

"Sure, we wanted Ross to go free. We wanted him to be innocent, to be a hero: the poster boy for privacy in the Information Age." That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. If you read the chats he had, he sounds completely out of his league, and probably never would have…

> That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." Never tried for murder. Never charged. Why not? That's a slam dunk if it were true. But it carries with it greater scrutiny by appellate courts, greater scrutiny by the press. Perhaps those accusations were bullshit. Perhaps our prosecutors should be prohibited by law from makin…

The conspiracy to murder a federal witness indictment is still floating around Maryland. They used it to deny him bail but now that it's proven he is DPR they could if they wanted drive nails into his coffin and pursue that indictment.

In that phony hit, the FBI was on the other end and can testify they received payment and instructions from Ulbricht to kill a witness so it isn't just a textfile diary as the only evidence like in the other murder charges (which were quietly dropped after he was denied bail).

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