Ok so how did the government bust Force and the other guy? Seems to me these are guys with intimate knowledge of all investigative techniques and would know all counter-measures to never get caught.
Maybe they became aware of his activity when he tried to repatriate the bitcoins he stole.
Still, this seems like a guy that is supposed to get away with what he was doing; he is going to know everything they can and would do to catch him.
Just spent hours reading this and the multiple references. Really interesting, and it gave me greater insight into what exactly Silk Road was.Originally Posted by Belly Buster
A few things. He's clearly going away for basically life obviously, and he probably should just based on how out of control he got with the attempted murders and gun sales.
That said, some day, something like this will be legal, regulated, and a much safer alternative to how drugs are currently sold. None of us will likely be alive.
I have little doubt that his site literally saved hundreds, possibly a thousand lives. Having dealt with chronic pain twice in life, yet only knowing one heroin addict up until that point in my entire life, I grew to know probably a dozen people who eventually died from overdose deaths, all people I encountered from just that one friend. A dozen is a real low estimate. My friend had a refrigerator covered almost entirely in funeral cards, not one over 40 years old. Not sure any were over 35 as she was younger than me and they were her circle and peers.
That a handful of deaths occurred with over a million transactions is honestly a public health success story on a miracle level if that is indeed all the deaths that occured. I think that would be hard to pinpoint.
Still, with that number of transactions, he probably saved over a hundred lives simply from busted drug deals that end with a dealer simply putting a bullet into a kid's head rather than completing the transaction. Locally where I live, this happens to a young person once a month.
That he hired doctors to try and help users use safely shows he wasn't a straight sociolath.
Had he not tried to have associates killed, and had he not gotten into arms sales, I'd have way more compassion for this guy compared to a Snowden. I've never seen a logical end to Snowden's though process, and him hurting US interests only to end up in Russian hands kind of shows how badly conceived his ideals were.
In the end, this Ulbricht was insane just because there's no way they are ever going to let you facilitate that many narcotic deals and not hunt you down. You're Pablo Escobar living within US borders. It was never sustainable. Plus it appears he didn't have any semblance of the technical chops to even do it correctly. You're fucked eventually even with technical prowess because it's hard to be perfect, but once you start farming out work you can't do, your reign as King is on very borrowed time.
But if you had to pick one dude in federal prison most like you, this kid would be it for most of us. Just another delusional Mises institute inspired Libertarian that struck gold by happenstance, and then grew bold and dangerous with all the power and money flowing.
Crazy story, but when you read the Bitcoin/ Libertarian influenced sites, you can easily see how it happened in their alternate reality world. But in the end, that circle of customers greatly benefitted from it existing. Not nearly as well as if they weren't addicts, but he didn't create that. He simply created a world where you don't have to deal with an 18 year old slinger with a gun and no expectation to see 21. SR was a much better world.
Just spent hours reading this and the multiple references. Really interesting, and it gave me greater insight into what exactly Silk Road was.
A few things. He's clearly going away for basically life obviously, and he probably should just based on how out of control he got with the attempted murders and gun sales.
That said, some day, something like this will be legal, regulated, and a much safer alternative to how drugs are currently sold. None of us will likely be alive.
I have little doubt that his site literally saved hundreds, possibly a thousand lives. Having dealt with chronic pain twice in life, yet only knowing one heroin addict up until that point in my entire life, I grew to know probably a dozen people who eventually died from overdose deaths, all people I encountered from just that one friend. A dozen is a real low estimate. My friend had a refrigerator covered almost entirely in funeral cards, not one over 40 years old. Not sure any were over 35 as she was younger than me and they were her circle and peers.
That a handful of deaths occurred with over a million transactions is honestly a public health success story on a miracle level if that is indeed all the deaths that occured. I think that would be hard to pinpoint.
Still, with that number of transactions, he probably saved over a hundred lives simply from busted drug deals that end with a dealer simply putting a bullet into a kid's head rather than completing the transaction. Locally where I live, this happens to a young person once a month.
That he hired doctors to try and help users use safely shows he wasn't a straight sociolath.
Had he not tried to have associates killed, and had he not gotten into arms sales, I'd have way more compassion for this guy compared to a Snowden. I've never seen a logical end to Snowden's though process, and him hurting US interests only to end up in Russian hands kind of shows how badly conceived his ideals were.
In the end, this Ulbricht was insane just because there's no way they are ever going to let you facilitate that many narcotic deals and not hunt you down. You're Pablo Escobar living within US borders. It was never sustainable. Plus it appears he didn't have any semblance of the technical chops to even do it correctly. You're fucked eventually even with technical prowess because it's hard to be perfect, but once you start farming out work you can't do, your reign as King is on very borrowed time.
But if you had to pick one dude in federal prison most like you, this kid would be it for most of us. Just another delusional Mises institute inspired Libertarian that struck gold by happenstance, and then grew bold and dangerous with all the power and money flowing.
Crazy story, but when you read the Bitcoin/ Libertarian influenced sites, you can easily see how it happened in their alternate reality world. But in the end, that circle of customers greatly benefitted from it existing. Not nearly as well as if they weren't addicts, but he didn't create that. He simply created a world where you don't have to deal with an 18 year old slinger with a gun and no expectation to see 21. SR was a much better world.
Chill the hyperbole nigga; not everyone in the world is trying to buy hardcore drugs.
Wat?
Marx was dead on at one point when he said religion was the opiate of the masses. Now, opiates is the opiate of the masses. Shit is off the hook everywhere.
Lots in that ramble but I've highlighted the sentence that interests me most.
The U.S. government is running amok, perhaps more that usual. An insider, Snowdon sees this disinformation agenda daily.
When it comes to constitutional laws being broken, Snowdon and a number of "high-up" long serving members of government and security agencies all blew the whistle on the ruling government for breaking laws that are/were the backbone of your society. The whistle blowers were threatened, had their homes raided and some were ruined. Once whistle blower was charged I believe, which I guess would involve treason. Case was dropped.
Maybe telling when someone is lying straight to your face isn't such a bad thing.
the guy who ran Evo clearly saw the writing on the wall.
He was supposedly making as much or more than silk road in commissions and back in March took off with 40,000 + bitcoins that were in escrow on his marketplace.
Either the government was the last to know or they are lying about how they figured it out.In November 2011, Ulbricht had a scare. Someone posted to his Facebook wall, "I'm sure the authorities would be very interested in your site." He went over to Bates' apartment in a panic. Bates told him to shut the site down.
Here's the story of a low-level IRS agent who found basically used google-fu over 2 weekends to figure out the identity of Dread Pirate Roberts, and then how it took 3 more months before anyone would listen to him. (a lot of this is in the 2nd link cmoney posted in the OP)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/bu...silk-road.html
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"
“I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer,’” he recalled saying to himself. “In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”
Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”
“Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?” altoid asked. “It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”
The early date of the posting suggested that altoid might have inside knowledge about Silk Road.
During the first weekend of June 2013, Mr. Alford went through everything altoid had written, the online equivalent of sifting through trash cans near the scene of a crime. Mr. Alford eventually turned up a message that altoid had apparently deleted — but that had been preserved in the response of another user.
In that post, altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com. Doing a Google search for Ross Ulbricht, Mr. Alford found a young man from Texas who, just like Dread Pirate Roberts, admired the free-market economist Ludwig von Mises and the libertarian politician Ron Paul — the first of many striking parallels Mr. Alford discovered that weekend."
etc etc etc
I am trying to bridge the emptiness between the Ulbicht & Micon sentencings and the next Hillary Clinton scandal.
I believe Dark0de might do it but I really can't find anything I can dig my teeth into.
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