Reading legal coverage in Wired is like reading technology coverage in People magazine.
The witness list will be disclosed, a few days before the trial. In no litigation does either side have an obligation to produce lists of witnesses well ahead of time unless specifically ordered by a judge.
Disclosure of witness lists is not required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, which governs mandatory disclosures: http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_16. Local practice, including in SDNY where this trial is held, might hold it customary to make such disclosures, but no specific number of days of advance notice is usually required. It's useful to search "witness list" on that link and read the committee notes on the rationale behind the rule.
Casting a defendant as a dangerous attempted murderer without ever intending to put the defendant on trial for attempted murder would seem like a good strategy for the prosecution for almost any major crime. What are the repercussions that would prevent the prosecution from making allegations that would prejudice the judge against the defendant and hamper the defendant's defense, but never producing a witness at the trial that can be cross-examined?
(My personal guess would be that Ulbricht likely discussed a murder with an agent, but the details of this discussion, whether it was initiated by Ulbricht, and the exact plan the two arrived at are not yet known. I'd also guess that whether or not Ulbricht intended to commit murder, some of these details are ones the prosecution would prefer not to become known for fear that it would damage other parts of their case.)
Or technology coverage in Wired. And it has been that way since the first issue- it's always been a People Magazine type magazine.
When I got my first copy, stumbled on it at a news stand in harvard square on a trip to visit MIT, it was novel because at least it was talking about the internet.
But from that first issue, it's never been written by people who understood or gave a damn about technology.
The main function Wired magazine served early on was to give the writers of the old BoingBoing magazine (years before the current website) a paying job. So that justified its existence for quite a while.
I'd like a lawyer to chime in, but if they have previously made statements that could be exculpatory, I think Brady v. Maryland may apply. The point is to give the defense time to prepare, so they aren't ambushed at trial.
The notes to Rule 16 discuss the Constitutional issue:
> The Committee recognizes the force of the constitutional arguments advanced by defenders. Requiring a defendant, upon request, to give to the prosecution material which may be incriminating, certainly raises very serious constitutional problems. The Committee deals with these problems by having the defendant trigger the discovery procedures. Since the defendant has no constitutional right to discover any of the prosecution's evidence (unless it is exculpatory within the meaning of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963)), it is permissible to condition his access to nonexculpatory evidence upon his turning over a list of defense witnesses. Rule 16 currently operates in this manner.
Note that the notes discuss a house version of the rule that included a provision requiring both sides to, at the defense's option, turn over witness lists 3 days before trial. That provision ultimately did not make it into the final rule.
Genuine question: I didn't followed closely this case, and I'm quite surprised to see so much people defending Ulbricht or the Silk Road on behalf of internet freedom. Some people comparing him to kevin mitnick... I mean, ain't we talking about someone who ran a website where you could illegally buy drugs, guns and or even request an assination? Why should we be concerned by his case?
Many people here aren't fans of the drug war which has led to massive incarceration in our country, pissed off a variety of our South American "allies", made our neighborhoods more dangerous, and not shown any discernible decrease in drug use amongst the constituents of the United States. In fact, about all it has fostered is powerful lobbies who continue to fight to keep drugs illegal which prevent legitimate research into their possible medicinal uses and have resulted in over militarized police who use seemingly unnecessary force against generally nonviolent criminals and very often against innocent civilians.
The number of people who will request assassinations can be assumed to be small due to their expensive and extremely violent nature.
The people buying guns illegally might actually go down if there were less drug turf wars through legalization, decriminalization, and silk road esque services which deliver straight to the door step.
It's not a far stretch to make the case that the Silk Road makes the world, especially America a safer place.
And when drugs are legal, people do them less. Like in the Netherlands where marijuana use ranks far below America's. And other decriminalized countries.
Maybe Ulbright is not the world's greatest human, but his service may have saved more lives than anything.
I'm at work. But sources for everything I've said are rather easy to find using google. Generally I cite everything I say. In this case I can, but choose not to in recognition of time constraints ;-).
Come live in Mexico and tell me that the drug war is working. And once you are at it, try to explain how the potential risk of getting some more people addicted is better than 40,000 deaths, as many "disappearances" and many more kidnappings a year (just in Mexico).
If you think that the drug problem only involves the US, please read this article [1]. Maybe by the time you reach the end of the article, those libertarians don't look so libertarian anymore.
My problem isn't with the obvious statement that everyone agrees with already (the drug war is ineffective), my problem is with the remaining paragraphs of bullshit in that post.
The social and financial benefits of stopping the drug war is not limited to libertarians. I am a socialist and believe it to be a misguided and deeply destructive set of policies that have done far more harm than good.
> And when drugs are legal, people do them less. Like in the Netherlands where marijuana use ranks far below America's. And other decriminalized countries.
> You HN libertarians are living in a dream world.
I've heard this kind of argument multiple times talking to people about legalization/decriminalization of drugs. I just assumed GP meant their comment that way.
I know this is super post-mortem regarding my comment, but my "bullshit" claim was directed at the "Maybe Ulbright is not the world's greatest human, but his service may have saved more lives than anything" and "It's not a far stretch to make the case that the Silk Road makes the world, especially America a safer place". Everyone and their dog is against the drug war, I had no expectation that people here would assume I was for it.
>I mean, ain't we talking about someone who ran a website where you could illegally buy drugs, guns and or even request an assination? Why should we be concerned by his case?
No, we aren't talking about that someone because Silk Road dealt exclusively in drugs and counterfeits. Weapons were banned from the site. Assassinations were banned from the site. Anything that was designed solely to inflict harm on humans was explicitly banned from the site, as per site rules.
As you may now understand, I am asking questions.
Questions are asked in order to obtain informations, not to spread them. But thank you for your bit of infos regarding silk road's sites rules.
It's not so much what he is accused of doing, but how he allegedly did it.
I don't trust drug dealers. But then again, I also don't do business with them.
I don't trust my bank, and I don't trust my government. I cannot avoid them in quite the same way. So if someone can prove that it is possible for untrustworthy scum to anonymously do business with one another over the network, then I can almost certainly hope for a future where I am not forced to trust organizations that are only superficially trustworthy just to operate in the open marketplace.
As it is now, I get paid via direct deposit into a bank account, and pay my bills via electronic means from that account. Along the way, every transaction is compiled and reported to the state, so it can tax my money every time it moves.
Why do you rob banks? That's where the money is.
What's the best way to rob a bank? Own one.
My interest in the Silk Road is purely to see how effectively the government can fight it. They killed e-Gold. They killed Tor+Bitcoin+Silk Road. It remains to be seen whether they can kill their successors. I just really want open source money to work, because the closed source and curated money supply that I am forced to use isn't working out quite as well as I think it should.
So if Ulbricht is not convicted, I consider it to be no great loss to law and order. People like him exist in every big city, and many can remain at large for years. But it would be a great win for Tor and Bitcoin if it turns out that the state cannot prove its case, and a lesser win if the state is forced to reveal the methods used to compromise Tor and Bitcoin in the process.
Ulbricht himself is of little concern to me. But if someone like him is able to hide nefarious activities from the state and get rich without using the banking system, I can certainly do things like buy iodine for emergency preparedness without getting raided by a SWAT team (because it is apparently a precursor for something or other), and I can pay my electric bill from home without supporting the jerkass banking system that is apparently too big to fail and too avaricious to care.
You don't have to be a scumbag to hate your bank and fear your government.
And Ulbricht doesn't even need to get off completely for it to be a win for those of us who want to see more privacy in private business transactions and more personal control over private finances.
The reason it is important is because this case is going to set a legal precedent for a lot of important topics. It's worth reading up on both sides of it. http://freeross.org/
If you believe strongly in internet freedom and that drugs should be decriminalised / the drugs war is a terrible abomination, you probably think he's more or less a good guy. I think there's simply a large overlap in these two groups. It's somewhat internet related at any rate; the fact that he was found at all could be considered a statement that true freedom of speech may not exist.
(I'm pretty sure Silk Road never allowed assassination, and the similar claims against him personally seem quite dubious and designed to shape opinion.)
The law doesn't do an especially good job of it either. Perhaps it would be better were we all more observant of the principle than we tend to be; the accused is not always guilty.
I doubt that in Garner case there was any doubt over any verifiable facts. The only things questionable were the feelings of the policemen involved (not following too close the case, though, might be wrong).
So it was never a case of what they did, but was it a crime.
I think that Cosby's fall from grace is better recent example if I read your point correctly
By the logic I was responding to, it is inappropriate to be angry at the cop. He's innocent until proven guilty. That's obviously not how public opinion works.
Whether or not you think Ulbrecht really was a full-on digital gangster, assassinating enemies at will -- I sure don't -- I think we all can agree: it does not bode well for your coming trial when the judge publicly declares you a danger to the lives of witnesses.
Why don't you think he was? I personally was all-for his cause (and everything silk road stood for), but I think he's probably guilty of the murder thing and they claim evidence to back it up.
Edit: Funny how I'm getting downvotes. Apparently it's soo controversial to make my decision based on evidence. And something that'll he likely be convicted for.
The prosecution has every incentive to cast Ulbrecht in the worst light possible before the trial begins. Because they're not actually at trial yet, they can make claims that won't actually hold up to scrutiny in court. As others have already pointed out, if he really did order people's murders, wouldn't the prosecution indict him for it?
All that aside, it seems a big leap for Ulbrecht to make from online drug-deal middleman to someone calling out hits on people. He's not Don Corleone or Avon Barksdale, he's some tech kid with really poor judgement. I actually find the government's claim that he tried to hire an undercover as a hitman completely credible. It also seems to speak to the idea that he had no idea what he was doing and was completely out of his element.
I do not find the idea that some dude sitting on a mountain of Dunning-Krugerrands might write an email allocating some tiny percentage of them to the project of getting rid of someone inconvenient to his business.
I would find the story less believable if it involved Ulbricht actually meeting some shadowy figure in the the parking lot of a Target or whatever. But nobody has alleged that he effectively ordered a killing; he appears to have just had a casual email exchange about it.
The factual complexity of the murder narrative, and the degree of dedicated intent Ulbricht didn't pay to it, seems like good reason not to base the case against him on it.
Enough of the conspiracy theories, please. We already went through all this crap with Hans Reiser (another guy who suffered from "poor judgment"). I have no idea whether Ulbrecht is innocent or guilty, but the most probable reason for the judge's decision is a genuine concern for the witnesses' safety. It's easy to dismiss the risk when it's not your conscience. The judge is probably thinking "Hmm, he's probably not going to have these witnesses killed, but it's going to be a total shit show if he does, so lets err on the side of caution".
> if he really did order people's murders, wouldn't the prosecution indict him for it?
No, that's a non sequitur.
For example, imagine that the prosecution knows that Alice killed Bob, but only because they were illegally tapping Alice's phone lines and the evidence would get thrown out. Or imagine that Alice is in the mafia, and your only witness, Charlie, suddenly went missing.
> he's some tech kid with really poor judgement
History is littered with people who went from "poor judgement" to "murder". To be clear, I'm not calling Ulbricht a murderer. I'm just not convinced that you know him so well that you know what he will and won't do.
I should clarify, I don't mean poor judgement in the "he's a good kid, he just had poor judgement" sense. He might be a terrible person for all I know. Heck, he probably is. And I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to murder people. I meant it in the sense that I don't think he is capable of finding someone willing and able.
It seems a big leap to go from someone who orders a few murders over an anonymous web service paid for with digital currency to being a Don Corleone or Avon Barksdale.
You make it seem like it's some big deal, you could/can literally order a murder in a few clicks on these black market sites.
Because the murder charge is factually complicated, the Silk Road charges are simpler, Ulbricht will serve a long prison sentence if convicted of either set of charges, and introducing the trickier murder charge risks the credibility of the rest of the charges with the jury?
That doesn't sound plausible - US prosecutors are notorious for piling up charges (even when there is little chance they will hold in court), to increase the maximum possible sentence the defendant could server, to make him/her plead guily and settle (e.g. the story of Aaron Swartz).
This is similar to the logic people applied to the Reiser case and their failure to charge the "serial killer" who "confessed" to Nina Reiser's murder.
The reality is: charges are applied strategically in most federal cases, and, for that matter, witness lists are regularly withheld until trial. The reason this is generating outrage now is because people on HN have a rooting interest in Ross Ulbricht, just like they did in the Reiser case.
Furthermore, if the prosecutor wished it, the grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.
The fact that he was not indicted shows that the prosecutor did not desire for him to be indicted. Given the aforementioned notoriety for throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, the most likely explanations for a no-bill are (1) the charge can't actually be proven with admissible evidence or (2) the suspect is a cop or (3) the prosecution of the charge would embarrass or otherwise damage the state.
We can probably rule out #2. And by the ham sandwich rule, #1 is only rarely an impediment to indictment. So that leaves #3. The state probably fears what would go public in the discovery phase if they pressed the murder-for-hire charge, and that might affect its position for the other charge.
I think if you go looking you'll find cases where entrapment is brought up as a defense to murder charges. The bigger issue with entrapment is that it usually requires the defendant to concede the charged crime; to say he was entrapped into ordering a murder, Ulbricht would have to surrender any defense involving him not giving that order, or believing the order was anything other than what it appeared to be.
No, that's the example I came up with in my head too. "Entrapment" is what happens when law enforcement coerces someone to commit a crime who was not otherwise inclined to do it. The kernel of entrapment isn't that law enforcement creates an opportunity to commit a crime, but that they accompany the opportunity with some kind of push or shove.
What about if you were caught committing a crime and a detective told you you had to help in a sting operation if you wanted to avoid chargers. In the sing operation you are told to solicit a hit from a suspected hitman. which you do and then are promptly arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. Do you think entrapment should not be a defense in this case? I am pretty sure it's the exact kind of situation the defense is intended to be used in.
Yes. There are state criminal procedure rules that explicitly spell out when you can withhold the identities of witnesses; see for instance Ohio Criminal Procedure Rule 16 (D)(1). (I found Ohio's because there was a news story about increased use of the rule to protect witnesses there).
You can't withhold the identity of a witness at trial, because of the 6th Amendment.
It must be somewhat common practice, because this is what the Witness Protection Program is for, right? And that program was established under the Organized Crime Control Act.
I don't know exactly how it works, but the witnesses will at least be under US Marshal protection before and during the trial: http://www.usmarshals.gov/witsec/
In an organized crime trial, I think it would make sense to keep the witnesses secret, but again I don't know the details. And either way I don't think it's necessary here.
This ruling likely doesn't matter that much, given that Ulbricht and his attorneys surely know who the most important witnesses are, as he knows the people he interacted with. It does, however, show that the judge is willing to believe in the possibility that he's Pablo Escobar 2.0. That probably doesn't bode well for his trial. Even though his guilt will ultimately be decided by a jury, the judge's rulings on motions (such as the pending motion to keep testimony about his attempted murders-for-hire out of the trial) can have a huge impact on the verdict.
This sounds as ridiculous as when Kevin Mitnick wasn't allowed to use a phone whilst incarcerated because it was rumoured he'd set of nuclear missiles by whistling at certain frequencies.
It's worth saying, as hackers we're familiar with the quotes about, if some old expert says something is impossible, be much more skeptical than when a young person says it is possible. Things like:
"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." - Robert Goddard
Are perfect quotes for hackers. Maybe we should ease up on mocking people for believing the whistling nukes thing. The reasons it couldn't have happened involve details more specific than "sounds on phones can't do things on computers", notably because that wasn't true at the time. And experts probably told him that people only have to be clever enough to find a single flaw in a security system to compromise it, and having one insight the creators of the system didn't could lead to compromising it.
So the judge hears some seasoned professional say it's impossible... and the same person says when you hear some old professional say something is impossible you should be extremely skeptical. When faced with Armageddon? Let's cut the people involved a little slack.
I get the idea that it's pretty certain that he actually couldn't, but at that time I don't think you could be certain of anything he might be able to do.
Maybe not set of nuclear missiles, but destroying evidence perhaps? Or some other scheme that would only require a simple digital initiation?
As I'm sure you are well aware there actually were hackers at the time who taught themselves to whistle at 2600hz. Who knows if someone you have just caught and otherwise know nothing about could do something similar?
Because if not, I hereby declare the entire trial a sham, a huge attack on his constitutional rights, an insult to the idea of impartial justice and a return to the Star Chamber.
Wow, this really looks like it's going to be a farce trial. I wonder in how many other cases "the accused is dangerous - better keep witnesses secret" rhetoric will be used to pervert justice. Especially if the "murder" accusations can simply be made up!
The witness list will be disclosed, a few days before the trial. In no litigation does either side have an obligation to produce lists of witnesses well ahead of time unless specifically ordered by a judge.
Disclosure of witness lists is not required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, which governs mandatory disclosures: http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_16. Local practice, including in SDNY where this trial is held, might hold it customary to make such disclosures, but no specific number of days of advance notice is usually required. It's useful to search "witness list" on that link and read the committee notes on the rationale behind the rule.
A good, but somewhat old, article on the subject. http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=27...