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So, as an armchair juror, 3 enourmous questions spring to mind: 1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptograph

So, as an armchair juror, 3 enourmous questions spring to mind: 1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Why wasn't his hard drive encrypted? Why were there no plans to erase and destroy data at a moment's notice, in the event that he gets arrested? Are we expected to believe that his meticulous use of crypto-currency and onion routing go hand in hand with maintaining a silly plain text journal of his comings and goings? That he was simply naive to the idea that his local storage devices should not be a meticulously guarded has his network presence? 2. Are screenshots honestly a valid form of evidence? Consider that there's a distinct lack of any sort of chain-of-custody for such evidence, and the fact that it's trivial to fabricate screenshots, why should I believe that any give screenshot can be regarded as authentic evidence? 3. Screenshots aside, how can we honestly buy into any digital evidence presented to us, when there's no assured certainty to its integrity? Consider that one cannot even trust plaintext HTTP data to be safe from corruption by MITM attacks. Given that large quantities of digital evidence can be manufactured programatically, with relative ease, given the proper expertise, how are we to trust a large volume of digital data as anything more than artificially produced bits and bytes spat out by a machine? Logs? Logs, you say? Who maintained these logs? What program created these logs? And if I can possibly capture and replay a remote desktop session, doesn't it stand to reason that I might be able to spice things up, and insert salacious tidbits, and then programatically produce screenshots at will? So what if they have gigabytes of data demonstrating such and such? What is the true measure of authenticity when confronted by the fact that it's still just faceless bytes sitting on a disk?

maxerickson 13y ago
It is just like any evidence. You look at the people that are certifying it and decide if it is plausible that they are all lying. (aimed mostly at 3.)
loceng 13y ago
One very plausible answer is the government wanted to demonize him so there'd be less of an uproar of support against their actions.
- krapp 13y ago
  An uproar from whom?
  - loceng 13y ago
    I don't know honestly, though you don't think it's possible the government would try to demonize someone in order to gain public support?
    - krapp 13y ago
      They certainly would, Martin Luther King Jr. would be one good example. But I think they have public support in this case. Most people would be disgusted to know that Silk Road ever existed and would be happy it's gone. But more relevant, perhaps, I don't believe that public support really matters here either way. DPR isn't a hero to many people, demonizing him isn't likely to affect popular opinion, or have any relevant political merit. Trying to secure a conviction might be another matter, but even then I would think they would be certain that they had a solid case to begin with. I can't imagine they would fabricate evidence without anything concrete to back it up. It's not as if this is all they have, they would be insane to just toss some photoshops in to 'sweeten the pot' as it were.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      So you have no real strong reason why the government would demonize him in this case, which is sufficient evidence to prop this hypothesis all the way in your mind to "very plausible"? Wonderful.
      - loceng 13y ago
        It is very reasonable this is something the government would do. There are loads of historical accounts of intelligence/military agencies doing this. It's mainly called propaganda.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      This is a real-life chewbacca defense if I ever heard one.
ericcumbee 13y ago
1) He was arrogant and thought that they would never get that close to him. or He thought that keeping notes offline in an analog format would be safer than keeping digital copies. Also consider that for all the Trade Craft Bin Laden practiced to stay hidden. He was sloppy when it came to the computer drives and notes he kept in his house.
- XorNot 13y ago
  There's an observation from the FBI that applies to people caught for child pornography: it turns out that usually most of them have disk encryption software installed, but don't actually use it (i.e. you find a whole bunch of unencrypted stuff that's still completely illegal just in a folder somewhere). The main thing to remember about crime is that it's not rational - the risk/reward payoff is absurdly lopsided, so to some extent every step of the way you have to engage in little fictions to convince yourself you won't ever get caught - because if you took stringent precautions, you'd have to acknowledge that if you ever need to use them it probably still means you're going to jail for some amount of time.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  There's a certain commonality there. It didn't matter whether any of Bin Laden's hard drives were encrypted; he was dead when we found him and he knew it. Likewise, from a practical stand point once the Feds came knocking at DPR's front door the jig was up. While the extra evidence will no doubt add a couple of nails to the coffin when this finally goes to trial, chances were that if he was tracked down at all, there would be enough evidence to convict him on that paper trail alone. Chances are this is just the standard "it's a lot harder to commit a perfect crime than you think it is." But it might also not be irrational to focus exclusively on not getting caught, and not worry so hard about all the extra evidence that will be scooped up with you.
  - ericcumbee 13y ago
    very true
  - comrh 13y ago
gcv 13y ago
All good points. This is why neither you, nor any other programmer, is likely to sit on a jury in a trial relating to computer crime.
ceejayoz 13y ago
The FBI appears to have seized a very large number of Bitcoins, posed as hitmen killing someone on his behalf, and they've got a wide variety of physical evidence like the fake IDs shown. I doubt they needed to take the risky step of faking extra evidence here.
- scenicBulimic 13y ago
  I'll readily entertain the possibility of tangible artifacts over some bytestream any old day of the week. If he's busted with a bunch of fake IDs on his person, I'd consider that to be evidence proper. But anything transpiring in the netherworld of the internet needs to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when no real-world violence erupted. It may be possible that this is the guy. The evidence that rings truest in my mind is that there was a real world cause-and-effect chain of events that occured immediately after his arrest. The shit hit the fan, and the site went down. Clearly, the real world arrest had a direct influence on the availability of the website. But given the DEA's predilection for parallel construction, and the NSA's predilection for electronic dragnets, can we take the narrative of how they came to bust the Ulbricht at face value? Even if he was breaking the law, was he apprehended lawfully? Did they come into possession of this digital evidence in a lawful manner? If Ulbricht gets off on a technicality for the crime he's charged with, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. He's being charged with the hypothetical thoughtcrime of killing an internet persona (or two). To me, that feels like a technicality to begin with. If the people he killed never existed to begin with, then how can we be sure that the evidence that supports these ideas was collected and not crafted? He may be the real deal, the guy himself, responsible for The Silk Road. But if you're going to put him away with that in mind, justice is not served unless he's charged with the crime he's being punished for, and justified by the true story of how they nailed him. I want to know what was truly so evil about The Silk Road, such that it might necessitate some sneaky peaky, in order to lock up the man responsible for it. Maybe they achieve their goal of unmasking him, through this direct relationship of arrest and then site outage, but does that mean we have to swallow this murder-for-hire wrap too, no matter how flimsy it feels?
  - MrMan 13y ago
    yeah man! murder is just a thought crime now.
Steko 13y ago
You really think "my client is too smart to have made any of these mistakes it must all be a government conspiracy" is going to fly as a defense?
berberous 13y ago
1) The drive was very likely encrypted. The FBI deliberately waited until he was using the laptop in a public location, and tackled him so they could explore the drive while it was still logged in. As to why he wrote everything down in a diary, or didn't plan for that eventuality...seems to be a combination of hubris, inexperience, and naivety. 2) Yes. They can be authenticated by the officers who took them. The officers merely state that they tackled Ross in the library, and that they personally photographed what was on the screen, and that the image you see is said photograph. You are of course correct that they could be fabricated, but that's up to his defense attorney to argue, and for a jury to believe is enough to constitute "reasonable doubt" in their collective minds. 3) Again, evidence does not have to be perfect. Everything you argue applies to any kind of evidence. What's to say the witnesses testimony wasn't coerced? The letter forged? The rules of evidence come into play here, as well as the jury's role in deciding what to believe. That said, it's certainly an interesting issue, and it would be great if there were stronger chain-of-custody and verification rules for digital evidence collected from a seized hard-drive, for example.
- scenicBulimic 13y ago
  Specifically in response to number 3: I contend that it is easier to coerce a machine than a witness, that forged bits can be perfectly identical whereas forged letters might not. Machines need to be held to different standards for different reasons. If we lend them a greater veracity than is appropriate, how unforgiving might such an error be? We live in a world of statecraft through malware with Stuxnet, Flame and Duqu. We live in a world where international telecommunications companies enable global eavesdropping and interception at the carrier-grade level. You cannot discount the idea that his entire machine might have been compromised all the way down to the firmware, to elicit highly specific programmable responses choreographed in real time. That much is is honestly unlikely, and unrealistic, but in theory, the possibility is there. Consider that he may have been a useful idiot. A patsy. That he was framed, does the physical evidence and circumstantial evidence seal off that path of doubt? How advanced could the Silk Road's administrators actually be? Could they have crafted such malware, to root kit his laptop and lead investigators to a fall guy, and then temporarily close up shop if he goes down? I don't think that's what happened, but when a laptop is a key piece of evidence that a case may hinge on, The first thing I think of is how much control I honestly have over my own laptop. Fabricating bits is not the same as fabricating other evidence. Machines are different. As for your points #1 and #2, yeah, I'll agree that those are valid points and that sounds pretty damning, and I'll give it up on those.
coldtea 13y ago
>1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Because they wouldn't matter one iota. Either they would get him with his computer on, and read them off of memory, or the court would have forced him to give the password -- or face even harsher sentence based on all the other evidence.

maxerickson 13y ago

It is just like any evidence. You look at the people that are certifying it and decide if it is plausible that they are all lying. (aimed mostly at 3.)

loceng 13y ago

One very plausible answer is the government wanted to demonize him so there'd be less of an uproar of support against their actions.

krapp 13y ago
An uproar from whom?
- loceng 13y ago
  I don't know honestly, though you don't think it's possible the government would try to demonize someone in order to gain public support?
  - krapp 13y ago
    They certainly would, Martin Luther King Jr. would be one good example. But I think they have public support in this case. Most people would be disgusted to know that Silk Road ever existed and would be happy it's gone. But more relevant, perhaps, I don't believe that public support really matters here either way. DPR isn't a hero to many people, demonizing him isn't likely to affect popular opinion, or have any relevant political merit. Trying to secure a conviction might be another matter, but even then I would think they would be certain that they had a solid case to begin with. I can't imagine they would fabricate evidence without anything concrete to back it up. It's not as if this is all they have, they would be insane to just toss some photoshops in to 'sweeten the pot' as it were.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    So you have no real strong reason why the government would demonize him in this case, which is sufficient evidence to prop this hypothesis all the way in your mind to "very plausible"? Wonderful.
    - loceng 13y ago
      It is very reasonable this is something the government would do. There are loads of historical accounts of intelligence/military agencies doing this. It's mainly called propaganda.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    This is a real-life chewbacca defense if I ever heard one.

ericcumbee 13y ago

1) He was arrogant and thought that they would never get that close to him. or He thought that keeping notes offline in an analog format would be safer than keeping digital copies. Also consider that for all the Trade Craft Bin Laden practiced to stay hidden. He was sloppy when it came to the computer drives and notes he kept in his house.

XorNot 13y ago
There's an observation from the FBI that applies to people caught for child pornography: it turns out that usually most of them have disk encryption software installed, but don't actually use it (i.e. you find a whole bunch of unencrypted stuff that's still completely illegal just in a folder somewhere). The main thing to remember about crime is that it's not rational - the risk/reward payoff is absurdly lopsided, so to some extent every step of the way you have to engage in little fictions to convince yourself you won't ever get caught - because if you took stringent precautions, you'd have to acknowledge that if you ever need to use them it probably still means you're going to jail for some amount of time.
saalweachter 13y ago
There's a certain commonality there. It didn't matter whether any of Bin Laden's hard drives were encrypted; he was dead when we found him and he knew it. Likewise, from a practical stand point once the Feds came knocking at DPR's front door the jig was up. While the extra evidence will no doubt add a couple of nails to the coffin when this finally goes to trial, chances were that if he was tracked down at all, there would be enough evidence to convict him on that paper trail alone. Chances are this is just the standard "it's a lot harder to commit a perfect crime than you think it is." But it might also not be irrational to focus exclusively on not getting caught, and not worry so hard about all the extra evidence that will be scooped up with you.
- ericcumbee 13y ago
  very true
- comrh 13y ago

gcv 13y ago

All good points. This is why neither you, nor any other programmer, is likely to sit on a jury in a trial relating to computer crime.

ceejayoz 13y ago

The FBI appears to have seized a very large number of Bitcoins, posed as hitmen killing someone on his behalf, and they've got a wide variety of physical evidence like the fake IDs shown. I doubt they needed to take the risky step of faking extra evidence here.

scenicBulimic 13y ago
I'll readily entertain the possibility of tangible artifacts over some bytestream any old day of the week. If he's busted with a bunch of fake IDs on his person, I'd consider that to be evidence proper. But anything transpiring in the netherworld of the internet needs to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when no real-world violence erupted. It may be possible that this is the guy. The evidence that rings truest in my mind is that there was a real world cause-and-effect chain of events that occured immediately after his arrest. The shit hit the fan, and the site went down. Clearly, the real world arrest had a direct influence on the availability of the website. But given the DEA's predilection for parallel construction, and the NSA's predilection for electronic dragnets, can we take the narrative of how they came to bust the Ulbricht at face value? Even if he was breaking the law, was he apprehended lawfully? Did they come into possession of this digital evidence in a lawful manner? If Ulbricht gets off on a technicality for the crime he's charged with, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. He's being charged with the hypothetical thoughtcrime of killing an internet persona (or two). To me, that feels like a technicality to begin with. If the people he killed never existed to begin with, then how can we be sure that the evidence that supports these ideas was collected and not crafted? He may be the real deal, the guy himself, responsible for The Silk Road. But if you're going to put him away with that in mind, justice is not served unless he's charged with the crime he's being punished for, and justified by the true story of how they nailed him. I want to know what was truly so evil about The Silk Road, such that it might necessitate some sneaky peaky, in order to lock up the man responsible for it. Maybe they achieve their goal of unmasking him, through this direct relationship of arrest and then site outage, but does that mean we have to swallow this murder-for-hire wrap too, no matter how flimsy it feels?
- MrMan 13y ago
  yeah man! murder is just a thought crime now.

Steko 13y ago

You really think "my client is too smart to have made any of these mistakes it must all be a government conspiracy" is going to fly as a defense?

berberous 13y ago

1) The drive was very likely encrypted. The FBI deliberately waited until he was using the laptop in a public location, and tackled him so they could explore the drive while it was still logged in. As to why he wrote everything down in a diary, or didn't plan for that eventuality...seems to be a combination of hubris, inexperience, and naivety. 2) Yes. They can be authenticated by the officers who took them. The officers merely state that they tackled Ross in the library, and that they personally photographed what was on the screen, and that the image you see is said photograph. You are of course correct that they could be fabricated, but that's up to his defense attorney to argue, and for a jury to believe is enough to constitute "reasonable doubt" in their collective minds. 3) Again, evidence does not have to be perfect. Everything you argue applies to any kind of evidence. What's to say the witnesses testimony wasn't coerced? The letter forged? The rules of evidence come into play here, as well as the jury's role in deciding what to believe. That said, it's certainly an interesting issue, and it would be great if there were stronger chain-of-custody and verification rules for digital evidence collected from a seized hard-drive, for example.

scenicBulimic 13y ago
Specifically in response to number 3: I contend that it is easier to coerce a machine than a witness, that forged bits can be perfectly identical whereas forged letters might not. Machines need to be held to different standards for different reasons. If we lend them a greater veracity than is appropriate, how unforgiving might such an error be? We live in a world of statecraft through malware with Stuxnet, Flame and Duqu. We live in a world where international telecommunications companies enable global eavesdropping and interception at the carrier-grade level. You cannot discount the idea that his entire machine might have been compromised all the way down to the firmware, to elicit highly specific programmable responses choreographed in real time. That much is is honestly unlikely, and unrealistic, but in theory, the possibility is there. Consider that he may have been a useful idiot. A patsy. That he was framed, does the physical evidence and circumstantial evidence seal off that path of doubt? How advanced could the Silk Road's administrators actually be? Could they have crafted such malware, to root kit his laptop and lead investigators to a fall guy, and then temporarily close up shop if he goes down? I don't think that's what happened, but when a laptop is a key piece of evidence that a case may hinge on, The first thing I think of is how much control I honestly have over my own laptop. Fabricating bits is not the same as fabricating other evidence. Machines are different. As for your points #1 and #2, yeah, I'll agree that those are valid points and that sounds pretty damning, and I'll give it up on those.

coldtea 13y ago

>1. Why would a man, who allegedly built an extremely profitable empire using robust cryptographic software, not have enough expertise to employ powerful encypted countermeasures on his personal machine? Because they wouldn't matter one iota. Either they would get him with his computer on, and read them off of memory, or the court would have forced him to give the password -- or face even harsher sentence based on all the other evidence.