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There's a major difference between this and the Reiser case. As you mentioned, with Reiser people were really practicing wishful thinking in order to save a her

by tedivm 12y ago

There's a major difference between this and the Reiser case. As you mentioned, with Reiser people were really practicing wishful thinking in order to save a hero of theirs. In this case people are trying to follow the case because there's a huge and reasonable chance that the FBI did not act above board in following US law. I don't think anyone things DPR is innocent, or that he's going to some how get away with this. However, people are concerned that the methods used to find him were not constitutional. This has more to do with keeping the government in check than it does with anything else.

Patrick_Devine 12y ago
That's a fair point. I think you articulated better what I was feeling than I had expressed, which is that it felt like wishful thinking on the part of the OP. There does feel like there is hero worship going on with DPR "standing up to the man" though, regardless of whether people feel he's guilty or not. That's particularly so with people who feel services like the Silk Road only came about as a result of the prohibition of narcotics. Regardless though, the unsavoury nature of Ulbricht's actions unfortunately taint the constitutionality issue.
mpyne 12y ago
> However, people are concerned that the methods used to find him were not constitutional. However, people are expressing this concern independent of evidence to support this concern. Even if you're of the school of thought that the FBI has no extra "public authority" power to do their statutory job whatsoever, it's not illegal for anyone to go to the SR website on Tor, and to see what IP addresses the website instructs your web browser to hit in the process. So there's a perfectly reasonable (and likely, IMHO) explanation on the record that supports the FBI position, and against the FBI position, there's only a lot of rather painful wishful thinking (as you say). So I'm not sure how the situation is that different, at least until more substantive evidence against the FBI's claims are presented.

by tedivm 12y ago

Patrick_Devine 12y ago

That's a fair point. I think you articulated better what I was feeling than I had expressed, which is that it felt like wishful thinking on the part of the OP. There does feel like there is hero worship going on with DPR "standing up to the man" though, regardless of whether people feel he's guilty or not. That's particularly so with people who feel services like the Silk Road only came about as a result of the prohibition of narcotics. Regardless though, the unsavoury nature of Ulbricht's actions unfortunately taint the constitutionality issue.

mpyne 12y ago

> However, people are concerned that the methods used to find him were not constitutional. However, people are expressing this concern independent of evidence to support this concern. Even if you're of the school of thought that the FBI has no extra "public authority" power to do their statutory job whatsoever, it's not illegal for anyone to go to the SR website on Tor, and to see what IP addresses the website instructs your web browser to hit in the process. So there's a perfectly reasonable (and likely, IMHO) explanation on the record that supports the FBI position, and against the FBI position, there's only a lot of rather painful wishful thinking (as you say). So I'm not sure how the situation is that different, at least until more substantive evidence against the FBI's claims are presented.