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Silk Road Defense Says Ulbricht Was Framed by the ‘Real’ Dread Pirate Roberts
- YoAdrian 12y agoThe real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Bendude137 12y agoPantagonia... sounds like I'd like the weather there
- codezero 12y agoWill be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe they just need to convince the jury he didn't act alone? There is probably a decent amount of evidence to show he had help and maybe wasn't running the whole operation, but this seems like a defense approach that will make the jury very suspicious from the onset.
- nerfhammer 12y agoI think the strategy is to dazzle the jury with confusing uncertainty
- ccleve 12y agoAh, the Chewbacca Defense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense
- tomphoolery 12y agoI mean, everyone's defense is "I didn't do it, I was framed". There really is no defense here. You'd think more people would be screaming about it if he was truly innocent. Hopefully, the defense will also include some sort of evidence backing up the statement, otherwise I'm pretty sure Ulbricht is going to jail.
- tedunangst 12y agoObvious question the jury will be asking: so who did he sell it to? Better have a good answer.
- utnick 12y agoI think he really is just trying to convince the jury that it might have been someone else who ordered the murders. That should shave decades off the jailtime.
- schuman 12y agoDude wasn't a libertarian. He was just a murderous asshole. He sold hacking tools and identity theft kits that existed solely to harm others. He tried to have people killed. Fuck him. And fuck the inevitable posts here about how, despite selling tools that are explicitly meant to harm other people, that he was somehow some good-hearted libertarian. He wasn't. He was just a fucking asshole. I hope he rots.
- neotek 12y agoI know he's fighting for his freedom and you can't begrudge a man for doing whatever it takes to beat a charge, but I really think this is such a cop-out defense and I wish he had the balls to act like the same person he pretended to be when he was writing his grand manifestos about freedom of choice and individual rights. Whatever Ulbricht himself may be, whether or not the murder for hire allegations are true, however he might have gone about running Silk Road, the libertarian ideals that justify the existence of Silk Road should have their day in court. But that won't happen here, because his defense relies on Silk Road being a terrible thing that somebody else did.
- mahyarm 12y agoPeople espouse libertarian ideals because they are terrified of the power of the state and do not trust it. To go with this kind of defense, especially when you don't have many options, is not hypocritical. It's easy to say 'have some balls' from the safety of your keyboard.
- neotek 12y agoI didn't suggest it was hypocritical, and nor did I suggest Ulbricht should feel compelled to defend the principles he wrote about. I'm saying that I wish he (or anyone in his position) would fight for those ideals, which are entirely justified in a world where NSA spying is treated as the punchline to a late night show monologue joke.
- fsloth 12y agoSomeone always has the de facto authority to wield violence. In modern society, this authority is the state. In Dread Pirate Robert's universe, no authority should wield violence... except Dread Pirate and his associates if it suites them. Libertarian and anarchistic ideologies start from the wish that no-one would wield violence and all would be equal. Unfortunately, how real world scenarios evolve is that existing system is replaced by chaos, from which a few entities reach political authority, at which point they take the authority to wield violence and make the decisions for everyone else they want to make. Anarchy and the like work only in smaller social groups such as a family or a commune where everyone can rationally assume everyone can be trusted and to act fairly within the context of an uncodified behavioral standard - to stay within the groups culture. At larger scales these types of population dynamics just don't work, and the stuff rises up which require the equivalent of the functions of modern state to function properly as a whole. The point is, if there is no central auhtority, someone will become that authority (picture somalian warlords, russia after 1917 revolution and so on). So replacing current state with an entity on 'non-violence' and non-coercion does not work - these are sociological oxymorons that do not exist.
- anigbrowl 12y agoAh, the 'Keyser Soze' defense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyser_S%C3%B6ze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyser_S%C3%B6ze
- ritchiea 12y agoOr the Shaggy defense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5fqunQ_4I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5fqunQ_4I
- btilly 12y agoIt will be interesting to see this unfold. But I am inclined to believe Ulbricht here. My main reason for finding it immediately believable is that the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" is an obvious Princess Bride reference to a pirate who inherited his trade and occupation from another pirate. That combined with the fact that the name did not appear on the forums for the first few months leads me to believe that the name is an inside joke about the fact that the Dread Pirate Roberts did not create the site. The 2013 quote from the Dread Pirate Roberts saying the same thing when he had no particular reason to lie is just icing on the cake.
- baby 12y agoWhat 2013 quote?
- mburns 12y agoThe one at the end of the article.
- canjobear 12y agoHe _did_ have a particular reason to lie about this in 2013, and to make his name Dread Pirate Roberts and spread rumors that he wasn't the first one. He could have been setting up just this kind of defense.
- jacquesm 12y agoSeems more like a 'grasping at straws' strategy to me.
- mc32 12y agoPeople were inclined to believe Hans Reiser too[1],[2], untill he led the police to Nina's body. Despite all the evidence, lots of people did not want to believe it was him and held out for hope, in the end, though, people realized indeed it was he who did it. [1] http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/06/09/1155214/hans-reiser-to-reveal-location-of-wifes-body http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/06/09/1155214/hans-reiser-... [2]http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/02/23/2218256/hans-reiser-and-the-geek-defense-strategy http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/02/23/2218256/hans-reiser-a...
- tedunangst 12y agoWow. I had a joke theory that the "real truth" was the Silk Road was a DEA sting operation but the (gov) operators were caught skimming and needed to shut it down in a hurry. I didn't think that would be the real defense.
- refurb 12y agoWasn't Ulbricht logged into an administrator account of Silk Road when he was busted at the library? That would make it harder to claim you were "framed".
- Retra 12y agoNo, their genius leadership somehow got him to come back for... for whatever. Yes, people he doesn't really know doing illegal things that he didn't want to be a part of convinced him to go to a public space and get back into it just before he got caught. All because they are far to clever to get themselves caught, you see.
- kassemi 12y agoGiven a jury without sufficient education and a case with as much technical nuance as this and then a reasonable doubt that the same technical nuance could indicate a frame job... Seems like an ok move...
- hackerboos 12y agoI'd say it was a good strategy in light of overwhelming evidence he is connected to the site. He's still going to prison just maybe not for the rest of his life.
- mattrj 12y agoHope the jury is as stupid as OJs.
- Pyxl101 12y agoIf the block chain doesn't fit, you must acquit!
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- diminoten 12y agoSo for him to effectively use this defense, he'd have to cast reasonable doubt on the prosecution's evidence that he was "Dread Pirate Roberts"? And in order to do that, he'd have to discredit the authenticity of their evidence that his computer was the one doing all the work, which means the defense would have to show that his computer was hacked, and all of the evidence was forged by the hacker(s). How's he going to show a jury of non-techies (which you know the prosecution selected for) that it was all just his computer getting hacked? How do any high-level technical trials work, when the jury goes into the trial not educated on the topic? The reliance on expert testimony?
- bsder 12y agoWell, if his defense can throw up enough dust, the government will likely have to abandon the charges around murder and go for something a lot lower level.
- sidcool 12y agoNot a bad start.
- exo762 12y agoAs for "murder for hire": he was never charged with it. Why?! Why on earth prosecutors have chosen not to throw a book on a guy? Because it never happened. Whole "murder for hire" story is just a part of smear campaign.
- tomp 12y agoWell, the other possibility is that there isn't enough proof. But IMO if there isn't enough proof, he's not guilty, and they shouldn't even mention it, to avoid damaging his public perception.
- ubernostrum 12y agoThe counterpoint to what you say is that the evidence comes from personal documents/conversations/etc. they obtained, and if they released some of that but not all -- in order to avoid publicly releasing any murder-for-hire bits -- you would be here saying that the selective release is suspicious and that they should release everything in order to avoid damaging his reputation through cherry-picking evidence.
- canjobear 12y agoDid you read the indictment? Do you think they just blatantly made up the dialogues and diary entries there? It seems unlikely they would risk doing that just to spice up what already seems like an open-and-shut case.