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Please forgive an ignorant question from someone who has not been following this very closely: is there any substantial evidence that the prosecution's evidence

Please forgive an ignorant question from someone who has not been following this very closely: is there any substantial evidence that the prosecution's evidence was manufactured (either by the prosecution itself, or a third party seeking to frame Ulbricht)? It's entirely possible for virtually any evidence to be manufactured (granted, it's often easier with digital evidence), but in most cases we take it at face value simply because there is no reason to think it's been faked. [Edited to clarify that I'm not just asking about evidence allegedly manufactured by the prosecution.]

tptacek 12y ago
The suggestion is not so much that the prosecutors manufactured evidence, but that whoever "framed" Ulbricht did. But that's a tough row to hoe, given that there is physical evidence connecting Ulbricht as well. There's no evidence of manufacturing or tampering with evidence. The argument that the defense is relying on is that the evidence is so overwhelming, so spectacularly damning, that nobody with the ability to run a vast criminal conspiracy could simultaneously be so reckless and naive as to leave that much evidence. Two additional points the defense was going to attempt before being shut down by the court: * They were going to put a bitcoin expert on the stand to testify as to the unlikelihood of someone actually being able to transfer as much bitcoin from Silk Road to Ulbricht's wallet as the FBI actually found. Possibly --- it is part of the defense's strategy to surprise the prosecution with new arguments --- they'd also find some way to testify as to ways in which bitcoin wallets can be tampered with or manufactured. Nick Weaver at ISCI independently tracked SR transactions to what's believed to be Ulbricht's wallet, and was able to almost immediately trace 20% of the funds in that wallet directly to Silk Road. This was going to be a longshot argument, but it's an argument in the vein you're referring to. * They were going to put Steve Bellovin on the stand to testify as to how vulnerabilities in BitTorrent clients could have allowed hackers to put arbitrary files on Ulbricht's laptop, thus explaining away all the evidence the FBI found on it. At the time he was apprehended, Ulbricht was running a BitTorrent client downloading a Colbert episode. That's about it. That, and the old lady he grew up with who said he was a nice boy. Really. Against the notion that hackers digitally framed Ulbricht are things like the slips of paper they found with SR details on them alongside his girlfriend's phone number, or the USB fob backup of SR they found on his nightstand. Everyone feels like they've missed something here, or that they haven't been following along carefully, because the defense put on an absurdly short slate of witnesses who primarily testified to Ulbricht's character. The court chided them for attempting to put on a case through the prosecution's witnesses rather than calling their own. Even when the defense tried to do that, it did so outlandishly; for instance, their accusation that Karpeles was behind Ulbricht's framing fell apart dramatically when it was revealed that Ulbricht had paid the hosting bills for the Silk Road website parked at Karpeles hosting company. It's just a weird, weird case, is what I'm saying.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for all that information. It does sound like a weird case. But I can also tell you that, having been involved in a number of federal criminal trials, when the defense is exceptionally weak, the trials always get weird in precisely the way you describe. Ulbricht is hardly the first to discover that when the government has you dead to rights, often the best you can do is try to raise the jurors' skepticism about the government's evidence, and elicit testimony from people who think you're a nice guy and "would never do such a thing." One obvious, and classic way of doing this is to suggest someone is framing you, and try to make the government prove that the mysterious third party didn't manufacture all the prosecution's evidence.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Does that ever work? I'm curious about why he didn't plead out. Nick Weaver accused his lawyer, Joshua Dratel, of deliberately dragging the case out to secure more fees. But that's not very plausible; Dratel has a long resume (among other things, he was the first civilian lawyer at Guantanamo) and presumably doesn't need to shake down bitcoin drug dealers for fees. I wonder whether the prosecution was simply unwilling to offer up any meaningful concessions in response to a guilty plea.
    - pdabbadabba 12y ago
      I've never seen it work. Then again, in the trials I've been involved in [many, I suspect, by HN standards, but few compared to a practicing criminal attorney], nobody has ever been acquitted, for any reason. (At least in these cases, it wasn't because the system is rigged against them -- it's because the U.S. Attorney in the district where I worked is very politically visible, and tends only to take slam dunk cases to trial.) As for why he didn't plead out: who knows. It's possible the government didn't want to give him much of a deal, given the high profile of the case, and their apparent mountain of evidence. Occasionally, the government actually wants to go to trial. It's also possible that Ulbricht was either desperate to be exonerated or, relatedly, had a somewhat deluded sense of his prospects at trial (either through self-delusion, or through an overly optimistic lawyer). Some people insist on their day in court, no matter how ill-advised, from a practical perspective, that may be.
bradleyjg 12y ago
There's no indication than any of the substantive evidence (i.e. the evidence that tends to indicate Ulbricht is guilty) was manufactured. There is a strong argument to be made that the government's testimony as to how it came to obtain that evidence is fraudulent or at the very least incomplete* (which is not relevant to guilt, but would have been relevant to a suppression motion under the fourth amendment except the defense inexplicably procedurally defaulted on that question+.) * See http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/10/reading-silk-road-configuration.html http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/10/reading-silk-road-configur... and http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-holes-in-fbis-story/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-ho... + http://ia700603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824.89.0.pdf http://ia700603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.42... (starting on page 6)
- tptacek 12y ago
  The issue here is that the FBI discovered the SR server in Iceland and didn't credibly reveal how they did it, and the rest of the evidence is traceable back to the server imaging that Iceland did. Against that is the assertion that they had Ulbricht's name prior to the server seizure, and that virtually all of the most important evidence in the case came from the laptop, which was searched with a warrant and incident to his lawful arrest. There's also the notion of inevitable discovery to contend with.
  - bradleyjg 12y ago
    Sure, Ulbricht's suppression motion was hardly a slam dunk even if it hadn't been de facto defaulted, but it was certainly worth a shot.
  - dmix 12y ago
    A IRS special agent apparently found Ross "first" using Google: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/the-incredibly-simple-story-of-how-the-govt-googled-ross-ulbricht/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/the-incredibly-si...

tptacek 12y ago

The suggestion is not so much that the prosecutors manufactured evidence, but that whoever "framed" Ulbricht did. But that's a tough row to hoe, given that there is physical evidence connecting Ulbricht as well. There's no evidence of manufacturing or tampering with evidence. The argument that the defense is relying on is that the evidence is so overwhelming, so spectacularly damning, that nobody with the ability to run a vast criminal conspiracy could simultaneously be so reckless and naive as to leave that much evidence. Two additional points the defense was going to attempt before being shut down by the court: * They were going to put a bitcoin expert on the stand to testify as to the unlikelihood of someone actually being able to transfer as much bitcoin from Silk Road to Ulbricht's wallet as the FBI actually found. Possibly --- it is part of the defense's strategy to surprise the prosecution with new arguments --- they'd also find some way to testify as to ways in which bitcoin wallets can be tampered with or manufactured. Nick Weaver at ISCI independently tracked SR transactions to what's believed to be Ulbricht's wallet, and was able to almost immediately trace 20% of the funds in that wallet directly to Silk Road. This was going to be a longshot argument, but it's an argument in the vein you're referring to. * They were going to put Steve Bellovin on the stand to testify as to how vulnerabilities in BitTorrent clients could have allowed hackers to put arbitrary files on Ulbricht's laptop, thus explaining away all the evidence the FBI found on it. At the time he was apprehended, Ulbricht was running a BitTorrent client downloading a Colbert episode. That's about it. That, and the old lady he grew up with who said he was a nice boy. Really. Against the notion that hackers digitally framed Ulbricht are things like the slips of paper they found with SR details on them alongside his girlfriend's phone number, or the USB fob backup of SR they found on his nightstand. Everyone feels like they've missed something here, or that they haven't been following along carefully, because the defense put on an absurdly short slate of witnesses who primarily testified to Ulbricht's character. The court chided them for attempting to put on a case through the prosecution's witnesses rather than calling their own. Even when the defense tried to do that, it did so outlandishly; for instance, their accusation that Karpeles was behind Ulbricht's framing fell apart dramatically when it was revealed that Ulbricht had paid the hosting bills for the Silk Road website parked at Karpeles hosting company. It's just a weird, weird case, is what I'm saying.

pdabbadabba 12y ago
Interesting. Thanks for all that information. It does sound like a weird case. But I can also tell you that, having been involved in a number of federal criminal trials, when the defense is exceptionally weak, the trials always get weird in precisely the way you describe. Ulbricht is hardly the first to discover that when the government has you dead to rights, often the best you can do is try to raise the jurors' skepticism about the government's evidence, and elicit testimony from people who think you're a nice guy and "would never do such a thing." One obvious, and classic way of doing this is to suggest someone is framing you, and try to make the government prove that the mysterious third party didn't manufacture all the prosecution's evidence.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Does that ever work? I'm curious about why he didn't plead out. Nick Weaver accused his lawyer, Joshua Dratel, of deliberately dragging the case out to secure more fees. But that's not very plausible; Dratel has a long resume (among other things, he was the first civilian lawyer at Guantanamo) and presumably doesn't need to shake down bitcoin drug dealers for fees. I wonder whether the prosecution was simply unwilling to offer up any meaningful concessions in response to a guilty plea.
  - pdabbadabba 12y ago
    I've never seen it work. Then again, in the trials I've been involved in [many, I suspect, by HN standards, but few compared to a practicing criminal attorney], nobody has ever been acquitted, for any reason. (At least in these cases, it wasn't because the system is rigged against them -- it's because the U.S. Attorney in the district where I worked is very politically visible, and tends only to take slam dunk cases to trial.) As for why he didn't plead out: who knows. It's possible the government didn't want to give him much of a deal, given the high profile of the case, and their apparent mountain of evidence. Occasionally, the government actually wants to go to trial. It's also possible that Ulbricht was either desperate to be exonerated or, relatedly, had a somewhat deluded sense of his prospects at trial (either through self-delusion, or through an overly optimistic lawyer). Some people insist on their day in court, no matter how ill-advised, from a practical perspective, that may be.

bradleyjg 12y ago

There's no indication than any of the substantive evidence (i.e. the evidence that tends to indicate Ulbricht is guilty) was manufactured. There is a strong argument to be made that the government's testimony as to how it came to obtain that evidence is fraudulent or at the very least incomplete* (which is not relevant to guilt, but would have been relevant to a suppression motion under the fourth amendment except the defense inexplicably procedurally defaulted on that question+.) * See http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/10/reading-silk-road-configuration.html http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/10/reading-silk-road-configur... and http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-holes-in-fbis-story/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-ho... + http://ia700603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824/gov.uscourts.nysd.422824.89.0.pdf http://ia700603.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.42... (starting on page 6)

tptacek 12y ago
The issue here is that the FBI discovered the SR server in Iceland and didn't credibly reveal how they did it, and the rest of the evidence is traceable back to the server imaging that Iceland did. Against that is the assertion that they had Ulbricht's name prior to the server seizure, and that virtually all of the most important evidence in the case came from the laptop, which was searched with a warrant and incident to his lawful arrest. There's also the notion of inevitable discovery to contend with.
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  Sure, Ulbricht's suppression motion was hardly a slam dunk even if it hadn't been de facto defaulted, but it was certainly worth a shot.
- dmix 12y ago
  A IRS special agent apparently found Ross "first" using Google: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/the-incredibly-simple-story-of-how-the-govt-googled-ross-ulbricht/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/the-incredibly-si...