Justice Condemned: The Ross Ulbricht Case

RUJustice

I’ve been in and around the US justice system for most of my life. I’ve always had relatives and friends who were lawyers, and I worked as an expert witness for more than 30 years. And however much I may disregard the state as an institution, I hold great regard for the common law, upon which the US justice system was based.

So, when I tell you that Ross Ulbricht’s prosecution shocked me, please understand that this is not the judgment of an antagonist or a neophyte.

Just the Facts

I’m obviously passionate about this subject, and I think you’ll shortly see why. But I also want to present the facts clearly. And so I’m going to use blunt and honest wording, but I’ll also give you links, so you can assure yourselves that my statements rest on more than passion.

Here are the things you should know:

  • The FBI’s explanation of how it found the Silk Road server were lies. What they really did was almost certainly parallel construction, known in honest speech as “lying to the court.”

  • The case was clearly politically driven. (See here and here.)

  • A mere two months before Ulbricht’s arrest, the lead DHS investigator swore under oath that Mark Karpeles (of Mt. Gox infamy) was the “Dread Pirate Roberts” who ran the Silk Road darknet site.

  • Two federal agents investigating the case pled guilty to corruption related to it and are now in jail.

  • The government spied on Ulbricht’s internet traffic (along with others who used the same router) without showing probable cause and without a warrant.

  • The judge altered the trial transcript. The only link I have for this is from Lyn Ulbricht (Ross’s mom), but I was sitting in the same courtroom and heard the same thing. The judge said (and this is close to verbatim), “Last Thursday when agent Der-Yeghiayan was testifying under cross examination, I thought the prosecutors could have objected more. And so, over the weekend, I edited the trial transcript and removed all the testimony that could have been objected to.” The judge then went on for a long time, trying to explain why this was okay, even if it didn’t seem like it.

  • The prosecution’s forensic evidence was below amateur level. The tools used were bad choices, and when the metadata (the times and dates you see when you open File Manager) are exactly the same for every file, it’s inescapably clear that they’ve been altered. To then submit them as evidence is laughable… or would be if so much wasn’t at stake.

  • Ulbricht was neither indicted nor convicted for some highly publicized murder-for-hire charges, but he was sentenced based upon them.

  • Ulbricht’s sentence was beyond extreme: Two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years… for a nonviolent, first-time offender. And one who is seemingly loved by everyone who knows him.

There are more problems with this case, but I’ll stop my list here.

And Now?

A petition now stands before the Supreme Court, arguing two constitutional points:

  1. Whether the warrantless seizure of an individual’s internet data without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment.

  2. Whether the Sixth Amendment permits judges to base an otherwise unreasonable sentence upon uncharged crimes.

Five amicus briefs, signed by 20 organizations, have been filed in support of the Supreme Court petition.

So, will the supremes pull off a stick-save? I certainly hope so. But even if they do, I’ll never look at justice in America the same way. What if Ulbricht’s parents hadn’t risen, heroically, to his defense? And what if the crypto community hadn’t donated substantially?

When I was a schoolboy, we were taught about Soviet show trials, where the verdict was decided beforehand by apparatchiks and a trial was staged to legitimize it. I never expected to see such a thing in America… but I did.

* * * * *

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  • Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
  • There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
  • Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

TheBreakingDawn

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 20: A Storm Warning

rosc20

I walked into Jay’s expecting to find Johnny to be his usual gregarious self. And he was, so long as he was greeting people at the bar. Once we sat by ourselves in the restaurant, however, he changed.

I had never seen Johnny scared before. I’d seen him angry, disgusted, and irritated, but not scared. We were barely through the usual “How’s your family?” stuff before he jumped into crypto.

“I did some looking, Paul, and it seems like you’ve got a handle on this stuff. Do you really?”

“I suppose so, John, but there’s so much action these days that no one can keep up with it all. So I can help you with the basics but not on the newest things. There’s just too much.”

The idea that this crypto thing was expanding beyond the ability of its friends to monitor frightened him further, but neither of us pursued that avenue.

“Listen,” he said. “I know you’re a reasonable guy, even if you are a little crazy…”

We both laughed; I was always the crazed radical in our group of friends.

“But a lot of us are concerned about this. It’s like a genie let out of its bottle, and it may not be controllable pretty soon.”

It was the usual fear of control addicts, but Johnny is my friend and I wanted to help him.

“I think you’re right, Johnny, this thing is growing wildly, but I want to set your mind at ease in at least one way: With the exception of a few scam artists and a small fraction of just plain assholes, the crypto crowd are decent people. They may disagree with the political class on how the world should operate, but they’re not remotely interested in forcing their ideas on people.”

John was partly comforted but only partly.

“Yeah, I get that,” he said, slowly nodding his head. “The question is how far can this thing go? How big can it get?”

This put me into a bit of a dilemma. John is my friend, but I don’t want to give him information that he could pass along to bigger operators than himself. So I addressed only the currency aspect of it.

“The real issue is that this is currency. And it’s better currency. Right now all the cryptos combined account for less than 1% of world currency value. So the question is how much of world currency should be in cryptos rather than government currencies? Are the cryptos good enough for 1% of world value? 10%? 50%?”

Johnny shook his head and waited for me to answer my own question.

“I don’t know where it will end up, but I do know that this stuff is better in a bunch of ways, and people will eventually figure that out.”

“So you think they could really win?”

“I’m not sure ‘win’ is the right word, John, but yeah, there’s a good chance they’ll keep spreading for a long time and become a very significant thing.”

Then without skipping a beat, Johnny pulled out his iPhone and typed something on it.

“It’s from your cousin,” he said. “Cousin” is his slang for our mutual friend. I looked at the screen. It clearly was not an incoming message; it displayed only what Johnny had just typed. It said,

Laugh like it’s funny.

I did. The second line said,

Turn off your cell phone and sit on it.

I typed back,

I turned it off and pulled the battery before walking in.

He read it, we both laughed together, and he turned off his phone then slid it under his leg, while making it look like he was putting it into his pocket. And I quickly remembered that as we were seated, Johnny asked for a different table than the one we were first shown. Johnny’s better at cloak-and-dagger than I thought.

We each took a sip of wine and waited a few seconds. Then Johnny leaned in.

“Like I say, I checked on this, and a couple of the agencies are watching the group meeting at the bar.” I groaned a little. “The first thing that got their attention was the kid who flew off to Poland and opened an exchange.”

“I knew the kid, but I didn’t know he went to Poland.”

“Well, he did, and he stepped right into their sights. They’re paying a lot of attention to those exchanges.”

I nodded my head and said, “Yeah, I know… they have to. It’s the last control point and they need to collect taxes from this.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, “they do.”

“And the second thing was the seminars?”

“Yes,” he said. “They probably wouldn’t have cared about them, but they think these kids are taking that same kind of rebellion on the road…” He trailed off.

“And so they need to kill it,” I said, concluding the statement.

Johnny nodded his head in agreement.

“Okay, Johnny, please tell the agencies two things. First, that I’ll do what I can to get the kids to pull back. Second, that they’re fools if they try to take these kids down in their usual hyper-aggressive way. Look at what they did to Ross Ulbricht: They wanted his head on a pike, but all the exercise did was make the agencies look like maniacs, turn Ulbricht into a martyr, and spawn a dozen new dark markets.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Well, it’s true,” I went on. “These guys have no idea how barbaric they look to the kids on the darknet.”

“I believe you, Paul, but I don’t think I can say that to the agencies; they really believe that they’re working for God.”

I quickly realized that he was right.

“You’re right, John. Don’t tell them anything. Say something about me not realizing how extreme those kids were getting and leave it at that. They’re never going to see what they don’t want to see. Let ’em screw themselves again.”

John and I ordered more drinks and went back to talking about old friends. He pulled out his phone and turned in back on. I picked up the check, we hugged, I thanked him, and I headed back home.

At least we have a storm warning, I muttered to myself as I went.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

  • I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
  • Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
  • There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
  • Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

TheBreakingDawn

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com