SilkRoad domain Seized?

[wtfvanity]

I really dont buy the whole murder for hire plot. Why would he of all people not speak with an encrypted message about that matter? The whole thing is sketchy, but I don't know.

How do you openly discuss a murder for hire without PGP?

DPR: What will it take to get rid of him?
Red: 500k
DPR: Okay sent. Pics to confirm?
Red: Pics sent.
DPR: Ty!

Really?? #1 the whole transaction which is supposedly word for word is too bland for a half a million dollar deal. #2 how do they have a recording of these messages?


Also obviously no one was murdered on or around that date in BC.

Wouldn't a good murder be one where a death seemed natural?

[jubalix]

FBI agent
low orders on BTC
release news
picked them up cheap,
?
Profit

[Rampion]

This "ethics" discussion aside, is clear that DPR was just scammed as a dumbass, let's sum up:

a) A certain FriendlyChemist blackmails DPR. He justifies the blackmail by saying he needs money to pay his drug suppliers
b) DPR asks FriendlyChemist to be put in contact with the people FC owes money to
c) A certain "redandwhite" contacts DPR on behalf of FriendlyChemist, telling DPR he represent the people that has a credit with FC
d) DPR asks "redandwhite" to just execute FC, as he is a "liability"
e) "redanwhite" complies in less than 24 hours for +1,700BTC

a+b+c+d+e: DPR is DUMB AS FUCK and was clearly owned, I guess the prosecutors know it well as the chapter is labelled as "DPR's willingness to use violence", and they clearly state at the end that nobody seems to have been killed.

The story for those that cannot download the affidavit:

[TheButterZone]

Murder for hire, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag , that is a question.

[arabianights]

I had the same initial reaction as almost everyone else here to the hitman claims - and personally now I've thought about it, I would never get a hitman for reasons explained later.

But instead of just condemning him for it, you should at least try to see where he was coming from. If many thousands of silk road users were revealed, I guarantee there would have been at least a few deaths and many lives ruined.

For a start, any users in Singapore or Malaysia or many other East Asian countries could have been looking at the death penalty.

Then there are those with addictions to benzodiazapenes and barbituates, and possibly some other drugs, where sudden forced cold turkey will kill them. You will be reading about some of them shortly.

Then there are the many addicts to other substances who are going to accidentally OD in the near future. To be fair this is going to be less likely than normal simply because silk road (by and large) was just so damn good - more likely is the addicts will not get enough and be, er, warm turkey (is that right?)

Then of course the many many many more addicts who will just have to go cold turkey. If you were buying drugs to sustain an addiction from silk road you were almost certainly a functioning addict, something that the anti drug groups try to pretend doesn't exist. To be a functioning addict you need a reliable supply. Lose that and many of these addicts are going to lose jobs and family. There will be suicides, not to mention suicides from withdrawal, including PWS.

All those are predictable consequences of stopping major drug suppliers, and are one reason the war on drugs is simply evil. But releasing the names of users would be far far worse - especially in places like america where they drug test employees. Anyone on that list would get that at a very minimum. More likely, just fired. And that's ignoring the police investigations, where tbh at least in America they will pay lip service to respecting your rights. Albania, not so much.

Combine all that and unless you always believe killing is wrong, no matter what, there is a perfectly reasonable argument for cold blooded murder.

Even so, I wouldn't order a hitman myself and for three major reasons - the users brought this on themselves by taking the risk of signing up for silk road. This, I think, would severely shift the balance of responsiblity away from me such that I wasn't forced to make a deal with the devil. Secondly, I would have no idea where to hire a hitman and am skeptical "real" ones even exist. Thirdly, the above analysis assumes the two options are murder or nothing. In reality there were plenty of other options that could be taken and he should have tried one of them.

P.S. @ the person who thinks it's appalling to think murder is an acceptable form of justice. Of course it's appalling. But you know who's supposed to enforce justice? The government. Do you think that I can take some guy to small claims court if he sells me oregano for $200/oz? It is precisely this, being forced to take justice into your own hands, which causes the worst practical side effects of the war on drugs.

[Raoul Duke]

Is it possible to forge forum messages? What mechanism prevents an admin from doing so on this forum, or the silk road forum?

The forums software itself documents post edits, either by user or mod/admin.

You can see the post in question https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.0 is untouched, otherwise the date line would be underlined as in this post which i have edited after posting for demonstration of the function.

The only way to do an edit that is not noticed by the forum software would be by directly modifying the post on the database level.

EDIT: Ok, the function showing that a post was edited doesn't seem to be working as it should. You may now start going paranoid.

Edits are only registered if they are done a few minutes after the time of the post/reply. If SMF works like phpBB those "few minutes" are configured by the administrator.

[jeezy]

The question is, how Atlantis already knew it a couple of days ago... FBI honeypot theory confirmed?

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

The fact that some idiot thinks I'm "authoritarian" for merely being unsurprised at Ulbricht's true nature

That was not exactly what you said. Let's recapitulate it, shall we?

By the way - I'm amazed at how many people are surprised that a drug dealer with extreme anarcho-capitalist tendencies turned out to be not a swell guy! Imagine that!

You simply concluded that somebody with "extreme anarcho-capitalists tendencies" (what's "extreme ancap" by the way? You're either ancap or you're not, it's pretty binary, no "intensity levels" are possible) is automatically not a "swell guy"... in the particular case, a potential murderer.

Well, I am an anarcho-capistalist myself, as many people around here. You just compared us with a potential murderer. Calling you an "authoritarian asshole" was quite polite on my part, if you want to know.

[ronimacarroni]

I had the same initial reaction as almost everyone else here to the hitman claims - and personally now I've thought about it, I would never get a hitman for reasons explained later.

But instead of just condemning him for it, you should at least try to see where he was coming from. If many thousands of silk road users were revealed, I guarantee there would have been at least a few deaths and many lives ruined.

For a start, any users in Singapore or Malaysia or many other East Asian countries could have been looking at the death penalty.

Then there are those with addictions to benzodiazapenes and barbituates, and possibly some other drugs, where sudden forced cold turkey will kill them. You will be reading about some of them shortly.

Then there are the many addicts to other substances who are going to accidentally OD in the near future. To be fair this is going to be less likely than normal simply because silk road (by and large) was just so damn good - more likely is the addicts will not get enough and be, er, warm turkey (is that right?)

Then of course the many many many more addicts who will just have to go cold turkey. If you were buying drugs to sustain an addiction from silk road you were almost certainly a functioning addict, something that the anti drug groups try to pretend doesn't exist. To be a functioning addict you need a reliable supply. Lose that and many of these addicts are going to lose jobs and family. There will be suicides, not to mention suicides from withdrawal, including PWS.

All those are predictable consequences of stopping major drug suppliers, and are one reason the war on drugs is simply evil. But releasing the names of users would be far far worse - especially in places like america where they drug test employees. Anyone on that list would get that at a very minimum. More likely, just fired. And that's ignoring the police investigations, where tbh at least in America they will pay lip service to respecting your rights. Albania, not so much.

Combine all that and unless you always believe killing is wrong, no matter what, there is a perfectly reasonable argument for cold blooded murder.

Even so, I wouldn't order a hitman myself and for three major reasons - the users brought this on themselves by taking the risk of signing up for silk road. This, I think, would severely shift the balance of responsiblity away from me such that I wasn't forced to make a deal with the devil. Secondly, I would have no idea where to hire a hitman and am skeptical "real" ones even exist. Thirdly, the above analysis assumes the two options are murder or nothing. In reality there were plenty of other options that could be taken and he should have tried one of them.

P.S. @ the person who thinks it's appalling to think murder is an acceptable form of justice. Of course it's appalling. But you know who's supposed to enforce justice? The government. Do you think that I can take some guy to small claims court if he sells me oregano for $200/oz? It is precisely this, being forced to take justice into your own hands, which causes the worst practical side effects of the war on drugs.

Hey the use of drugs is debatable.
I mean people will always find a way to get them.
Might as well get them from a source that is not violent
Otherwise it defeats the purpose.
No murder is not justified.
It would have cost him cheaper in the end to make a deal with the guy and write it off as a cost.
Instead of murdering someone.  

[Rampion]

Murder for hire, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag , that is a question.

I don't know what they would need a false flag, to create this debate among the über-small BTCnerds community? 99% of the population thinks narcotics is a serious felony enough to rot in jail, so what's the point in making up the hitman story? Plus, in the affidavit its implied that the hit probably never happened, and you can see clearly how the probable thing is that DPR was scammed because he was dumb. What is the point in making that up, if they already have overwhelming proof to throw DPR in jail forever?

[malevolent]

I think it's too early to speculate but a lot more was at stake. If the blackmailer had released compromising information about SR users this could result in a lot more broken families.
It seems to me that as a libertarian, DPR was acting within the non-agression principle.

No way. Seriously, that should be a no brainer. Blackmailing isn't an aggression, so no use of force against a blackmailer is acceptable. Just study ethics before saying such things. Here, start with Walter Block: https://mises.org/daily/4576

If after the revelation of such secrets, bad things happen, that's not the direct action of the blackmailer, but of those who took the bad actions (the government, in this case). The blackmailer isn't violating anybody's rights. You have no "right to keep secrets". Having a "right to keep secrets" implies in having the "right to censor", by the way.

Thanks, you may have a point, I'll have a read of that link.

[tinus42]

The question is, how Atlantis already knew it a couple of days ago... FBI honeypot theory confirmed?

You can never know. The Feds always have the edge with espionage techniques.  

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

The fact that some idiot thinks I'm "authoritarian" for merely being unsurprised at Ulbricht's true nature just shows how deluded some people really were. You didn't have to be a genius to see that he might be dangerous.

You're an "authoritarian asshole" because you turned an unproven allegation into an indiscriminate political smear against an entire philosophical discipline, including some of the top thinkers in the world today and some of the highest profile and staunchest Bitcoin supporters.

You didn't condemn contracted murder, you used contracted murder as an excuse to condemned people who disagree with you politically.

You've manage to write it better than me what I wanted to say. Thanks.

[TheEmperor]

He should have just hired a hacker to destroy or retrieve the data back. Probably would have been cheaper than 150k too.

[Rampion]

I think it's too early to speculate but a lot more was at stake. If the blackmailer had released compromising information about SR users this could result in a lot more broken families.
It seems to me that as a libertarian, DPR was acting within the non-agression principle.

No way. Seriously, that should be a no brainer. Blackmailing isn't an aggression, so no use of force against a blackmailer is acceptable. Just study ethics before saying such things. Here, start with Walter Block: https://mises.org/daily/4576

If after the revelation of such secrets, bad things happen, that's not the direct action of the blackmailer, but of those who took the bad actions (the government, in this case). The blackmailer isn't violating anybody's rights. You have no "right to keep secrets". Having a "right to keep secrets" implies in having the "right to censor", by the way.

Thanks, you may have a point, I'll have a read of that link.

Oh, great. So if an article on mises.org says that blackmailing IS aggression because its against your property, then murdering is OK. If on the contrary it says that blackmailing is not an aggression by itself, then murdering is not OK.

Mind-blowing indeed. Some of you love a tad too much your books, there is people that adores their constitution (or their favorite Rothbard book) just like Muslims blindly adore their Coran or Christians their Bible.

[CoinHoarder]

The question is, how Atlantis already knew it a couple of days ago... FBI honeypot theory confirmed?

I'm guessing DPR tipped off Atlantis that he was being investigated and was about to go down. They then made an educated decision to not continue down the same path. Just a guess...

DPR got a knock and talk from HIS agents in June 2013 for the seized fake IDs he ordered. He must of known or had some idea that shit was about to hit the fan.

[Raoul Duke]

He should have just hired a hacker to destroy or retrieve the data back. Probably would have been cheaper than 150k too.

How do you make sure "the hacker" destroyed/retrieved all copies?
How do you make sure "the hacker", later, will not blackmail you with the same data you paid him to destroy/retrieve?

[VolanicEruptor]

How did they have such quick access to his BTC wallet?  You would think it would be password encrypted, or something..

[arabianights]

FBI agent
low orders on BTC
release news
picked them up cheap,
?
Profit

I'm looking forward to the dump of 600 000 BTC at market.

[greyhawk]

Edits are only registered if they are done a few minutes after the time of the post/reply. If SMF works like phpBB those "few minutes" are configured by the administrator.

Thanks. You're right, it works now. I've updated the post accordingly.