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Comment by delegate | Hacker News Reader

> Some 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers were passed on to Europol.

That's really bad, because not all countries are Holland, which is famous for its 'relaxed' attitude towards drugs in general, so some users might have their lives turned around by this - followed, arrested, jailed, extorted, etc.

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It would be interesting to compare damages caused by the release of this information versus damages caused by the production, sale, and usage of the drugs themselves.

How would you measure either?

I think they were saying it more as a thought experiment.

You could measure in deaths, lost productivity, or effect on tax revenue, any sort of typical economic measure really.

Well, the cartels have already caused their part and would have done it regardless, now normal people will get in trouble, possibly lose their jobs and get their lives ruined for basically no reason.

There's still no proof of payment. How could you win the case? I could easily order drugs to someone I don't like.

Blockchain analysis can tie transactions with KYC'd identities.

http://www.sandia.gov/news/publications/labnews/articles/201...

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xz35e/us-law-enf...

http://www.coindesk.com/elliptic-partners-with-risk-controls...

If your BTC is KYC'd then you're doing something very wrong...

To be fair... If you commit a crime, you have to expect there's a risk of being caught and punished. So how is this "really bad", except from the POV of the users who may face repercussions?

Everybody has the right to expect a fair and reasonable treatment and punishment. If that can't be guaranteed it might be imperative to not share the identity, because sharing it would imply another injustice without righting any other.

I mean... if they released the addresses publicly, sure. But they just passed them along to Interpol...

And interpol would do what with them? Probably pass them along to the police-services of the respective countries that these people live in.

Some countries execute people for drug possession alone.

Well at no point does that chain of events trigger a public witch hunt.

Interpol now faces an ethical / moral / legal dilemma of how to proceed, but passing the addresses _up_ to Interpol was not a mistake.

Now, if Interpol was to share the addresses with a country which they knew had cruel and unusual punishments for the alleged crimes then _that_ would be a mistake.

That would be a great reason not to order drugs online from these countries then.

Whether or not you approve of the law, you have to realise that you are putting yourself at risk if you are breaking the law.

I'm specifically mentioning it from the interpol-level. They would at that point be essentially handing-down a death-sentence for a crime that they don't view as being that serious.

When laws are bad, its bad when people face the repercussions of those laws.

Yeah but debating whether the law itself is bad is a separate discussion. Until the laws change people can't be outraged or surprised when they got caught up in them...

Besides, it's possible that many of the users live in countries where _buying_ drugs isn't a crime, or where circumstantial evidence like this isn't enough to warrant opening an investigation. So it's possible that most of these users won't even face those repercussions.

>Until the laws change people can't be outraged or surprised when they got caught up

Bad laws are usually changed because of public outrage and surprise so.......

Surprised, yes, but why can't people be outraged at people suffering from bad laws? That makes no sense.

Not outraged at the laws, outraged at being persecuted.

If you know something is illegal, and it carries a fine of $1,000 and you do it, you get caught, and they fine you $1,000 you can't be like "What?! How DARE you catch me and fine me like the law says?! ARRRGH!"

Why not? If the law is unjust, it's perfectly reasonable to be outraged at being punished when you're caught even if you knew exactly what would happen beforehand.

Since drugs have such a stigma in the countries HNers are likely to be from, imagine if we were talking about laws against, say, women driving cars, or criticizing the president.

Then you'd be using your arrest / punishment as a form of martyrdom to draw attention to the issue. Kind of like civil disobedience... but criminal.

You'd get arrested (as expected), fined or imprisoned (as expected), then be outraged that the law exists. But you wouldn't be outraged that you _were_ arrested... you must have expected that.

I'm confused by this concept of "Kind of like civil disobedience... but criminal." Isn't it exactly like civil disobedience, which is criminal?

I still don't get why we can't be outraged just because we expected it. If the law says I have to sit at the back of the bus, and I get arrested for sitting at the front of the bus, I can't be outraged at being arrested?

> I'm confused by this concept of "Kind of like civil disobedience... but criminal." Isn't it exactly like civil disobedience, which is criminal?

“Can be” rather than “is”. Civil disobedience can apply to laws with civil or criminal penalties (the “civil” in “civil disobedience” does not refer to the civil/criminal distinction.)

You can both expect something and be outraged by it.

Your post seems to assume the reason for the outrage is that the arrest goes against an expectation.

Part of the issue with this line of reasoning is selective enforcement. If the law is unjust and commonly broken, it is fair to be outraged if they choose to target you for punishment. Drug laws are broken every day, and in some cities LEOs are even working with the dealers. Unjust laws allow them to pick on people they don't like and people that threaten their business. Given these circumstances, I think it's still fair to be outraged at the enforcement of unjust laws.

Fair point. Sometimes I think the police state that America has become was in large part facilitated by this kind of thing. Almost everyone is in violation of something these days. If the police or the state don't like you then surprise surprise... you're getting arrested for that thing you've been doing for the past decade that half your neighbours do too...

That's exactly the definition of police state. I remember it being used to describe China, can't quite the source though. Sorry

Yea and attacking peoples fine as long as you threaten them first.

The problem with this example is that if I knew your address I could order drugs to you.

That's why it's circumstantial. It like trying to tie an IP address to an individual. It's, at best, a proxy measurement of "who".

For example, maybe people ordered drugs to their neighbour's address then waited for the delivery guy and intercepted the package.

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