Everything we know about Ross Ulbricht, outdoorsy libertarian behind Silk Road | Hacker News Reader

Everything we know about Ross Ulbricht, outdoorsy libertarian behind Silk Road

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29 pointsRougeFemme63 comments

Let the character assassination of libertarians begin. To me, that's the most discouraging thing I'm seeing coming from media coverage of Ulbricht's arrest. Yes, the site was facilitating illegal commerce; but was it immoral? Evil? These are far more difficult questions to answer specifically because people will have their own opinions.

Unfortunately, this feels like the whole situation being reduced to, "those damn libertarians and their evil drugs!"

if it's any consolation i'm a pure bleeding heart liberal, but when i read that article and it went from "they said he couldn't be the killer" to "but little did they know, he was a libertarian" i did a double take in disbelief. that's terrible journalism.

It's the ultimate example of the two-party system's incredible stranglehold on the mainstream media. Anything outside of those two parties is treated with such derision as to suggest that they are inherently bad / wrong / evil.

it's the washington post, what do you expect? It is a platform for influence and a method to suck up to those in power.

This is just my humble opinion, but actual libertarianism is a self-assassinating concept as it's normally described and practiced.

It's possible to think that the state has grown too powerful without subscribing to libertarian ideals, but it's pretty hard to introduce libertarian absolutes into the grainy gray of the real world without bending the principles... at which point it has stopped being libertarian.

E.g., consider http://www.demos.org/blog/8/21/13/fun-times-libertarianism

...actual libertarianism is a self-assassinating concept as it's normally described and practiced.

No political philosophy is defensible when caricatured to its most extreme positions.

The reason I'm anarchist is not that I've enjoyed my time in Somalia and I'd like the USA to become that, only more temperate. The reason is that the only changes we can make to our polity that could conceivably be good for the people are in an anarchist direction. If the nation commits to anarchism and starts the slow process of making its laws and practices more just and humanist, less total and oppressive, in twenty years I'll probably find that I've become more moderate and open to other directions for societal change. But we're in a hole here. When people advocate that we stop digging and start climbing, it is nonresponsive to point out that the air at 50,000 feet is too thin to breathe.

> No political philosophy is defensible when caricatured to its most extreme positions.

Well, political philosophies that deliberately avoid making everything bright-line ideological concerns are usually pretty flexible (and accordingly easier to defend).

Instead of living life according to a rigid bible, why don't we simply Do The Right Thing™ and then adjust what ends up being broken?

Even if you do find a set of guidelines that seem appropriate now, they may not be appropriate in the future. Even the Revolutionary Commune in Paris wasn't above simply executing the enemies of the revolution, after all.

> "Instead of living life according to a rigid bible, why don't we simply Do The Right Thing™ and then adjust what ends up being broken?"

The point of political philosophies is to make and support assertions as to what the Right Thing is, within a given social context. Because different political philosophies exist, different sets of Right Things are proposed by the adherents of each. As you mentioned, less "moderate" political philosophies usually trade ideological malleability for ideological clarity in an attempt to provide a stronger and more consistent argument for its own set of Right Things at the expense of less philosophically inclined voters.

If everyone could agree on what The Right Thing is, we wouldn't have rigid political philosophies because they would serve no purpose. If the human brain was capable of determining an ethical and optimal solution for any given problem, people wouldn't create political philosophies as simplifying heuristics.

> If the human brain was capable of determining an ethical and optimal solution for any given problem, people wouldn't create political philosophies as simplifying heuristics.

Well that's the thing. Anyone with experience with programming can see that it's quite clear that even a system with incredibly rigid guidelines can, when formed into complex interconnections, take a form that is both unpredictable and does things that are wrong.

So the answer cannot be more rigidity. Instead, we need risk management, and the willingness to forgo rigid determinants in the quest for optimal solutions, since they won't always produce optimal solutions anyways.

Yes, our non-rigid heuristics will likely themselves produce non-optimal solutions, but that's OK too since it's easier to adjust and adapt. Not every startup turns a profit for a VC either, but that doesn't invalidate entrepreneurial risk-taking.

Instead of living life according to a rigid bible...

Certainly not. The metaphor I invoked was "let's stop digging". If that's too rigid for you, you must just really like digging.

...why don't we simply Do The Right Thing™...

If you think locking up people who like 'shrooms is "The Right Thing™", then we have a disagreement.

Even if you do find a set of guidelines that seem appropriate now, they may not be appropriate in the future.

I certainly hope so! It would be sad to live an entire life and never change one's mind. I don't think that's a reason not to have opinions in the first place though! Also I specifically raised the possibility of changing my position in response to improving conditions.

Even the Revolutionary Commune in Paris wasn't above simply executing the enemies of the revolution, after all.

Fuck those guys. Over here in USA we honor a Revolution worthy of the name. Our founding fathers didn't pull that shit.

> If you think locking up people who like 'shrooms is "The Right Thing", then we have a disagreement.

Just shrooms? Probably not, as long as they don't hurt anyone else.

> Over here in USA we honor a Revolution worthy of the name. Our founding fathers didn't pull that shit.

They also didn't install anarchy, either before, during, or the 2 times they tried after the American Revolution.

I'm not saying that "The State" is always the answer to an issue either. Certainly there are issues which can and should be properly resolved at the lowest possible level (believe me, I'm familiar with those too as a former Navy division officer... a lot of what I did was have to make decisions to avoid getting involved in minor spats between sailors that they should figure out themselves).

But when directed action on the part of the people is necessary, either to protect the public welfare, avoid being abused by Big Business, etc., there is no substitute for the state, and it must be empowered accordingly.

Witness the collective societies that succeed in nature. They don't succeed based on "what's best for the individual", they succeed based on "what's best for the colony". E.g. the example of Japanese honey bees vs. giant hornets. And don't mistake the apparent lack of overseers as each one working for itself and just happening to develop the needed emergent action. They're working by the rules alright... it's just that their rules are 'baked in'.

I'm just not very good at this communication thing, because you seem to be arguing against a position that is totally unrelated to mine. I'm anarchist because that's the direction this nation needs to move right now. The entire point of this thread is that we should consider currently feasible options and ignore the extremes of what doing the right thing now could conceivably be extrapolated to decades hence. I would love it if we stopped all the wars and 3F/D bullshit and bailouts and corporatism etc., to such an extent that 15 years from now a reasonable person could take a look around and say, "holy shit this place is bonkers we gotta regulate!"

The "natural" metaphor doesn't actually make the point you think it's making. Humans are animals, too, but we're not Hymenoptera.

How much stock can I really put into an article that begins by stating that libertarianism exists to benefit affluent, white men? Moreover, presenting a single reductio ad absurdum argument does not identify the concept as "self-assassinating."

Libertarianism does disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Being white only matters when you happen to live in a country where wealthy people are disproportionately white, which as it turns out is exactly the situation we have in America. It really is not that much of a stretch.

The article didn't begin by saying that libertarianism was created or allowed to exist to benefit rich white men. It does imply that libertarianism benefits rich white men (which is why rich white men would predominantly support it...), but the article doesn't make the claim that libertarianism was created for that purpose.

Perhaps you should try a critical analysis of what the article actually says instead of a cursory skimming of what you assume the article says, before you decide how much stock you can place in it?

I empathize on libertarians on this one, but at the same time as a statist I'm gleeful that it took no time at all for this "free" system to devolve into an amateur crime lord calling out hits on people.

DPR isn't just a libertarian. He's bad in the ways that highlight the shortcomings of anarcho libertarianism. People aren't good and presented with opportunity, they act quickly to aggrandize themselves using whatever means are necessary.

> "People aren't good and presented with opportunity, they act quickly to aggrandize themselves using whatever means are necessary."

I largely agree with your statement [1], but I do wish to point out that the usual libertarian response to this is that it applies equally to state institutions, and that Kafkaesque state systems can often veil this behavior from the public better than an individual can veil his own misbehavior from others.

[1] My only nitpick is that focusing only on the opportunity side of aggrandization ignores any potential risks, so inferring inevitable aggrandization from bad people + opportunity isn't the complete picture.

People aren't good and presented with opportunity, they act quickly to aggrandize themselves using whatever means are necessary.

Fascinating. I agree completely with that statement, indeed it is the foundation of my ethical and political philosophy, and yet it is the first of yours I've seen with which I have agreed in the least.

EDIT: Now I also see the "no cognitive dissonance" statement you made below. Hmmm.

Alledgedly calling out hits on people. Let's try and maintain at least the pretense of the principle of presumption of innocence, eh?

People are presumed innocent in the criminal justice system. It's also important that the press be cautious about drawing conclusions. But individuals uninvolved in the case are not required to genuflect to a presumption of innocence.

You're free to do as you please, but I for one believe the presumption of innocence to be a useful stance both in the courtroom as well as beyond it; particularly so when the accuser is a party known to have previously routinely lied in order to secure false convictions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy

Sure, that'll be the reaction in some quarters, and in breezy superficial mainstream reports. But that's always the reaction in those places: no change here.

But there will also be curiosity that leads people to other more sophisticated takes on Silk Road and DPR's philosophy. Here's an interesting one:

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/10/silk...

Silk Road was safer and cheaper than the very-violent legacy prohibited-drugs businesses. (Other smuggling cartels with $1.2B in sales likely have a lot more blood on their hands than two fake assassinations.) So here's another potential takeaway worthy of discussion:

• maybe psychoactive drugs ought to be a mail-order business, as a harm-reduction policy. USPS/Fedex/UPS can check proof-of-age on delivery, and people in addiction-recovery could be put (by election or court-order) on no-delivery lists

• if an online drug vendor is being blackmailed by a hacker/disgruntled-employee threatening the release of customer information, that vendor should be able to go to the cops and have the blackmailer arrested under the CFAA. Same for an embezzling employee. No extralegal "street justice" required.

• the taxes on such commerce could be spent to help addicts far more than today, and have some left over for spending on other social benefits

What if the more easily procured drugs create more addicts, reducing tax revenue so that the net tax benefit is negative? Then you've got less money to help more addicts.

Could happen, but it is not just the tax revenue. You also greatly reduce the tax burden of keeping so many people in prison, both for drug possession or selling and for related problems like the crimes surrounding the drug trade. You greatly reduce the money spent arresting those people. You have a businesses that benefit from a legal drug market, strengthening the larger economy.

https://www.csub.edu/kej/documents/economic_rsch/2012-03-26....

You could make the same point about murderers, though. If we ignore them we save tax money spent today on investigations, trials, and imprisonment.

The solution should do more good than harm. In the case of victimless crimes like for most marijuana usage the solution is clear. But highly addictive drugs lead to victims other than the user, including the general taxpayers who helped fund their upbringing.

Possible, the only way to find out is to tinker. Other experiments in decriminalization-plus-harm-reduction have usually shown net benefits. See for example Portugal:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...

Usage goes up a bit, but more addicts enter treatment, drug-related disease and crime drops, and most people, even most drug users, know to avoid the nastiest addictions.

We need to highlight the whole fringe part. Fringe libertarians are no more dangerous than fringe conservatives or fringe liberals.

What baffles me is the cognitive dissonance from some of these critics - that the libertarian stance on drugs is wrong, but also the drug war is wrong.

I guess it depends on what you mean by the libertarian stance on drugs. If you mean that we should establish an unregulated market for recreational drugs, then yes, it is reasonable to be opposed, just like it is reasonable to be opposed to the idea of an unregulated market on meat, automobiles, or anything else that might affect public safety.

On the other hand, if you mean that people should not be imprisoned for possessing, selling, or producing drugs, then you are not talking about an idea that libertarians have a monopoly on. I am opposed to the drug war, but I think that recreational drugs should be taxed and that their production and sale should be regulated. That is not cognitive dissonance, that is just a different idea about how to approach and implement drug legalization.

> If you mean that we should established an unregulated market for recreational drugs, then yes, it is reasonable to be opposed, just like it is reasonable to be opposed to the idea of an unregulated market on meat, automobiles, or anything else that might affect public safety.

I don't think either opposition is reasonable.

Ah, but in the case of drugs, we can compare regulated and unregulated markets, both historically and present-day. At one time the market for drugs was unregulated, and the result was a hazard to the public: drugs of unknown strength and purity, false advertising, etc. Today we have points of comparison: black market methamphetamine is produced in an unregulated fashion and tends to make people sick (or at least look very sick), while pharmaceutical methamphetamine comes in regulated dosages and with assurances of its purity; similarly, black market opiates versus prescription opiates.

Even with cars, we can observe the positive effect of safety regulations. The market did not put seat belts and crumple zones into our cars; laws did, and as a result of those laws many peoples lives have been saved.

So if you truly believe in the power of unregulated markets, you need to answer the question of how to deal with people who buy needlessly unsafe drugs. Likewise, what is society supposed to do about needlessly unsafe cars?

> At one time the market for drugs was unregulated, and the result was a hazard to the public: drugs of unknown strength and purity, false advertising, etc.

Is it clear that the negative affects of drug abuse have been lessened by regulations and the drug war? It's not clear to me, and it's especially not clear when you consider the cost of the drug war.

> similarly, black market opiates versus prescription opiates.

That's because these opiates are illegal, so there's very little market pressure (from competition) and also very little recourse against abuses (you can't take your drug dealer/manufacturer to court or call the police, which is also why there's lots of violence associated with illegal drugs).

In these comparisons, you also have to try to consider the cost of drug regulators like the FDA. Surely lives have directly been lost due to drugs not being approved.

> In these comparisons, you also have to try to consider the cost of drug regulators like the FDA. Surely lives have directly been lost due to drugs not being approved.

Such as lives saved by thalidomide, perhaps?

'Black market' is not the same as 'unregulated market': a black market is specifically something that has to operate in the shadows, under constant threat, maintaining their organizations by extra-legal means. So of course its products are sketchy.

Liability for defective products and false advertising is all the 'regulation' most markets need, especially now with the explosion of network- and software-aided consumer choice. Such liability, not specific to product type, is what most advocates of deregulation want. Not 'black' markets, just free and open markets – where competition, sticky reputations, and normal legal remedies against dishonesty can work as usual.

How is that a cognitive dissonance? People often reason similar conclusions through different logical reasoning. In fact one of my jobs as an instructor at a military training command was to identify students who had achieved an "answer by accident" to ensure that they went and studied the actual principles behind the problem they had mistakenly hit on the right answer for.

There is no cognitive dissonance in believing the state has the right to prohibit harmful things while also believing that most drugs aren't that harmful and the drug war is overly broad and poorly executed.

So, DPR was identified because Ross made really amateur level mistakes for a man in his position:

1. Was using the same pseudonym in several places.

2. Was advertising the Silk Road. He asked people what do they think about it: "Let me know what you guys think." [1, page 25] - this just suggests that he is connected with it.

3. Used his name (then changed to the same pseudonym he was using in other places) to ask a question about how to connect to Tor using Curl in PHP. He just could ask how to connect to a SOCKS5 server using Curl in PHP whatsoever avoiding mentioning the Tor.

4. Was not using Tor in public WiFi network at cafe.

5. Was giving interviews, long interviews. FBI could correlate his style of writing with what he writes under his own identity.

6. The most grave mistake: he posted his personal Gmail account using his pseudonym (which he was using to advertise the Silk Road) in the Forum asking for a "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" [1, page 26].

[1] - http://cryptome.org/2013/10/fbi-silk-road.pdf

Number 3 was huge because the stackoverflow answer was used on the site nearly as-is:

Based on forensic analysis of the Silk Road Web Server, I know that the computer code ... includes a customized PHP strip based on 'curl' that is functionally very similar to the computer code described in Ulbricht's posting on Stack Overflow, and includes several lines of code that are identical to lines of code quoted in the posting.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road...

That code-identicality alone doesn't necessarily mean much: lots of people come later and will use the public question/answer code in their own work. (Only together with the other pseudonym correlations, it means more.)

Right, it wasn't just the fact that the code was the same; it was that he initially posted those questions under his real name.

Absolutely none of this is evidence of his guilt, it's all just very loose circumstantial suggestion. If this is all it takes to convince people of someone's guilt in a huge criminal case, we're all doomed.

"Probable cause" is all you need for a warrant. With the warrant you secure the "beyond any reasonable doubt" evidence.

No, the financial transactions will prove his guilt. This is for finding him in the first place and getting the necessary warrants. Also, note that this evidence is for the indictment, which is what it takes to bring the charge, not a full statement of the case at trial.

Circumstantial evidence has sometimes been enough for "beyond a reasonable doubt" in many cases over the past hundred years. I guess we were doomed since before then?

He certainly did make mistakes. I wonder if the next Silk Road will be open sourced? If it is, and its author becomes hors de combat, the one after him will have an easier base from which to start.

The actual site and system seems rather simple. The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR. The real issue is trust (both in the site and vendors), and open source won't help there.

> The actual site and system seems rather simple

I daresay it is. But even a simple web site hakes time and effort to build. And getting security right is always non-trivial.

> The other Tor merchant sites I've seen look much better than SR

You may well be right; I've never used any of them.

> open source won't help there.

If building a new darknet ecommerce site was a simple as:

    sudo apt-get install silk-road

don't you think there'd be more of them? The lower the barriers to entry, the sooner someone will build something the authorities can't shut down.

I am going to be naive here but could someone explain to me how it is possible to legally dox a person this way when there still isn't a court sentence that demonstrate that this guy is indeed DPR?

"the man federal prosecutors say is behind the infamous contraband market Silk Road" - note how they never claim he actually is DPR. They merely "report" that federal prosecutors say that.

except in the title, where they explicitly claim he was behind Silk Road.

Good point. If he's acquitted he'll have a good case of slander.

And not a single banker is in jail.

He wrote an interesting manifesto on freedom, https://www.facebook.com/notes/ross-ulbricht/thoughts-on-fre... unfortunately soon he will find himself locked in a cage.

How does his "interesting manifesto" contrast with the freedom of persons not to be murdered because they are inconvenient to his business?

I don't think it's unfortunate at all that he'll be locked up. He's a murdering thug, at least twice over by his own admission.

Wasn't the data the guy was blackmailing him with the information on sellers on the site? Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian.

> Between 100+ people getting 5+ year jail sentences (arbitrary numbers here) and two people dying, the later might seem more acceptable to a strong libertarian.

Perhaps. That's even more an indictment on libertarianism if true, but I'll let the more educated libertarians decide whether that's true or whether DPR is not a True Scotsman.

Absent hard evidence there's no significant difference between Ulbricht and a murder mystery author, in that regard. We'd at least have to know that the people he discussed with and about were real. It's just words in a database at this point.

> It's just words in a database at this point.

We're all just bits in a universe of information, really. I'm not inclined to take DPR's words at other than face value just because he wasn't able to actually kill anyone.

For instance, the first hit that he claimed to have achieved for $80k was with an undercover cop, so there is hard evidence on that one.

If the target of a murder plot or confession is fictional, I think there's no crime, whether or not told to a cop; it's protected under free speech. Let's see if the investigators can find real people to link to his words.

He could have been framed. Even if he is its all true that doesn't mean he doesn't have something interesting to say about freedom.

How do you know he's a murderer already? He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet.

> He's not found guilty of placing a murder yet.

Guilt is for the legal system to decide, and I'll let it take it's course.

But that doesn't require me to act as if I'm blind or can't understand evidence and reason.

I have to think "Ben Tepfer", "KZ Inoue", "Ann Gokieli", and the rest of the people on the sidebar in the LinkedIn screenshot would have appreciated a more judicious crop. That's pretty unprofessional, even for the Post.

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