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Comment by pallandt | Hacker News Reader

I've deleted my original comment because I noticed a FAQ on the site with more info, apparently the owner of the site is not anonymous as I originally thought, so I didn't want to risk confusing other post readers.

However, have you actually read the official criminal complaint and accompanying docs?

There were transcripts of this guy's conversations where he literally was ordering a hit and mentioning he had ordered another one in the past.

Start reading with page 21 if you haven't: http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalCompl...

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I've read every word of every legal document I've found and had pointed out to me, and am probably closing in on having done so twice.

I am not convinced that the Dread Pirate Roberts cited ordering killings is the same Dread Pirate Roberts of the libertarian vision and expansive writings to that end. Reading an essay on Ross's Facebook account, I'm convinced that if he was Dread Pirate Roberts, he wasn't the only person using that moniker.

Part of the purpose of this documentation archive is to facilitate comparative linguistic analysis (stylometry) to demonstrate the Multiple Dread Pirates Roberts Theory (https://www.rossulbricht.org/multiple-dread-pirates-roberts-...)

“[The Dread Pirate] Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. ‘I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts’ he said. ‘My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia. Then he explained the name was the important thing, for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley.”

  – Dread Pirate Roberts IV, The Princess Bride

Further, I seem to recall him saying explicitely that he was not the first user of the moniker and that he inherited the site... however - that is either untrue, or a false memory on my part.

I believe this was from his reddit AMA?

I think it was never clear whether he was making a princess bride joke when he claimed there were multiple dprs.

I have no opinion on how realistic all the talk about ordering "hits" is or if that was all a farce, but it seems likely to me if Ross Ulbricht wasn't the "real" DPR or if there were multiple active official DPRs, the "real" DPR or one of the other active ones would have posted an online message using DPR's known PGP signature by now, either to cast doubt on the arrest, or just to thumb their nose at the government.

What makes you think they would want to cast doubt on his arrest? Let's put it this way: if there were two DPRs and one was arrested, and the arrested involved shutting down a Tor hidden service (i.e. the feds found the hidden service), would you really go around announcing that you were still walking free? Assuming that there is another DPR / SR admin / whatever out there, he or she is probably at a rifle range shooting every storage device with any SR material on it.

If I were the real DPR, my priorities at this point would be securing the commissions if at all possible, and hiding: taunting the feds with a signed message does not prove anything other than someone else had access to the key (Ross could still be the 'real' DPR), and it immediately tells the feds they left a loose end hanging. A hypothetical real DPR could have no way of knowing what incriminating evidence has been left on the server, be known by Ross (who might want to strike a bargain and maybe reduce his sentence by 1%), or available in Ross's belongings.

I'm not sure the timelines, but is the implication that Mr. Ulbricht is the original DPR (i.e. the libertarian evangelist) and not the one paying for assassinations? If so, then he can probably assist the FBI in finding the "thug" DPR, because he presumably handed control to that person, and may have some amount of corroborating evidence. That would remove the worst charges, and may mitigate sentencing for the other charges. However if Mr. Ulbricht is the one who ordered the assassinations, that is about as far from libertarian as you can get.

The prosecution is trying their hardest to make the case fit uniformly on Ulbrecht. One often omits facts and information that does not support a claim in court when making a criminal complaint. If we ruled only on the information provided by the prosecution, we would be a fascist society, guilty until proven innocent. Seeing as we are all presumed innocent until proven guilty, Perhaps you should not form your opinion based on the documents from only one side of the debate.

Indeed. And particularly so when the agency making the allegations has an established track record of lying in order to secure convictions. Witness:

> The history of the FBI Lab hasn't been without controversy. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. In a subsequent investigation, it was found that evidence had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had testified falsely, in as many as 10,000 cases, resulting in many false convictions. More than a decade later, cases were still being overturned because of this massive fraud.

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

what makes you think he is telling the truth? The basic virtue of his character?

So by that logic he's somewhat less (potentially) guilty because there's only one (potentially real) transcript of him ordering a hit? Perhaps I'm just not understanding what you're attempting to say.

Agreed. I dont think you do.

I don't want to offend you, so I'll assume you haven't spent a couple of hours attentively reading the court docs.

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