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Comment by jdmitch | Hacker News Reader

This seemed a bit worrying:

Federal agents say the use of Tor and Bitcoin were major obstacles for them and that investigating the site was “uncharted territory” that involved a reversal of their usual investigative methods. Instead of starting with probable cause against a specific suspect who is already identified and then obtaining a search warrant to collect more evidence, the investigation of Silk Road involved collecting evidence from the site first and then trying to identify individuals.

Sure it is "uncharted territory" in terms of the technology for maintaining anonymous identities, but shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? Maybe I am naive, but sounds like dodgy criminal investigation methodology to me...

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The real concern would be if they used parallel construction and actually used the NSA's warrantless surveillance. The core of parallel construction is to use fruit of the poisonous tree to identify the dots you need to connect, then do your sleuthing purely to figure out how to connect those dots.

However, given the story told so far, it's actually pretty straightforward to identify the founder of the Silk Road based on a few of his missteps.

This cannot be stated enough.

> shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime?

This might surprise you, but there are very often situations where the police and the public are remarkably aware of the facts of the crimes being committed, but unable to do anything about it. Drugs fall into this category. Everyone knows that "that's where the deals go down" and "that's where they count the money", but that's only because we're not completely stupid. Proving direct culpability, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, as is proving the culpability of people who matter. (Street level dealers, for instance, are pretty interchangeable: one gets shot, you get someone else to do his job. Ain't no thing.)

If you find a druggie on a corner, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to recognize he's probably guilty of possession. It's also sort of pointless to prosecute him, since the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation. You want evidence of that crime? That's also the druggie on the corner. Half of whom can tell you exactly who it is who manages the city-wide operation. None of which are willing to take the witness stand to accuse him in a court of law. Because he knows that he goes right back to that corner the next day and not only does he no longer have someone bringing him drugs, but he's also get a bullet in his head for the trouble.

If you want a visceral primer, watch The Wire.

the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation

That is a complete non sequitur.

Actually, if you really want people to stop using drugs, arresting and imprisoning users is the single most effective technique yet known. It's especially effective against the middle class white population that consumes most drugs in the USA, but it works against poor minorities and addicts, also.

And if you want to stop dealers, arresting and imprisoning retail dealers is the most effective technique. It clears the ones that work in public or sell to strangers out quite quickly.

Arresting the kingpins or traffickers is totally ineffective at reducing drug use or reducing drug availability. If reducing public harm were a priority, the kingpins and traffickers could be ignored. Once the users and retailers are imprisoned, the bosses are out of business, anyway.

And if you do catch the kingpins and traffickers, your efforts are completely ineffectual. There are always more kingpins in line to get rich quickly and easily. Decades of police targeting kingpins has only seen increases in drug availability. In fact, the faster you turn them over, the more violent the whole business becomes.

The reason police agencies target kingpins and traffickers is because the purpose of the war on drugs, from the point of view of police administration, is to seize cash to fund police operations. There is no law enforcement justification for such a policy, merely an agency budgeting justification.

> That is a complete non sequitur.

Agreed. I'm not remotely a fan of the war on drugs or its consequences for the prison-industrial complex or the militarization of the police.

The real root is really shitty legislation based on shitty moralizations based on shitty philosophical grounds, the absurd nature of how the police are funded, and the ridiculous political reality of law enforcement offices. It's such a multifaceted problem that I'm unwilling to try to tackle it myself.

But all of this was just a handy example for why wishing for an "empirical investigation" is not necessarily the right way to go about things.

Yup. There's a certain absurdity to it. The names of the current mafia bosses in the New York area are listed on Wikipedia (Five Families).

It's not so strange. Conspiracy to ____ is often shown before the individuals participating in the conspiracy. In this case there was evidence galore of illegal drug trade, so it became a matter of finding the individuals responsible.

You are ignoring the 'already identified' in the text you quote.

I'm sure there is occasional abuse, but I'm also sure that most investigations start with an examination of the available evidence to look for leads about who committed the crime.

This is how the government found MrSlippery in the opening pages of Vernor Vinge's True Names, that is they went through a list of likely suspects until they hit paydirt.

Amazingly prescient for something written in 1979.

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