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Comment by GrinningFool | Hacker News Reader

I noticed that in the weeks and months before Silk Road went down, we had some interesting things happen:

    1. several articles like this one 
    2. statements from the FBI that it was untraceable 
    3. the implication in tech media that it was 'safe' to use, with usual caveat emptor verbiage.

I know we have a sample size of one here, and there's no guarantee that steps 2 and 3 above will follow - but to me, it seems that mainstream coverage of anything like this is a sure signal to bail out.

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If this is a US operation, don't the US law prohibits entrapment? Also, doesn't it seem more likely a surge in public interest is what originated the operation, instead of the other way around?

That's not entrapment.

An undercover cop can ask you to commit a crime without entrapping you. It's only entrapment if the police induce you to commit a crime that you wouldn't commit otherwise. Hence, them offering you the opportunity to commit a crime is permitted by law.

See this illustrated guide to understand better:

http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-wa...

What I learned from that: the easiest way to detect undercover cops is to ask them to--or really, entrap them into--committing an unrelated crime, e.g. hurting someone.

Imagine "rewarding" the new member of your drug ring by giving them a hired escort who has been paid to resist all acts upon them, and then locking the new member and the escort in a room together with some extremely brutal S&M "toys." You'll get lots of false positives--people who don't actually get their jollies from harming others--but it's the false negatives that are important here, so maybe populating your organization with sociopaths is a low price to pay.

On the other hand: is the boss committing a crime just by setting up this "reward?" They wouldn't mention anything about having to harm the escort, it'd just be implicit in the setup that if you're that type of person, the situation is easy to take advantage of.

No escort is stupid enough to participate in that. Only men would do that.

Probably not uncommon for initiation / testing purposes to ask members of evil organization to break the law in some way. Such that they become black-mailable easily.

A large organization would presumably benefit from having hidden away proof of each of its members breaking the law, such that if time comes and that member gets out of line, that can be used against them.

So perhaps an undercover cop would be asked to assassinate someone, or take use illegal drugs and get recorded in the process.

Prosecutors usually break this blackmail ring by offering immunity to one person if they present evidence against others.

That's wishful thinking. Undercover cops must commit minor crimes all day every day to be truly undercover in a drug ring. If the cop had to stop and say, "Sorry, I can't drive over the speed limit", they wouldn't be effective or ever used.

No, this is effectively a drug sting.

There's no entrapment going on here.

http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-wa...

The entrapment defense is pretty much non-existent. The thing is that it's perfectly fine to entrap someone who is willing to commit the crime anyway. A government agent can give you everything you need to commit a crime, beg and plead and nag you to commit the crime, and still prosecute you for doing it -- because it's your job not to commit crimes even when you have means and motive to do so.

What's against the rules is to make someone commit a crime who is unwilling. But you, the defendant, pretty much have to admit you decided to commit the crime in order to convincingly offer an entrapment defense in the first place. ("I wasn't going to do it, but then the government did A, B, and C ...") So how do you also convince the jury that you did it unwillingly? Basically, A, B, and C have to be so compelling that the jury is convinced they themselves would have done the same thing in those circumstances. Short of "the undercover cop pointed a gun at me and ordered me to do it," it's a tough sell.

The bar is not quite that high. I recall hearing about a case where the cops suspected someone so they sent a fair amount of advertisements for an illegal product to their house. The defense basically said, they did not bite the first time or the second, but after a while curiosity got the best of them. The important thing to note is they passed up several opportunity's before trying to commit the crime.

In this case, as long as the cops don't actively advertise people probably can't use the entrapment defense. But, if they setup a large ad-words account then in theory that's a problem.

However, If the jury finds that the defendant was predisposed to commit the crime that he committed, the defendant will not be allowed to use the entrapment defense, no matter how extensive police participation was in inducing the defendant to commit the crime on this particular occasion. So, if the prosecution demonstrates someone is a habitual drug user then the cops can advertise freely. But, if they cops advertise and someone that's been clean for a few months/years calls them up that's a gray area that depends on the jury's interpretation.

You're probably referring to Jacobson v. United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States

I see, so cops can force a drug user to take drugs they brought in front of them, then the DA can get a conviction? Or they can force a pedophile to molest a child by threatening them, and then use the argument that they were predisposed already?

If they needed to force the person, that person was plainly not predisposed to take the action in question.

>If this is a US operation, don't the US law prohibits entrapment?

In the same way that it prohibits all other kind of behavior that is regularly acted by law enforcement. From planting evidence to "cruel and unusual punishment" (e.g whatever sadistic game a cop or prison director wants to play on an inmate).

Are you implying that the silk road was not safe for people who followed protocols?

Nope - but I suppose I am implying that significant numbers of people using such services know or care little of protocols. Instead they're happy to go with the idea that it's a nicely packaged untraceable means of getting what they're after.

Correct. The sellers made a huge footprint by mailing so much on such a regular basis. This lead to major sellers getting busted. At which point all the buyers that purchased from them may have their order details released.

this is incorrect. Sellers drop off packages over a wide area anonymously. They don't just mail stuff.

nod was found because he (or his girlfriend) dropped off packages over a "wide area" by going into post offices and mailing things. The indictment claims the investigator went to the PO and asked if they had noticed a certain car, and the employees there were readily able to provide details on a individual that made frequent mailings.

A large seller has too many packages to easily avoid leaving a trace. Automated analysis of video recordings near a post drop, for instance, could reveal these patterns.

Apart from that, sellers often mess up on opsec, just because it's so hard to maintain over such a large period of time. That's just how it is.

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