Hacker News Reader

Comment by btouellette | Hacker News Reader

It was pretty obvious that the FBI was lying (or misrepresenting or whatever weasel word you want to use) in their original claims. The real question in my mind, which still remains unanswered, is why? The most optimistic explanation is that they just botched the investigation and then spectacularly confused the prosecution as they were preparing their claims. I'd rather not think too hard about the most pessimistic explanation.

View on HN

I find it plausible that the NSA, DHS may have assisted. During the same time of the rise of Silkroad we have the NSA in full cowboy mode. A reading of the xkeyscorerules100.txt[1] leak shows this, among other things. Looking to Tor as a potential tool for terrorism, if not now than in the future, they would turn to Silkroad as the only interesting target for them to train their teeth on. I just know that if I were in the shoes of a NSA "hacker" dealing with Tor I wouldn't be satisfied with playing war games against internal teams. Hackers are addicts that get their kick best when its public. I would certainly have argued for "better cooperation" with the FBI and DHS for that reason alone.

Anything the NSA does is "secret" so the holes in the FBI arguments, in this scenario, would make sense. An interesting result in this case would be if at any point evidence is not permitted for publication. I wonder if the defence could construct a canary for this possible circumstance.

1: http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/xkeyscorerules100.txt (note how certain civil liberties are dictated by Geo IP location alone -- that is what I mean by "cowboy mode")

It's called "Parallel construction"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Most likely, the NSA got the information around May, tipped off the FBI and the FBI started working on their "PC" story. Unfortunately, Ross was moving his servers and reconfiguring them during this time, making the PC story a bit more difficult to get.

Isn't it obvious? They wanted him gone. This is just like what happened to Kim Dotcom - the US government/elite wanted him gone, so they used whatever methods they wanted, executed by the Law Enforcement, to try and remove him. Sure, they might lose in court now, but most of the damage is done - Megavideo is gone, Silk Road is gone - just what they wanted.

EDIT: I guess the biggest problem here is that the people responsible for actually perpetrating the crimes (e.g. the police officers lying in court) will most likely not be held responsible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_Motor_Company#Downtur...

Also, isn't there a new Silk Road already?

And a new DPR to go along with it

There is a new Silk Road and a plethora of successful alternatives. Far from shutting down darknet markets they really just gave them more publicity and now have 20 sites to go after instead of one.

They changed their story because the truth is that they violated the 4th amendement rights of anyone who browsed Silk Road for a period of time. They executed drive-by Javascript code on the computers of hundreds of unknowing silk road users, without a warrant. At worst, that's extremely illegal, and at best, it's in a definite gray area. I don't blame the FBI for trying to cover it up.

(Citation -- wired article I read at some point; maybe someone else can find it.)

You are confusing this with Freedom Hosting.

http://www.wired.com/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/

Ah, my mistake. You're right. Although I would not be surprised if they used a similar technique once they had access to SR servers.

Someone admitted I'm right in HN. I should go out and buy a lottery ticket. ;)

We all are wrong sometimes. Shit happens. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com