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>But it's patently obvious that Anaya is a criminal and engaged in criminal conspiracy to traffic narcotics.

Obvious to whom? Neither having nor seeing $800,000 in cash is a crime. While he may have had reason to be suspicious, that is not what the law requires. There must be actual knowledge of illegal use. Professional gamblers carry this kind of cash and more all the time. They could have been on their way to a poker game for all he knew.

>Most damningly, he tried to isolate himself from information (if you don't suspect a client of being a criminal, you don't instruct them to avoid talking of their usage)

You just indicted every criminal defense lawyer, and most accountants, in America. As officers of the court, lawyers are not supposed to knowingly make representations in court that they know not to be true. For precisely this reason, unlike in the movies, most lawyers will not sit down and ask a client to just tell them everything that happened; actual knowledge of certain facts could seriously damage their ability to defend their client. Instead they analyze the discovery given to them by the prosecution and ask the client questions as needed. Isolating yourself from information is certainly not a crime, and is necessary for many people in order to properly do their jobs.

I posted this elsewhere in the comments already, but it seems relevant to the "obviousness" claim.

From the decision of Anaya's 2013 appeal [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-10th-circuit/1642115.html], here's a synopsis of the evidence that swayed the jury to believe he knew what he was doing. Its not just the 800K.

3. Sufficient Evidence of Knowledge

At trial, the Government presented evidence that Mr. Anaya

• built multiple hidden compartments in vehicles for the DTO that were insulated to mask the smell of drugs;

• witnessed $800,000 in one of his compartments in a DTO vehicle;

• used “kilos” as a unit of measurement for building compartments;

• communicated by phone with the DTO through a secret code to discuss compartment sizes; and

• warned Mr. Crow not to discuss the compartments or how they worked with anyone to avoid police detection.

> But it's patently obvious that Anaya is a criminal

A criminal in what manner? What act did he commit that harmed another person or that was in some way or another unethical or immoral? Whom did he cheat?

He isn't a criminal in that sense at all. He's a criminal for breaking a vaguely worded and open-to-interpretation law that seems unconstitutional on its face.

When the government writes a bad law here and there, it's just the inevitable mistakes that we hope will be eventually corrected. But when the government writes one bad law after another, with never a good one in between, "criminal" ceases to mean anything.

> He witnessed $800,000

And? I find it hilarious how we've been taught and propagandized to think that money is, itself, horrible and incriminating. They have our bank tellers spying on us for the IRS, fuck, I don't even think you can buy a new car with cash without someone phoning it in to the feds. And whatever you do, don't dare drive out-of-state down a highway with money like that... cops are likely to steal it.

> Do the people in this thread think that getaway drivers on bank robberies should get off scot free because driving a car is not itself a crime?

Apparently you're ready to indict the guy that sold him the car, and the gas station attendant that didn't call it in to the police when he saw them filling up the tank.

> But it's patently obvious that Anaya is a criminal and engaged in criminal conspiracy to traffic narcotics.

Who's being irrational here? If a law is "unnecessary and ill-conceived," why is it irrational to complain about the law being enforced? I think that's very rational. I think he should be able to explicitly say, even advertise "I will create a secret compartment in your vehicle where you can put drugs," without risking any legal trouble. 24 years in prison is too harsh a sentence. Spending the night in jail would be too harsh a sentence. A $50 fine would be too harsh a sentence.

> Do the people in this thread think that getaway drivers on bank robberies should get off scot free because driving a car is not itself a crime?

No, because laws prohibiting robbery and theft are reasonable laws.

Irrationality is not a valid defense for violating a law. If a law is unconstitutional, challenging the legality of being charged with the crime is valid. But if the claim is that a law doesn't make sense or should be changed, the method for enacting that change is via the legislative branch.

Put simply: Americans have the laws they have because they were written down by the folks Americans voted for. We can debate forever about how we're mostly made up of sheeple and the election process is biased and all the other things that get in the way of pure, fun-loving democracy, but that doesn't mean we just get to decide at an individual level which laws we don't think are rational and then break them.

> Irrationality is not a valid defense for violating a law.

It's not a valid legal defense in the legal system where that law exists, obviously. But that doesn't mean we should approve of the enforcement of bad laws. That's the Nuremberg defense. If a law is bad, the law should be changed, but it's also bad for the law to be enforced, and not bad to break the law.

> but that doesn't mean we just get to decide at an individual level which laws we don't think are rational and then break them.

Again, I completely disagree. You're making a moral argument that people ought to obey all laws. I find that argument repulsive. What do you think about civil disobedience?

Let's be careful not to put words in my mouth? I said that making decisions at the individual level about which laws are rational and breaking the irrational ones is not feasible.

Civil disobedience is almost never undertaken at the individual level, and more specifically it is never successful at the individual level. It is an exercise undertaken by a society. Society making judgements about the rationality of laws and then using civil and legislative means to affect change on the laws themselves is healthy and valid.

By contrast, making these judgements at the individual level opens up a whole world of danger, because our individual feelings on what is and is not rational vary as widely as our viewpoints on everything else.

> I said that making decisions at the individual level about which laws are rational and breaking the irrational ones is not feasible.

What do you mean by "feasible"? I am certainly capable of deciding which laws I think are rational and choosing which laws to obey.

> Civil disobedience is almost never undertaken at the individual level, and more specifically it is never successful at the individual level. It is an exercise undertaken by a society.

You seem to be conflating civil disobedience with organized protest or resistance. Civil disobedience is just a deliberate refusal to obey a rule one believes to be a bad rule. It doesn't have to be organized.

You seem to have a disdain for all individual discretion about rules and laws. I disagree, and strongly. Only individuals act, and I think only individuals have the ability and responsibility to choose how to act.

They probally have enough information to convict him. But you know that Kilos is just how most of the world handles weight? If I wanted to put lets say a speaker or computer in there, id also be interested in what weight it can hold. If they actually wanted to carry money, they would also need to know as money is pretty heavy.

Dude is american. Outside of science, there are only a handful of things in America measured in kilos or grams. I'm struggling to think of one besides drugs. Certainly coke or heroin. Pot is often sold in eighths, while hash is sold in grams.

Nobody in America discusses weight of speakers, computers, or anything in kilos. Perhaps the only other place I've heard it used is for bumper plates. I'd frankly bet more than 90% of Americans couldn't tell you off the top of their heads if a kilo weighs more or less than a pound.

> But you know that Kilos is just how most of the world handles weight?

Yes, but not Americans. 9/10 times, if an American is talking about kilos they're talking about drugs.

Or they're in science, or engineering, or in a trade business where kilograms are more common than Imperial units, or they're a recent immigrant, or they're being silly because they want to joke that they're a drug dealer, or...

> Do the people in this thread think that getaway drivers on bank robberies should get off scot free because driving a car is not itself a crime?

I think this is more like putting the car salesman in jail for selling them the getaway car ... and that would be wrong.

> But it's patently obvious that Anaya is a criminal and engaged in criminal conspiracy to traffic narcotics.

You can say the same about every bank in America, which facilitates the same. Oh and probably every electric utility for growing all that weed. Water utility too?

I mean, it's not like they ask each of their clients if they're drug dealers or growing dope. They don't exactly look for the criminals either.

Probably because it's not their job.

> I think this is more like putting the car salesman in jail for selling them the getaway car ... and that would be wrong.

They did not go after, or put in jail, the people that sold the cars to the drug dealers, because, as you say, that would be wrong. They went after the person that knowingly made it possible for the drug dealers to commit their crimes.

> You can say the same about every bank in America, which facilitates the same.

Actually, they do stop doing business with you when reasonably believe you are committing a crime.

http://www.denverpost.com/marijuana/ci_25965517/reluctance-b...

> Actually, they do stop doing business with you when reasonably believe you are committing a crime.

Did you read the article? The guy had no idea what they were doing.

The only difference here is that unlike banks, utilities, etc. he's just a small guy who doesn't have friends in the right places, so I guess it's OK to throw him in jail for 24 years.

They had ZERO evidence that he knew what his work was being used for. That's why it's so outrageous.

They had ZERO evidence that he knew what his work was being used for.

That's patently false. You've fallen victim to Wired painting this guy as a saint. If you actually read the details of the case, you'll see that, in addition to the incident with the wads of cash, he also instructed his clients not to talk about the compartments, and also used drug-related code words on the phone to talk about the capacity of the compartments.

After reading the article, I was incredibly sympathetic toward Anaya, because that's what the author wanted us to feel, and wrote the article that way. After reading about some of the actual facts of the case... not so much anymore.

But when you have a personal relationship with clients who make it pretty obvious that they're engaged in criminal activity, you absolutely have an obligation to stop assisting.

This needs a citation for your argument to hold water.

Edit for the down vote:

You made a statement of law on which your argument relied. The burden of proof is on the asserting party. It matters whether the law does actually exists. There is no point in debating the law if what we're talking about is not actually a law.

If Bruce Schneier became aware that a drug cartel was using one of his crypto algorithms, isn't he too an accomplice? In what world is someone who willfully helps the cartel conceal their activity not an accomplice?

Do you really think crypto authors should get off scot free when their software is at the crux of criminal communication? They know exactly what they are doing, don't they?