> police have been devoting a huge amount of resources to track down peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade like Charlie Shrem and the operators of the Silk Road Market
Um, the "operator(s) of Silk Road Market" allegedly attempted to hire a contract killer. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of peaceful, if true.
The “police have been devoting a huge amount of resources to track down
peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade like Charlie Shrem and the
operators of the Silk Road Market,” Ver says
The part you left out is the most context that that statement was made by Ver, someone interviewed for the article, and no real claim was being made that the Silk Road is peacefully run.
You can gain additional insight into the statement when you look at how Robert McMillian introduces Ver, a few paragraphs back.
Ver put a 37 bitcoin bounty on [the hackers] head.
[Ver] was himself sentenced to 10 months in federal prison...
peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade like
[...] the operators of the Silk Road Market
to be a claim that the Silk Road Market operators were "peaceful people" that the FBI had no business going after. I don't know anything about the case against Charlie Shrem, but that "and" groups Charlie Shrem and the Silk Road operators into the same bucket.
So long as that quote is being faithfully reproduced, I don't see how talking about his prison sentence has much to do with what I'm talking about.
I don't mean to say those guys aren't scumbags - I'm sure some of them are.
I just wanted to point out the opinion of the silk road presented in the article was not an opinion belonging to wired but instead it belongs to this Ver guy, who is in fact a criminal.
Well, I did make my comments conditional on the allegations being true.
My only point was that the Silk Road case isn't just about the big bad government rushing after innocent people that just want to do their drugs in peace while keeping to themselves, but are caught up in the War on Drugs.
That said, if the law enforcement were forced to presume that you were innocent until convicted, they would not be able to investigate you because they would no longer be presuming that you were innocent.
The statement that I commented on makes the assumption that the admin(s) of Silk Road were doing nothing but providing a marketplace for consensual (though illegal) transactions. If the admin(s) of Silk Road were engaged in a murder-for-hire plot, then I would assume you are ok with the FBI investigating such things (though maybe I shouldn't make such assumptions). Murder-for-hire goes well beyond people just minding their own business.
Right. The trial is not where "we find out what happens." It's where the state, having already decided you suck and need to spend some time in jail, needs to prove it to a jury of your peers beyond a reasonable doubt in a formal setting where only legally obtained evidence can be used.
It appeared that you were trying to minimize taking out a hit on someone because, to paraphrase, "the police started it." If that isn't what you were doing, my bad, but if it was, then my comment was as designed.
But the police can take out a hit on me if I start a commotion and flee. Then they will pursue me with the intent (or legal right) to kill me and I will be blamed for it.
So it makes sense to blame the police for starting a commotion that set in motion a situation that would not have arisen otherwise.
Just playing devil's advocate, but the only difference I see here is that the government has a monopoly on law and they hire the police, and the killer that person allegedly hired is not working for the law the government made, but for the law that person made.
So there's no need to pontificate here. This is just the difference between an organization having a monopoly on violence and then acting surprised when others want to make contracts with rules based on violence as well.
Not to mention our current president has ordered the murder of US citizens before but no one is arresting him.
This article also seems to just abruptly end. Been seeing that more frequently lately with stuff posted online. Not sure if its just lazy or poor writing but no closing paragraph makes for a poor reading experience.
And this is why I always hit the comments before clicking on the link. I've seen a flux of these bait headlines, only if I know the URL will I click otherwise I will go to comments.
Pretty sad that all hacker news can find to talk about here is debate about the legalities of drug trade and the ethics of the people involved in them that was inspired by a somewhat trollish one-liner quote in the article, with little to no relation with the actual subject of the article.
The “police have been devoting a huge amount of resources to track down peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade
like Charlie Shrem and the operators of the Silk Road Market,” Ver says, “while evil hackers were busy terrorizing
quadriplegic Hal Finney and his family.”
"voluntary trade" makes it sound like said trade wasn't actually illegal (in other words, like something the police are actually supposed to stop, peaceful or otherwise.)
This is meant to suggest that the police were harassing innocent people while completely ignoring the actual crimes described, of course playing up the typical Bitcoin narrative of the violent, thuggish and incompetent police state.
Left completely unmentioned, is the fact that Bitcoin is designed, and intended, to make it infeasible to track users and enforce laws against transactors. It's an explicitly anarcho-capitalist system. Extortion rackets around Bitcoin are not a bug, they're a feature.
Try and launder a 1Billion to 10 Billion dollor transaction with bitcoin and that's going to fall flat.
PS: For comparison you can fedex ~170,000$ worth of gold in a vary inconspicious 15 LB box. Shipping ~60,000 lb of gold (1Billion$) is much easier to track and more risky.
There is no possible way to make gold inconspicuous. The density simply prohibits it: gold reflects easy-to-send parts of the EM spectrum that most anything else will pass.
Your assuming there is a test in place to detect gold in FedEx packages. That's not acutally a hard thing to test and I would be interested in the results.
"voluntary trade" makes it sound like said trade wasn't actually illegal (in
other words, like something the police are actually supposed to stop, peaceful
or otherwise.)
No it doesn't make it sound like that. "Voluntary" is not synonymous with "legal". The quality of voluntary trade is that both parties to it want to be in it: it's consensual. Many consensual actions are illegal, and some would argue that is oppressive.
Left completely unmentioned, is the fact that Bitcoin is designed, and intended,
to make it infeasible to track users and enforce laws against transactors.
Yet they tracked Ulbritch, who was using Bitcoin and Tor. If they dedicated the same amount of resources to catching this extortionist, I think it's pretty likely he would be found.
> But the police don't arrest people for breaking ethical principles, they arrest people for breaking laws.
...Unless the police officer has ethical principles, in which case they will refuse to obey unfair laws. I remember watching an interview with a Danish cop that refused to arrest someone for smoking marijuana inside their own house. I think it's fair to say the government police system encourages unethical people to become cops.
Last time I checked extortion and making a false police report was against the law. I think context was that the police are participating in the SWATings while not putting in any effort to track down the perpetrators and at the same time they're putting a disproportionate amount of effort into shutting down otherwise peaceful markets.
Right, but the police do not decide which laws to ignore and which to enforce. They are the enforcement arm, not the legislative. No one should be alarmed that people when people are arrested for peddling illegal drugs.
> the police do not decide which laws to ignore and which to enforce
They absolutely do. For example, police in Seattle explicitly made marijuana enforcement the lowest possible priority years before Washington legalized it. It was a common sight to see policemen standing right next to people openly smoking pot on the street and completely ignoring them.
The police actually have a huge amount of leeway, and it can be a big problem. They often decide who to prosecute and who to ignore, and their decisions are often driven by race, revenue concerns, or other issues that have little to do with justice.
That's true, but marijuana was still illegal, and some people were still prosecuted. Ultimately the ones deciding who would be arrested and who would be ignored on a case-by-case basis were the police.
You're correct. My point was directed more towards people, like the parent I was replying to, who defend government actions simply because something is illegal. It would be equivalent to defending people who returned escaped slaves back in the day because it was the law to do so at the time.
Well, the likely continued impunity of the practitioners of "enhanced interrogation" means that it's a legal precedent that applies only to evil Nazis.
Hey early adopters: you have no doubt heard how easy it is to de-anonymize bitcoin transactions. If someone demands 1000 btc to stop them from "swatting" your house, why not let the police know, send a very small amount to the address they no doubt want the money sent to, and let police take it form there?
"Ver, who was himself sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for illegally shipping explosive across state lines, believes that Savaged is not only the same person who swatted Hal Finney, but also the person who gained access to Satoshi Nakamoto’s email account earlier this year." --quote from OA...
Why does anyone ship explosives across state lines (or anywhere) unless they run a demolition company? Just wondering (I'm in the UK).
The operators of Silk Road were mafioso's that ordered hits on competitors and people they didn't like. The whole, "we're just a bunch of gentle hippie libertarians and the evil police state can't handle how chill and peaceful we are" is both factually and morally false. Please stop repeating it.
I also support 90% of the drug laws out there. The argument that heroin and meth should be legal is asinine. I'm not the police state. I'm common sense. I don't care if the meth dealer is a hip and gentle guy. He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.
disagree downvotes dont change the truth: Ulbricht ordered kills casually. Physically addictive drugs cause social harm. All the libertarian claptrap in the world doesnt change reality, sorry Rand Paul supporters!
> The argument that heroin and meth should be legal is asinine.
I don't think it's asinine. There's clearly reasonable arguments for it: mostly that the consequences to society of harsh crackdowns on drug abuse are worse than those of legalisation - in particular that addicts feel that they have no option but to kill or steal in order to obtain their next fix.
Do I think people ought to do hard drugs? Absolutely not, it's clearly a terrible idea. I just think addiction should be treated as a medical condition, not some righteous moral crusade. Legalisation might be a step too far, but criminalisation isn't clearly a better option.
I recently saw an episode of "Anthony Bourdain - Parts Unknown" where he visits Colombia. He talked to locals about the drug trade and one person he interviewed made a very good argument that stuck with me:
Many people see drugs as a single problem with a single solution (eliminate all the drugs). But it's much more reasonable to see it as two problems: trafficking and use. Trafficking would be decimated with legalization and money fighting it could be spent on programs to help users.
Minor point but one that I think is valuable. Decimating something is to reduce it by 1/10th. You are thinking of it as an analogy for destroy which it is not.
Have you read that link? Do you know what is under discussion here? The actual misunderstanding is between reducing something by a tenth and reducing it by a great deal. In that context, "decimate" does indeed mean to reduce by a tenth. Even the most pessimistic legalization forecasts see greater changes in trafficking than a reduction of a tenth.
Maybe you're not a churchgoer, but the additional meaning of "tithe" discussed in your link confirms even further that a tenth is what "decimate" is about, because those who tithe, typically tithe a tenth of their incomes.
[EDIT:] Language changes, and attempts to avert such changes, are both part of what "language" means. Don't even get me started on "penultimate". b^) I wouldn't have commented, except that parent (since deleted) was a fairly aggressive, specific, and substantially incorrect ("nuh-uh! decimation can also refer to tithing!") criticism of josh2600's comment.
Language changes whether you like it or not. There are plenty of changes happening that I don't like, but I realize that in most cases it is a waste of time to fight them.
> He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.
What about alcohol? Cigarettes? Poker? Penny stocks?
All of these things have contributed to people blowing their savings, futures, and ruining their own lives and their families' lives.
By criminalizing drugs, people who want to fix their behavior are unable to because they're afraid to go to jail.
What we need is support centers, like we have for alcoholics, gambling addicts, sex addicts, internet addicts, and addicts of any other kind. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in the 20s, and it hasn't worked for drugs.
I agree. Social campaigning will be much more effective than prohibition, that's what we do for legal drugs which also are devastating for addicts.
Prohibition does absolutely nothing to control drug demand. It makes the supply swell until it overruns law enforcement's efforts to stem it. It makes hard drugs with stronger effects for a small dose more profitable for smugglers, because they're easier to ship. And as American alcohol Prohibitionism showed in the 20s, it makes drugs more popular among the underaged.
What's this argument that if N vices are legal, then N+1 vices should be legal too? Yes, it's true that alcohol can ruin your life, but that fact is not a good argument for legalizing heroin.
It depends how you read it. If proponents of banning a drug (say, marijuana) argue that it should be banned because it is harmful and will threaten the fabric of society (or something), while more dangerous drugs are legally and readily available, and have failed to destroy society, parent's argument is reasonable.
Common sense is a great place to start from! Then you do science. You predict what will happen under various policies; you try some options and observe what happens; you revise your understanding of the problem; and repeat.
From the few places where people are thinking that way, it seems like the best approach is neither criminal law nor pure legalization, but regulation, treatment and harm reduction. There are some examples in this report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy:
But we still have a huge amount to learn, because for the most part we're not even trying -- just sticking with the "common sense" approach of looking for a larger hammer, when hitting the problem with a smaller hammer failed to work.
Asinine? How many people do you think are dying from opiate use now, compared to when prescription painkillers were easier to get? Heroin use has actually had a massive increase due to the laws you support. Imagine if opiates were legal and well regulated. So many families might be dealing with substance abuse rather than death of a loved one due to guessing what's in an illegal plastic bag. Similar to moonshine which caused blindness and death during prohibition.
You will have a better luck with "Erdos amphetamines" or something like that.
Still, uh, using amphetamines or amphetamine analogs in controlled dosages from pharmaceutical sources is a pretty normal thing to do, a pretty normal thing that doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of problems for most people. We give it to children to make them sit still, and many adults take it, too.
There are some analogs, like Methylphenidate, which are said to be less addictive, but many people prefer, and use Adderall, which isn't, and both are deemed to be safe enough to give to children in small doses. We even give straight up Dextroamphetamine to some people (though it's rather less common)
I mean, dosage is super important, of course, and so is purity, but yeah, lots of people take small amounts of amphetamines without problems.
Edit: As someone else pointed out, methamphetamines are similar in effect to, but generally more dangerous than amphetamines, and the latter, I believe, is what Erdos, and most everyday users under medical supervision use.
Paul Erdös was prescribed Ritalin in 1970 when he was nearly 60 years old and had already produced the bulk of his work. He was probably addicted but never varied from his doctor-prescribed dose. Also, Ritalin is nowhere near the same as Methampetamine.
Um, the "operator(s) of Silk Road Market" allegedly attempted to hire a contract killer. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of peaceful, if true.