As the last post made it to Slashdot, a good number of comments are happening on that platform instead of the post itself so I'll go through now and offer replies to some of them.
Yep, my take on the article was what you said, and that they have crappy records for that service, so they were on a fishing expedition to see if they could find anything good/relating to the silk road stuff. In all honesty, it sounded like due diligence to me, in other words, the Feds were doing the detective work they needed to be doing.
Now this is a reasonable interpretation of circumstances wherein BTCPak was largely mentioned in the context of being a potential icebreaker to start a conversation about Silk Road related matters. The naive appearance of anonymity BTCPak might have offered could make it a promising avenue to pursue for leads, but... I'm the sort who layers on the tinfoil a bit thick to have gone on The Silk Road in the first place. Or to imagine a prepaid code loaded into a debit card which is tied to my slave name and Social Security Number would be beyond the avenue of a dedicated investigator to follow up on.
No, as you say, it's a fishing expedition.
Sorry, officer, do you have some evidence of wrong doing on my behalf, or are you just asking around to see if you can find out anything you can use?
The answer, in both cases, is talk to my lawyer and come back with a warrant. Because when the police are on a fishing expedition, the last place you want to be is innocently answering questions they'll twist against you.
With parallel construction and every other dirty trick law enforcement is using, you have to start from the premise they're either lying to you, or hoping you'll slip up. Because, quite frankly, they probably are.
Even if there's no evidence you committed a crime or otherwise broke the law, you're still quite likely to get screwed over. Answering open ended questions is a terrible idea, because they're just as likely to use it to fabricate something about you.
Law enforcement is no longer trustworthy. Stop treating them like they are. Even if they're smiling at you, they're probably hostile to your best interests.
A distinct privilege of a citizen is the "unassailable privilege of speaking for yourself in public" and this includes the right to speak to your actual ignorance on matters to which you are ignorant. The reason investigators come to a persons door step and do not take them away in handcuffs is that they are looking for a person who is interesting and might have interesting information for them. What I knew of BTCPak was that it worked great and it worked fast.
Sure, with everything else you have to assume that they have a desire for you to slip and and incriminate yourself or that you might be willing to incriminate someone else in exchange for immunity or leniency. In the latter case an lawyer would be a valuable asset. In the former case... speak carefully? With the existence of parallel construction and the fact that not everything they need to present to you be true or complete there is an impetus to incredible caution. Still in Silk Road Matter the best defense is to have avoided the thing in the first place as with the rabid vigor the United States pursues drug matters, it is hard to believe that person could put some thought into the matter and not anticipated parallel construction et al. Reading even a brief description of the Silk Road it would be hard to imagine the thing ending other than in an orgy of prosecutions and people being pressured into turning State's evidence.1
Also given the prevalence of "No-Knock" warrants, insisting on a warrant can place yourself, your neighbors, and your family in danger. Risk assesment is a constant necessity when weighing whether to be a dick and maximally assert your rights, the Kelly Criterion is a thing useful in non-gambling ventures. I am also not against law and order, but have disagreements with the status quo on the degree and balance of order and disorder that is optimal.
AND its worth noting.....should anything ever go to court....
NOTHING you said can be used to help you. While anything you say can be considered a confession and used against you, anything you say that is not used against you is hearsay.
So you have nothing to gain by speaking if it ever does go to court.
Avoiding court is a great positive outcome, I will go so far as to suggest it is the ideal outcome. Court is an expensive affair in terms of both time and treasure. In so far as you can not perfectly anticipate the thoughts and actions of fellow homo sapiens, and once you proceed to trial and an element of chance becomes involved.
Paranoid delusions
.. spoken like a true pothead. Of course, The Man is out to get you, right?
This bit of text was addressed to another commenter, but it is worth addressing. I've always made it clear my drug of choice is good old fashioned booze, a choice which obliviates my need I might have for Darknet markets as the local purveyors of this intoxicant are happy to sell me as much as I can afford. I'll admit I'm a crank, I write a lot. I write great things and I write absolute shit. I write sober and I write drunk. I write truth and I write astounding fictions. The job of the reader is to well... read and discern.
It is also worth considering the hassle poor Ernest Hemmingway was put through by the FBI, and he too was largely just a writer. Generally people's methods and toolboxes broaden over time. It makes little sense that a person now could be exposed to substantially less in the way of investigation now than Hemmingway or Martin Luther King Jr. were.
Let's not overstate this. The account given by Bingo is a good one, and on the facts it shows two law enforcement officers just doing their job: gathering background information, and they're doing it in a way to minimise the hassle for the ordinary member of public they're interviewing. Bingo mentions no powerplays beyond them identifying themselves as LEOs.
And doing the research how Silk Road grew out of the early BitCoin scene (or if it even did) is a legitimate avenue of inquiry.
I am not a fan of the bullies that populate far too many police forces, so this is a welcome change of pace.
The were indeed relatively polite yet irritatingly insistent in a way that most likely helps them to extract information interesting to them. It could have been far worse. I am not quite sure however what really should be taken out of things knowing that they are taking their investigation out this far from The Silk Road in pursuit of leads.
This guy actually talked to the federal agents who came knocking on his door? Stupid, stupid...
Assuming these were probably FBI or Secret Service agents, my understanding is that the only record allowed of the interview consists of their handwritten notes. You are not allowed to make a recording. This means that, afterwards, they can put any spin on the interview that they want. If you disagree, they can and will throw you in jail for lying to a federal officer.
The only possible reply to these officers should be "I have nothing to say to you".
It has been explicitly noted that this was an FBI agent and a US Treasury agent. For the record the Treasury agent was the one taking handwritten notes. I used no recording device other than the great meaty piece of wetware in my skull. As the conversation happened outdoors on a front lawn I have no idea if the neighbors or anyone else might have made a recording. Nothing was communicated to me that the conversation was a matter to be kept quiet about and given that the venue was outdoors in an inhabited settlement, there can be no reasonable expectation that the conversation was a private matter.
A Blog is an instrument by which a person can keep notes. That's in the etymology of the thing which began with the concept of a "web journal" or a "web log" and sometimes a person has notes that they might care to take or share with the public. The concept similarly is "Journalism" which is a protected press activity. This conversation was one of the most interesting things that I've been a part of this year. Why should I not share it with the world. My big concern is that more people don't.
Really? If as you suggest they are willing to lie in their notes, what exactly is stopping them from turning "I have nothing to say to you" into long and detailed confession?
Nothing, as such. You might limit the potential damage by sending a time stamped email to yourself or someone else, stating your version of the interview.
If it's done promptly at least it puts your version of the story on the record at an early stage. It would show that you didn't suddenly reverse course weeks or months after the initial incident, and could provide some reasonable doubt in the minds of a judge or jury.
Or you blog about it, submit it to Slashdot, and make things abundantly clear you aren't a secretive creature from the Dark Web intentionally evading law enforcement. The police themselves aren't stupid, even if much of the system they operate in was built and hammered into a very stupid shape.
- State's evidence is this arrangement where in the concerning matter you go from person to property and as a result of this transformation you require a lawyer to work for you in the way a circus elephant needs the humane society. [↩]
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