Deep Web Page #6

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a constitutional right here

that we are innocent

until proven guilty.

Ross sent me this picture of

himself about a week ago.

It was taken a couple of

weeks ago in prison.

I guess sometimes they go around

and take pictures for the families.

He is doing well, uh,

as well as can be expected,

of course,

under the circumstances.

And finally, after

five months of delays,

he has had access to the discovery,

the evidence that the prosecution has.

And so he's been working very

hard going through that.

We are asking the,

uh, prosecution,

"How did you find the server,"

and they're not saying.

Um, we have to know how they

found the server in order to see

if Ross' Fourth Amendment

rights have been violated.

And how would anyone know if the evidence

had been tampered with or anything else

if it's not revealed how

they found the server?

There were 14 searches

and seizures in this case,

which is a...

a fishing expedition

into a person's

total property.

Unlimited rummaging through all of

their things to see what they can find.

When the criminal complaints

first appeared in... in October,

I think the supporters of

the Dread Pirate Roberts

and the Silk Road

just scattered.

Because suddenly this thing

that had seemed like

an idealistic community

built around non-violence

and, you know,

Libertarian free commerce,

suddenly seemed instead like

this bloody criminal conspiracy.

And a guy who probably otherwise

would have been a kind of, uh,

political cause clebre,

who... who would have had

all of these supporters

calling for his freedom,

instead was treated as a...

was an immediate pariah.

He was seen as a criminal.

So there's a lot of, um,

circumstantial, uh,

evidence,

if you want to call it that.

There's a lot of technical bits

and pieces involved.

It got really crazy

in the middle of that.

Sort of one thing is taking down

this online drug market.

Another thing is pinning a number

of Murders-For-Hires on top of it.

It just seems really,

really far-fetched.

The 29-year-old seemingly

clean-cut entrepreneur was living

a secret life as a digital drug lord.

- They're claiming that he's living in a

manner of a... of a head of a cartel.

The distinctions between Ross

Ulbricht and the head of a cartel,

you don't have to see

too many movies to...

to recognize what the

differences are here.

Then when the indictment

finally came out,

there were suddenly

no charges around

these Murder-For-Hire accusations,

only the drug trafficking

and money laundering

and computer hacking.

They had six charges. They used them

against him to deprive him of bail

and yet two and a half

months later, uh,

the prosecutor

didn't indict him.

What they did instead was they

called it an "uncharged crime. "

Well, if something's a crime,

don't you charge someone for it?

And if it's not a crime,

why is it there...

because it's

prejudicial to a jury

to have that sitting

there unproven just...

just smearing him.

The portrayal they want is

of someone who they could

present to a jury of not

having redeeming value.

It's a way of poisoning the

atmosphere so that the jury

doesn't focus on the allegations,

but focuses on this

atmospheric that the government

has created that in some sense

is a diversion appealing to

the emotional aspect of it

so that if the proof is weak,

the benefit of the doubt

doesn't go to the defendant,

where it belongs, under the

presumption of innocence,

but it goes to the

government because, hey

there are these awful

things lurking out there

which aren't part of what

we're supposed to find.

The government doesn't have to prove

them beyond a reasonable doubt,

but they've injected them

in the case in a way

that is toxic to an

impartial evaluation of

what the evidence is on

the charged crimes.

So people come in with

a preconceived notion

and that's halfway

there to... to guilt.

Previously, the Murder-

For-Hire was in there

as a charge and then

it was dropped.

But it's not gone away.

It's included as what

they call an overt act

in the conspiracy and...

to sell drugs.

And so they actually made it

one of the things to support

the larger drug conspiracy

to either get a trial

- or get him to plead.

- It seemed like this bait and switch

that the government had accused

him in this almost informal way

of murder so that when

he was charged with these

non-violent crimes in the end,

he would still be seen

as a violent criminal.

I think that that has

really been effective in...

in coloring the portrait

of Ross Ulbricht.

Ever since Ross' arrest,

he and his best friend Rene Pinnell

have remained in

regular contact.

Rene declined to give

substantive interviews

to the press for fear they would

be used against Ross in court,

but agreed to answer

questions via email.

I'm a little teapot

Short and stout

Here is my handle

here is my spout

When I get all steamed up

hear me shout

Tip me over

and pour me out

Yay!

Because of the severity

of the charges,

Ross was not able to grant

an interview from prison,

which left only a scattering of his

personal photographs and movies.

But from the exhaustive discussions

with friends and family

and the public knowledge

of Ross's trajectory

from Physics and

Engineering major

to running a small home-spun

book-selling company,

it was difficult to understand

how he could possibly

have been the sole

mastermind of the Silk Road,

a vast and complex internet service

with over a million users worldwide.

Ross was certainly

bright and studious

with a deep interest in

Libertarian economic theory,

which clearly echoed the

mandate and philosophy

of many of the posts of

the Dread Pirate Roberts.

But he had no experience

whatsoever in computer coding

or scaling large

internet companies.

So how did Ross connect

to what little is truly known

about the

Dread Pirate Roberts?

DPR was motivated

by a pacifistic philosophy

and an agenda of creating

victimless exchange

and reduced harm

in the drug trade.

This ethos would be embraced by the chief

architects and vendors of the Silk Road

and reverberate through

the entire community.

The Silk Road appeared to be

a successful experiment in

creating a pacifistic community,

overseen by a figurehead with

a deep-rooted ideology.

But these core ideals of

the Dread Pirate Roberts

were completely at odds with

the Murder-For-Hire allegations.

Did DPR become corrupted

and turn his back on

the mandate of non-violence

and harm reduction?

Were there other people

using the DPR account

who were responsible

for these actions?

Or was there some other truth

behind these alleged

murder hits that

produced no victims?

We don't know the first

piece of evidence

that lead the feds down

this chain of investigation

to the San Francisco library

where Ross Ulbricht was arrested. All we

know is that at some point they located

the Silk Road servers in a data center

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