The Trial of 'Dread Pirate Roberts' Begins

This may be the most important trial you’ve never heard of:

One of the potentially most important and far-reaching trials in recent memory has just begun without much fanfare. And if you care about due process, Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches, the limits of government surveillance, and Internet freedom, you should pay attention.

Ross Ulbricht, 29, stands accused by the federal government of being “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the pseudonymous proprietor of the notorious website Silk Road. Launched in 2011 and shuttered in 2013, Silk Road was known as the Amazon or eBay of the “darknet,” an anonymous, Bitcoin-enabled marketplace where “buying drugs online became safe, easy, and boring.” The site boasted an estimated 900,000 users and generated more than $1 billion in annual sales. And since being closed down, multiple new sites selling narcotics have appeared, a testament to the futility of war on drugs.

Ulbricht was nabbed by federal agents in a San Francisco public library. Soon after, stories began to circulate about how a mild-mannered math whiz had transmogrified into a vengeful drug lord who ordered executions of a half-dozen real and imagined rivals. That story arc is compelling, for sure: Ulbricht was literally an Eagle Scout who was constantly doing charity work before allegedly becoming a violence-prone Professor Moriarity of Internet crime.

It’s an amazing tale that, as Nick Gillespie notes in the linked piece, has played out largely under the radar except in the libertarian community. At issue here, in addition to a young man’s guilt or innocence, will be the government’s tactics against him:

In the trial taking place in New York, though, Ulbricht isn’t charged with any murders (in a separate case pending in Maryland, he does a face a count of hiring an undercover DEA agent to kill a former Silk Road partner). Instead, he’s facing the equivalent of life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic in fake IDs, running a criminal enterprise, and money laundering.

Yet prosecutors will still be allowed to enter evidence that he sought to bump off six of his enemies. And they don’t have to prove anything on that score. Incredibly, Judge Kartherine Forrest ruled, that “evidence that defendant sought to protect this sprawling enterprise by soliciting murders for hire is… not unduly prejudicial.” Additionally, the judge refused to let the defense know what witnesses would be testifying against Ulbricht until a week before the trial actually began… the manner in which his prosecution is playing out should disturb anyone who cares about justice.

For me, the most potentially troubling aspect of the case ranges beyond conventional questions of due process (as disturbing as those are). It’s the larger chilling effect this sort of prosecution may end up having. Silk Road users employed Tor, a free software bundle that allows users to maintain anonymity online. Ironically, the creation of Tor was partly funded by the U.S. State Department as a way of giving political dissidents a way of communicating. Yet as Ulbricht’s defense fund notes, “the government equates the desire for privacy… with criminal intent.”

Stay tuned.