Dear Diary: One day, you shall send me to prison for a long time.. (ArsTechnica article)

Oof. It pains me to even read this stuff. I can't even imagine how bad Ross felt while this was being read in court.


On that day, a male and female agent started an argument in San Francisco's Glen Park public library, to get Ulbricht's attention. As soon as Ulbricht was distracted, another agent grabbed the open computer and gave it to Kiernan, who is an FBI computer specialist. Kiernan spent the next three hours doing "triage" on the machine. Without allowing it to go idle, and thus become encrypted, he took photographs, went through the browser history, and ultimately handed it off to another agent who imaged the hard drive

The jury saw spreadsheets of Silk Road finances, Ulbricht's personal tracking of his "net worth," and got just a small glimpse of the years of TorChat chat logs with Silk Road administrators that were on the machine. In those chats, "myself"--the default name for a user of TorChat--made key executive decisions about how to run Silk Road.

There were many decisions that had to be made: promotions and demotions, contests and castigations. The jury saw Silk Road org charts, payroll documents, and daily logs tracking staff activities. They saw Ulbricht's old passport and driver's license, and the scanned IDs of Silk Road admins. Staffers had been promised those IDs would be kept encrypted, and they were--but the encryption was broken down by Kiernan, who found the keys on Ulbricht's machine.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/silk-road-trial-fbi-reveals-whats-on-ross-ulbrichts-computer-in-open-court/


EDIT: So, the good people of /r/bitcoin have actually gone ahead and purchased the transcripts of the entire day. This cost around $1200 out of some guy's pocket, so if you find this interesting/useful please be decent and contribute a few satoshi for the cause. They will probably continue and post these transcripts throughout the trial if they can gather enough donations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2t6eeu/silk_road_ross_ulbricht_trial_day_5_transcript/


Comments


[26 Points] None:

[deleted]


[15 Points] bigskymind:

Evidence has been presented that he had a mirror of the Silk Road website in /var/www , just sitting there....

http://i.imgur.com/ZQcsegP.png


[9 Points] AgoraMarket:

Staffers had been promised those IDs would be kept encrypted

I always thought, anyone with any common sense would have just sent Ross a picture of someone else's driver's license. Forget fake IDs, just an Internet picture of a real license -- they're not difficult to find.

Why would the Silk Road mods use their real identities? They didn't even know who Ross was, from their perspective, Ross could've been LE or something.


[7 Points] RosyPalm:

Wow. The only way Ross is getting out of prison is feet first.

Edit: down voting isn't going to make it any less true. Even if he successfully manages to get the laptop thrown out it will take years, and it's already put enough other people in prison that there will be a plethora of inmates ready to get revenge by testifying against Ross or gutting him with a pointy toothbrush... And LE hasn't even scratched the surface of the doxx Ross had on it yet.


[4 Points] ShulginsCat:

Wanted to share this comment from the Ars message board that I found particularly depressing:

bothered wrote: Who keeps a diary?

People who want to remember and reflect on the parts of their lives that slowly fade from memory over time.


[2 Points] TooPoetic:

"Ulbricht's computer had encrypted pictures of staffers on it. Kiernan broke the encryption"

Unless that is just misreported this would suggest he was somehow able to break the encryption.... I'm hoping this is just the reporter not understanding.


[2 Points] earthmoonsun:

I would not sentence him for SR but stupidity


[1 Points] None:

Wow. That sucks for him.


[1 Points] keepitcasualbrah:

Dude that is super terrible for the admins who expected encryption... I don't think I (not that I'd ever be that high up anyway) could bring myself to send ID/personal info for such a position. Gahhh. Bad feelz :|


[1 Points] melan85:

So he was having a conversation with Scout trying to convince her to be an admin because there was no way they could build a trial against them... Scout = Cirrus... Cirrus = LE. SMH


[1 Points] TooPoetic:

Question: In a trial like this does the defense lawyer ask Ross about what actually happened or does he just try to poke holes in what the prosecution puts forward.


[1 Points] Miz_pizzyizz:

"...the strategy of thieves and thugs"

and rats.


[-1 Points] sharpshooter789:

Too bad he didn't watch the wire.