Ross Ulbricht, the alleged operator and mastermind of the underground website Silk Road was denied bail, which I guess is unsurprising given the vast amount of resources that have been invested into the investigation that lead to his eventual arrest.
Much of the material in the documents tendered to the court reeks of parallel construction. I believe that those who rely upon tor hidden services should be extremely concerned about their continued anonymity.
Parallel Construction is becoming the norm these days for certain types of crimes.
For instance vehicals with supposadly defective tail lights or being poorly driven getting pulled over by the local Cainine Drug sniffing team and dog reacts and a major drugs bust happens…
Statisticaly this is a way lower probability than the number of “major successes”.
And that’s the point, the LEA’s are “greedy” and they think only one case at a time, thus if they get it by a defence team once they think it’s good to go for the next and the next…
Sooner or later some defence team will present the judge with a statistical analysis and that’s when it will all start to unravel, and with luck one or two senior LEO’s in the know will cop to a plea bargin to avoide time for purjury, or a whistle blower will “out them” and they will do time.
In all probability though the Likes of Diane Finklestien will claim “new legislation to stop it” which will give retrospective immunity…