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I guess justice is served and we call sleep better at night? Is "war on drugs" a magic formula which can be used to justify anything, just like "war on terror" and "think of the children"?
Apparently he was also charged with two counts of intimidating a witness, which the Wired article does not mention, so maybe there is more to this story.
Either way, it saddens me to know that the instigators, aggressors, and profiteers of this "war" will never spend a day in prison.
It's a compelling story but I agree that leaving out details like that is a failure of journalistic ethics.
It does mention that someone signed an affidavit then recanted it and claimed intimidation, but not where the second one comes from.
On one hand, I feel bad for the guy. I mean it seems like unless you're wealthy or have a really good case in these situations hiring a lawyer is too pricey for most people and so when the district attorney is coming at you with all they got and they shove you in with the other "drug" criminals and all you have is your appointed court defender, you're going to have a bad time. It's almost like he didn't have a "fair" shot just because the weight of accusations against him and the power behind it versus what he had was just outweighed.
On the other hand, he had to of known what was going on. You start down the path of shady, it's just going to get darker. I can't say I blame him or I wouldn't do the same if I had a passion for such things, but still he had to of known the risk. I don't believe in his sentence however and it really sucks the guys at the top only got half the length he did. There might have been other things involved sure, but stil a sentence like that is pretty staggering and life changing.
It's "had to have known", not "had to of known". For the love of all that is good and right in the world, please, "had to have known".
What the hell? This isn't grammar school. I was commenting in a hurry on a news site. Calm yourself.
By the same token though, the Tor developers had to have known that Tor would be used for distribution of child pornography, and gun manufacturers surely know that their guns will be used to kill innocent people.
Not to speak of tobacco...
True, but I think there is a distinction to be made between designing a protocol like tor and actually providing the service of setting up tor sites for people who you suspect are using them to distribute child porn.
Sure, I suppose Freenet or some other P2P would have made for a better analogy.
I think the distinction is when you are dealing directly with known or suspected criminals and providing them services to help in criminal activity rather than providing something that can have criminal uses but also legit ones.
Exactly, this. Creating Tor is like the general practice of building these traps as a business. Traps have both legal and illegal uses, and you have no way of knowing what will happen with each trap after you build it. No problem there. The problem is when that service is provided directly to someone known to be using it for an illegal purpose. In the case of Tor, it is not provided directly to anyone, but rather available freely to everyone. Now, say Tor came with home installations of the client, and the client mentions to the installer that now he's got a great way to buy drugs anonymously on SR. That would be a problem.
So that means if internet is created for terrorists to solve a problem be more efficient in communication among themselves, the creator of internet would have to be thrown in jail, even if there is also a good use in internet? Or the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering people, aren't the creators suppose to be executed as well? How about the camera? It was probably designed to create child porn!!! The creators should be fined and be thrown to jail as well!!! What makes the value of a tech, or neutral product, an act or passenger of evil or violation of laws depending on the context it is created in? Who is to decide that? You? Prosecutor? The government? I empathize this guy, as he is not confident enough, and is too kind.
"Or the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering people..."
It's not about whether it could be created for smothering people. If you're a tailor, and someone says to you, "I need a special kind of jacket with a loop like this that I can use to strangle people with,"* and you make that for them, then yes, you are liable when they indeed use it for that purpose! As for who decides whether the creator knew it would be used for an illegal purpose, that would be the jury.
If before there was an internet, a terrorist group approached a technologist and described a network that they required to better organize terror plots, then YES, that person should be held accountable for the uses the group puts it to, even if it eventually has positive consequences as well.
On the other hand, if a person makes and distributes anything, dangerous or not, with a legitimate use case in mind, they should absolutely be held blameless if it is then used by someone else to commit a crime.
*Assuming of course that a "reasonable person" would actually believe the person was indeed going to do that, since it comes across as pretty bizarre...
I know humorous links are discouraged on Hacker News, but this is barely humorous, and actually has a point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
As an independent contractor he owed it to himself to think through his choices and protect himself more carefully than he did.
That said, he did get hosed by a completely crazy and corrupt system. It's just that I think he should have known better.
This is a perfect example of where it is absolutely necessary to consult an attorney before starting a business, or expanding into offering new services.
Everyone complains about having to pay attorney fees, but in this case it would have saved the guy YEARS in prison. Don't just rely on "well I read on the internet somewhere that if my customer's don't mention drugs explicitly I'm OK"
And even if the attorney gives bad advice, it's still worthwhile. It would have sounded so much better in front a jury if he could have said: "Yes, I was worried I might be breaking the law, so I consulted XYZ attorney and he assured me it was ok. Here's his written opinion and bill"
This is troubling, right?
There's sort of three options about tech facilitating <bad thing>: you hold the people behind the tech responsible, you hold the people behind the tech blameless, or you cherry-pick when they're at fault.
I'd argue that cherry-picking is what we currently do, and that it is troublesome in its inherent double-standards: if I show teenagers how to make pipebombs and they hurt someone, that's on me, but if I write tech manuals for special forces on the same subject, that's okay. If I write software that helps ensure messages are private, that's okay, but if the same software is used to carry child porn, that's awful. If I write software for recording customer information, that's okay, but if I provide it to the government, that's not okay.
Cherry-picking is rubbish in this way, because the same tech--particularly for tools and services!--can be used for both good and harm. It may be difficult to argue for peaceful uses of stealth fighters, but barring a few cases it would seem that all tech is dual-use. We can acknowledge this fact, and pick one extreme or the other.
If we take the view that all tech providers are culpable for the use of their tech, we stifle innovation and retard the pace of development--if the morass of patent claims is bad, consider what happens if every product has to go through a strict liability filter to make sure it can't hurt anyone. We don't even stop the bad uses of tech--we can still be saddened to find that someone has found an illegal use for our tools that simply had never occurred to us.
If we go the other way, and hold tech providers blameless, we don't slow innovation. We simplify the cases against people who do commit crimes, and streamline the justice process. We give up the ability to try and stop the spread of things like traps and weapons and whatnot, and can focus on actually going after the people that use them for ill, or deciding not to waste resources on things that become impractical to enforce.
None of this matters a hill of beans, though, because we seem to be hellbent on a justice system which doesn't even bother to make clear the inscrutable laws with which it will nail you to the wall. Brilliant.
While I agree that the result in this case was extreme, it seems that the article does point out the distinction, which is whether the person behind the tech is directly aware that it will be used for <bad thing>.
In this particular case, I could see how there's a strong argument that he was. I mean, when he saw the $800k, honestly, he _did_ know it was related to drugs. He made the choice to continue. Should he have been charged as a conspirator and ultimately sentenced to 24 years? Not in my opinion! But he wasn't completely blameless either.
I think it would be fair he gets some punishment, but 24 years without parole, while the main perpetrators get a sentence half the length? I guess that's what happens when you don't take a deal.
"While I agree that the result in this case was extreme, it seems that the article does point out the distinction, which is whether the person behind the tech is directly aware that it will be used for <bad thing>."
Then anyone who implements a cryptosystem is in legal peril. There is no question that cryptosystems are used by criminals to commit crimes. So far, cryptographers have been able to sleep at night knowing that their work is also used to protect people from criminals and other dangers.
I dont think cryptographers have anything to be worried about here unless they are directly involved in designing a crypto-system for a person they know or could reasonably suspect would be involved in doing something illegal.
This individuals biggest problem was that he had more than a casual association with people that he could have reasonably suspected were involved in something illegal. If he had stopped having anything to do with the people who had the 800k hidden, he'd be a free man now. If he had tipped off the cops that he saw a car with 800k hidden in a secret compartment, he'd very likely have won the accolades of the entire police department along with buying himself some very welcome immunity from prosecution.
He chose sides and lost.
And if the people who worked with the two guys who had the 800k hidden had found out he'd snitched, then what?
The bottom line is that you shouldn't have to "choose sides" every time you see something suspicious. Most seemingly suspicious occurences are innocent, and calling the police on someone every time you see one is childish and naive.
How about not dealing with sketchy people who need hidden compartments in their vehicles? Why is that not an option from the outset?
I hate to say it, but I find the range of "legal" uses for a hidden compartment in a moving vehicle to be vanishingly small. I'd put them in the same range as legal reasons to wearing a full facemask/helmet in a bank.
I see this case as being no different from that attack on Phil Zimmerman in the 90s, except that Zimmerman is still a free man. Anaya did not "choose sides," he provided a legal service to willing customers without prying, no different from a cryptography expert who helps people deploy and use cryptosystems.
This man was prosecuted to intimidate others like him -- other people who might make such modifications to cars. The goal was to ensure that such compartments do not become commonplace. Zimmerman was attacked in the 90s out of an effort to keep email encryption from becoming commonplace. If a technology makes law enforcement more difficult, the creator of that technology should expect to be prosecuted.
Nobody "chose sides" in this case. Anaya is the victim of an vastly overpowered law enforcement system, one that has resulted in the United States having an order of magnitude more prisoners than any other country.
Who's safe to design crypto for then? We've just seen the US, UK, and Canadian governments participate in the slaughter of innocent people and try to hide the evidence with cryptography.
And we've seen the good guys use the same systems to hide from the governments while they leaked these facts.
Only if the cryptographers provide their tools or services directly to people they believe to be using them for illegal purposes. If they simply provide them freely to everyone, it is no problem, since there are obviously perfectly legitimate uses for cryptography as well.
Excuse me, how can you know that he knew it was from drugs?
I would personally be a bit surprised at 800k US Dollars - but it's not completely unlikely that someone would have that kind of cash. Even if they're not dealing/trafficing drugs.
I would also consider that A) Anaya is an master craftsman in his art, hence probably expensive (Even though he doesn't seem ridiculously expensive in the article) B) People with money do use master craftsmen, for what ever reasons they do - maybe it's the work of art - maybe it's because they don't care how much they spend or they want to look "appropriate"
The question is whether a "reasonable person" would believe the money was related to illegal activity. While he may have not known so beyond any doubt, my opinion is that a reasonable person would believe so, based on the money and the actions of the truck's owners. And in fact, Anaya himself admitted that he had suspicious about its origin.
I do not want to bring up the (easy, simple) example of crypto software--too much wiggle room. I do not want to bring up the example of simple dual-use tools (knifemakers and so on). I do not wish to bring up the fast-food industry, nor the energy industry, nor any other industry directly responsible for putting tools of discomfort and self-destruction in the hands of people who may use them for that purpose instead of for good.
Let's use an example which is not so forgiving and ambiguous:
Handgun manufacturers know that their weapons are designed specifically to kill or wound human beings. Do we punish or fine them for their weapons use in a criminal act? If so, why?
Do we really want to establish a legal and, worse, moral norm that any illegal act will require the prosecution of every "enabler" of that act?
Do you want to wish this on society?
IF a handgun maker (or distributor) sells a gun to someone who they know or have strong reason to suspect will use that gun to commit a crime, then YES, they should be held accountable. Ditto for all those other examples. Otherwise, they're fine. If they have no idea what a person will do with the gun, that's ok.
In this case, according to the jury (likely influenced by a prosecution that was superior in quality to the defense, yes), Anaya DID have reason to believe that his product would be used in an illegal act, and therefore he should not have provided it. And indeed, the jury got it right there, because he himself admits that he believed, or at least strongly suspected, that the F150 trap was used for illegal activity.
Again, I'm not saying that the punishment was in any way reasonable; just that the maker of any sort of tool should indeed be held accountable if they provide that tool specifically for illegal use.
Surely, surely, there should be a bigger difference between innocence and guilt than a disclaimer "Now, you boys don't go using this for anything illegal now, you hear?".
Even specific illegal use does a bad job as a metric, considering how arbitrary and unjust many laws considering technology are. What are you going to use a high-density disk for, if not storing downloaded media? Why would ordinary people want CD-Rs, if not for copyright infringement?
If the tool is provided in the conspiratorial sense--"You're having trouble with that bank vault, try this drill!"--I would probably agree with you. But something like this feels very different somehow.
I think there are a few different issues here. First off, I agree with you that to be charged with conspiracy as Anaya was - in other words, to be equally responsible as if he had committed the crime himself, a more specific awareness should be required.
However, I do believe that it should not simply be OK to provide a tool to someone in full knowledge that they will use it to commit a crime. Perhaps more granularity needs to exist in the law for these cases. (Or maybe it even does exist, but was not well applied in this case, possibly due to a poor defense. IANAL.)
Finally, there is the issue of arbitrary and unjust laws concerning technology. I do not disagree with you there at all, but it is a separate issue. It doesn't make sense to say, "It's OK to help people break laws, but only the unjust ones." Instead, the unjust laws themselves should be challenged. Obviously I don't like to see anyone go to jail due to an unjust law, but that doesn't mean that other laws should be distorted to work around it.
Some people here rightly question why he got twice as long sentence as the top guys. This is the key to understanding what really happened in this case (see below).
What case? Pure hearsay by real but <cooperating> drug traffickers, woven into a skillful tale of bespoke swimming pools, deliberately painting him as a drug dealer in the jury's minds. The intimidation charge, btw., is explained: it was needed to discredit the traffickers' initial account of him not being involved. Of course, the true reason for changing their story, i.e. successfully reducing their own sentences, would not have played so well for the prosecutor. The only remotely substantiated 'evidence' against him was that he saw some cash. By that count most bankers ought to be in jail with him.
So we come to the explanation of the glaring discrepancy in the sentencing:
1) His skills were making life difficult for the police, so he had to be <dealt with>, regardless of justice or law. This is why the prosecutor offered to cut sentencing deals with the real traffickers, just to get him.
2) Being innocent and <not cooperating> are the worst crimes in the US of today. The same principle as in Aaron Schwarz case.
Regardless of the details of this case, don't you think that it is just plain wrong that prosecutors can order any 'witness account' they want from most people in their clutches? Years in jail at their discretion is a very powerful inducement, one that must be distorting justice (read framing innocent people) on daily basis.
First, he was too cooperative. As soon as they brought him in for questioning he should have retained a lawyer. 15 compartments? For who? Do you know what they use them for? The answer to all those questions is "Let me ask my lawyer, first".
People watch to much TV. They think the justice system is fair based on the fact that Law and Order wraps up the case in 45 minutes and the perp always confesses. It doesn't work like that. Even from the article the DA takes great joy in sending people to prison. If you are in front of him your innocence is not taken into account. He's trying to send you to prison for as long as possible.
The moral aspect of this story is interesting.
Had he taken up the offer of a luxury bugged storefront with all the equipment he wanted, he would now be a respectable, financially secure citizen instead of languishing for over 24 years in jail. What do such extremely diverse outcomes for the same past activities say about the validity of the law and its implementation process?
The only hitch is that his innocent clients who have every right to hide their jewelery and other valuables in their own car would all have their security knowingly compromised by him.
What does that tell us about the authorities, their attitude towards our privacy rights, and the moral values they expect and enforce?
The whole justice system is badly in need of reform. Monstrosities like the ones signed into law for the war on terror, war on drugs and war on sex offenders need to be scaled back. Also discretion must be removed from the prosecutors. And why not instead of minimal sentence guidance, create a maximum for combined sentence where no bodily harm was inflicted. Like - 3 years. This will infuse some sanity.