From the WSJ:

After a three-week trial in New York City, Mr. Ulbricht was found guilty in February of seven criminal charges, including conspiracies to sell drugs, launder money and hack computers.

So a gun, knife or rope manufacturer should be label anytime someone misuses their products?

You forgot "9/11 was an inside job"

Except for that you are speaking of what really amount to common carriers which transport bits without much worry about what they are.

Now if Comcast was in the business of advertising they have the best internet pipe for looking for slaves, chemical weapons or terrorists for hire... you might have a point.

There is a big difference between something legitimate being used for illegitimate purposes and something being built explicitly for illegitimate purposes... this is why guns tend to be legal while building a bomb is not.

There is also the issue of noise in the signal and filtering of it.

While a good radar system is probably able to pick up a bird or a drone flying about, that also means it could probably see a baseball, a kite, or someone throwing a 12"x12" piece of aluminum foil into the air... and that in addition to general noise which may get picked up.

Rather than have all such items show up on an operators radar, there is likely a threshold that only objects over a certain size or moving at a certain speed (or both) end up being 'visible'.

So your best/only response is to accuse me of being a paid shill?

Truly now we see the depth of your intellect... though I doubt even a new born could drown in such waters if one were to try.

Never can it be that someone on their own might had a different opinion, no, never that.

Or would you like to cite specific and tangible EVIDENCE of what you claimed? I hear lots of claims of the NSA being involved yet so little to back it up... that must be part of why the judge (another NSA shill?) rejected those claims.

First off, even getting that laptop was fruit of the poisoned tree because they got it using evidence the NSA gathered through illegal wiretapping programs.

Citation?

Even then, Ulbreit admitted he built the site. He just didn't run it during the period in question. The entire point of the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" is that anyone can use it.

So he admitted buying the gun and evidence puts him at the murder scene... but you are still going to fight the idea that he pulled the trigger? You can be an accessory to a crime without directly taking part.

But then lets just ignore the other evidence on his laptop which did show him being a more active runner of the site than you suggest.

Besides, the site did use Tor correctly.

Really? So you've personally audited it and certified that in your capacity as an AC Tor expert?

FYI: Posting to Stackoverflow with your own name when trying to learn how to setup a Tor hidden service isn't the brightest thing when you are trying to not have the site tied to you.

It didn't help because the NSA has infiltrated Tor, which should surprise no one, because it was originally built by the US DOD anyway.

Like many, I'm still waiting to see/hear of these secret backdoors in Tor that were somehow inserted not through rouge check-ins... but through large checks to the Tor foundation.

Lemme guess... 9/11 was an inside job?

Secret evidence, discovery denied for obvious things...

When you get a hold of the accused laptop which is logged in and has ample evidence of being an administrator of the site in question... what exculpatory evidence do you think existed that could have gotten him off that he was denied?

And they proved Tor is not secure; arguments to the contrary are just not convincing anymore.

Tor is secure if you use it right... many do not. Bitcoin however we did find is far from anonymous and the evidence in the blockchain could be used against you years or even decades after your illicit purchase.

Exactly... and even if they happened to create a perfect system on day one, the training required to get the average person to be able to use it would be herculean task.

It's hard enough convincing many of our parents not to type in their username & password to just everywhere "Look for the lock icon in the address bar" we used to say, until malicious sites started setting the icon of the site to a lock.

PKI is fantastic when it's largely automated and transparent... and I trust my parents web browser and OS's binary signature checking far more than I do their ability to learn how to actively participate in such a system.

We are talking about the same national government that couldn't rollout a website with major issues, on time or for a reasonable cost... why do you think a national PKI would be any easier or efficient to implement & rollout?

I don't understand why drivers are even needed any more.

For the same reason you still have plenty of humans working to build cars... the auto & rail labor unions are rather strong.

Now OS/2 I'll grant you, IBM fumbled hard on that one...

For the kids in the room you'll need to be more explicit, or I can.

One of it's biggest failings was claiming that it was "a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows"... which is all fine and dandy except for it helps to remove the motivation to build much of anything specifically targeting for OS/2, rather than Windows... and being an 'also runs' OS doesn't get you much traction for adoption.

Because there are those who believe that voting today is just to gosh darn hard.

Too hard to find your polling place and go there during election hours.

Too hard to request an absentee ballot if you don't be able to make it on election day.

Too hard to come up with a photo id to prove you are who you say you are.

Here in Washington state we ignore all three of those and mail the ballot straight to your house and give you 3 weeks to return it to be counted. No possibility of fraud there!

Sometimes its not ser by the channel, but by the cable provider.

Up here near Seattle a few years back Frontier Communications acquired the Verizon FIOS they changed a few things, including the DRM settings for ALL channels they carried except for the must carry ones to the point that could only view a recording on the same PC that recorded it... So boycotting the channel isn't always feasible.

I don't know if this is still the case as a short time later I moved and now have the joy that is Comcast *rolls eyes *

Well then you aren't you lucky I provided a link to the research for you.

Actually... you didn't, I even referenced the sort of 'proof' I was expecting from folks like you as part of another convo.

None of the rest of your comment bears reading,

Really? So you admit defeat as you refuse to continue to engage? Good to know... but wait...

as its A) bullshit,

You realize that repeating the same claim over and over again doesn't make it true... right?

and B) all countered by research that you still havent yet, have you?

If you had bothered to read what I said and considered it, the falseness of your underling claims would be quite evident... but given your refusal to read what I said, is there a purpose to me saying much more?

I will finally say this... you and the other hoplophobes have lost not unlike those seeking to prevent same-sex marriage to be recognized legally in the US as the courts keep on upholding these individual rights, more so in fact in the case of the second amendment with Heller & McDonald which were rather broad, something that SSM supporters can only hope for from SCOTUS this summer... but again, why let facts get in the way of a good old fashion hate fest?