I’m not trolling but it’s easy to use slander against those who contradict your ramblings with common sense. It was Justice Holmes who said the life of the law is not logic but experience. Your reasoning is an empty shell. It is experience which teaches me and teaches our community that people who use Tor and Bitcoin are up to no good.

Every person is free to walk into every alley he or she chooses. And every police officer worth his salt will conclude that the person walking into the back alley on a moonless night is up to no good. And your protestations and Eric’s protestations are not fooling anyone…and most importantly they aren’t going to fool the jury in Ulbricht’s case. He’s going to go to jail. He’s going to jail because he’s a criminal. And it’s only those who present a false face who pretend otherwise.

I have the right to enter any public place. If you prefer to call some of them back alleys and claim I’m a criminal by the very nature of exercising my freedom to walk around, one of us is extremely unclear on how freedoms work in these United States.

Similarly software that does not violate the law is definitionally lawful (or “legal” if you prefer). The use of Tor or Bitcoin or Dogecoin or Paypal or United Miles are all lawful until there’s a law against them. If you prefer to think that those who use other than “US Dollars” for ALL transactions are criminals, again you are unclear on how freedoms work in these United States.

Cryptology is the study. Perhaps you meant cryptography. No matter – all in this country are allowed its use, because at its fundamental level ALL software and ALL cryptography is mathemtatics, and we ARE allowed to “do math.” If you feel that doing some forms of math are criminal, then again you are unclear on how freedoms work in these united states.

I understand you’re trolling, but in order to successfully troll, you must take a position that appears on its surface to be based in reason. Yours may work well somewhere, but not here.

Regards

Ehud

There is no confusion just equation based upon experience. People engaged in honest activity don’t go into back alleys to do their deeds and honest people don’t use Tor and Bitcoin. I realize that there is a huge public relations push to “sex up” programs like Tor and Bitcoin to make anonymization “cool” but it never will be cool except to those engaged in unlawful activity. Law abiding activity doesn’t need to be anonymous and so anonymity adds no value to lawful activity.

The challenge with Tor in particular is that there is some unlawful activity that the USA likes (such as that which gives China and Russia trouble) and unlawful activity that the USA doesn’t like (such as Silk Road). The problem is that cryptology is value-neutral in the sense that it has no ability to distinguish between the two types of unlawful activity….a bit is a bit. There is no way to only allow those who are friendly to the USA into the on-line back alley that Tor represents.

You confuse “undeniable unlawful activity” with anonymization.

Ulbricht claim is the functional equivalent of the guy in the dim-lit alley selling fake Rolex watches from underneath his trenchcoat averring that because he doesn’t actually own the watches but only gets a comission on the sale between two other parties he’s not a criminal but an entrepreneur. Such a situation is measurably different situation from the hawker in the souk who peddles some knockoff Louis Vuitton bags to cruise ship tourists along with the other sea shells and plastic flamingos. This isn’t because of some Grokster-like test about the ratio of infringing to non-infringing uses–this is because Ulbricht’s intention was wholly criminal.