Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: F104 on February 25, 2012, 04:32 am
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I have noticed that in a fairly short time, there are more and more postings that offer or lead to manufacturing precursors. I have been here a long time and never saw them, now suddenly it feels like there’s a lot.
If you get or even seek drug precursors and your would-be supplier is LE, you risk attention that dwarfs their interest in solo buyers.
Run from anyone who says “I have access to many things, send me a list.” Your list shows intent. If that person is LE, they may or may not have the material to sell you. Even if they don’t, your offer of money to buy the chemicals is tantamount to an actual purchase. Every now and then there’s a story about some dumbass who sold bogus drugs to a cop. Bogus doesn’t matter. Somehow under the law he was selling contraband because he intended the buyer to believe it was contraband. If that’s possible, there’s no limit. If you’re detailed enough, just wanting to do something is a crime. “Attempt” has standing in criminal law. There’s a lot of things you don’t have to do, only attempt, in order to be arrested, and the laws defining ‘attempt’ were written to help police make those arrests.
You: here’s a list of things I want. (they will make a contraband drug)
Seller: I can send all that to you, how does 100 units of money sound?
You: I will pay 100 units for that
You: …and here’s an address to send them to.
Seller: TYVM (the seller may not be one person but a group: a cop or two, a prosecutor, maybe a crime lab chemist)
Read up on conspiracy laws, both the general theory and the ones in your jurisdiction. It’s mind-blowing. One time, conspiracy laws made sense but the wording of the conspiracy laws we live under now are so broad and so vague they can’t be constitutional, yet “the government” can and will use them to ruin you and send you to prison. Courts let the police do as they wish with conspiracy laws, which are mostly disconnected from preventing harm or encouraging a good society, instead working primarily as conviction factories without even an expectation that they have a rational connection to human motivation, will, or activity.
In a worst-case situation, a person on SR will offer money to get a precursor chemical and the LE seller will get the buyer’s address. Layer on all the security concepts you want, the fact is LE now has a physical location and someone will need to go there to get a package or what they think is a package. LE won’t stake out a P. O. box to arrest you for an 1/8 of bud but if you’re getting enough iodine (say) to theoretically make a kilo of meth, holy shit you better believe they will sink their claws in you.
The laws they will charge you under will add up to punishment almost equivalent to having that kilo of meth. (when they arrest you, they will play up any SR angle they can, such as “look how we infiltrated it” to make users worry everyone they deal with is a cop)
You don’t have to possess the drug. Saying or writing you want it or want to make it or want the chemicals to make it have become crimes almost the same as actually possessing the drug. Think of the children.
If you know how to make drugs, you’re smart enough to be paranoid enough not to buy precursors here. Do you really think it’s going to be that easy? And if you make drugs, you already figured out how to get what you need. If any of the precursor offers are from LE, they’re targeting either noobs who want to “break into it” or experienced cooks who are exhausted jumping through hoops and hope for an easier way.
LE won’t post an ad asking to be shown your lab but if you answer an ad offering chemicals for sale, you could be issuing an invitation to show it to them someday soon. Pretend you are that person – imagine your truth is the story they are telling you about who they are and where they got the chemicals – then ask if it’s realistic, would you actually do or say that in the same situation? LE can lie all over the map, American law does not restrict how duplicitous they can be. They cannot entrap you, which means coax you to decide to do a crime (“forming intent”), but if you say you want to do a crime – once you have formed that intent - there are few limits on what that cannot do to “help” you. It won’t be entrapment then. Perhaps just being on SR clears the entrapment barrier: a prosecutor could argue the whole purpose of the site is to break the law so intent is established the second time you logged on to SR.
Say a meth vendor is LE. An SR buyer orders meth from him so now LE has an address for a meth user. Under a different identity, LE offers meth precursors for sale. The same buyer expresses an interest. Now LE can make an arrest with real horsepower and no drugs or chemicals are needed. But if they take the step to ship a chemical and even if that’s the only one the buyer has, a raid will net a “meth lab.” Obviously, delivery, work, and living addresses must all be different but if the cops want to and they have a budget for it, they will connect those dots too. The online connection breaks down if the prosecution is unable to match the suspect (his computer, data, connection) to the online identity seeking/getting meth and meth chemicals, but they still identified a physical address and invaded it.
None of what I wrote is original with me but seeing so many offers for drug precursors made me think of these plausible scenarios to explain the upswing. I’d say, stay focused on your purpose here & stick with what you know.
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"Your offer of money to buy chemicals is tantamount to an actual purchase"-
No, it's not. As a matter of law, it's not the same thing.
"If you’re detailed enough, just wanting to do something is a crime."
No it's not. As a matter of law, you can want all you want. As long as you don't make an overt act in furtherance of the crime while you want it to be committed.
"Bogus doesn’t matter"
As a matter of law, it does matter. In a variety of ways. I think what you're trying to say is that when a criminal defendant sells a product that a reasonable person under similar circumstances would believe that the purported value is illegal, the product is as a matter of law considered to be the purported illegal product. Even still, selling purported illegal drugs that are factually legal is much less serious than selling the real illegal drugs.
"Seller: TYVM (the seller may not be one person but a group: a cop or two, a prosecutor, maybe a crime lab chemist)"
If it even matters, a prosecutor or crime lab chemist would never be selected for this job. They have a field of expertise. They don't solicit people to commit crimes.
"so broad and so vague they can’t be constitutional"
This is your opinion. The SCOTUS has ruled against this opinion enough already. Conspiracy is a very easy crime to prosecute, but that doesn't make it vague. It's very specific.
"Courts let the police do as they wish with conspiracy laws"
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain in detail? Are you saying that police circumvent constitutional protections of private citizens when pursuing crimes that involve conspiracies, but not crimes that lack the conspiracy element?
"conspiracy laws, which are mostly disconnected from preventing harm or encouraging a good society, instead working primarily as conviction factories without even an expectation that they have a rational connection to human motivation, will, or activity."
Conspiracy is a very clear cut legal concept. What definition of conspiracy are you referring to?
"You don’t have to possess the drug. Saying or writing you want it or want to make it or want the chemicals to make it have become crimes almost the same as actually possessing the drug. Think of the children."
This is vague, but legally not totally inaccurate. You can commit crimes through:
1. Asking
2. Helping
3. Conspiring
4. Doing
Conspiracy is easy to prosecute, but asking is very hard to prosecute.
I really like this article you wrote. It raises some very good points. For instance, the prosecutor's hypothetical argument that SR log ons are evidence of intent. And I agree with your opinion to stay away from buying precursors. But then there is the question: Where would a person buy precursors, if they wanted to?
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Even still, selling purported illegal drugs that are factually legal is much less serious than selling the real illegal drugs.
Have any citations to back that up? I am 99% certain that if you sell a kilo of sugar to a cop and say it is cocaine, you are going to be charged for selling a kilo of cocaine. I am pretty sure the law doesn't give a fuck what you are actually selling if you sell it as something illegal, as far as illegal drugs go.
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As far as I'm concerned being a vendors means *never* using your address on here.
Not everybody might agree, but 'Paranoid Pine' thinks it's the best way to ensure security.
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Absolutely agreed, Pine.
I'm sure there is the odd vendor out there who would do this, but to me it's craziness. It's like waving a spotlight at the clouds with a big fucking cop badge on it.....
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thank the flying spaghetti monster I don't live stateside.
In Europe, LE's focus is on stopping organized crime (read: trafficking of cocaine or heroine by the tonne, manufacturing, large scale dealing, etc).
The selling of semi-(il)-legal psychoactives in small quantities is the least of their worries. Except if you're stupid and start snorting inside the police station or something like that. Just don't be that stupid and take care of your own security.
On a side note: I would love to go to burning man this year, how's the situation with LE over there? I read police patrol undercover on the playa? Are they more "relaxed" during the festival?
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in most of Europe police are not even allowed to do reverse sting operations against customers. Hell in parts of Europe it isn't even illegal to buy drugs for personal use. U.S.A. is really is a shitty place to live if you want freedom. Has large amounts of Jesus though.
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in most of Europe police are not even allowed to do reverse sting operations against customers. Hell in parts of Europe it isn't even illegal to buy drugs for personal use. U.S.A. is really is a shitty place to live if you want freedom. Has large amounts of Jesus though.
Premo bible belts too
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lol i prefer the flying spaghetti monster :-)
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Paranoia is a good thing!
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(when they arrest you, they will play up any SR angle they can, such as “look how we infiltrated it” to make users worry everyone they deal with is a cop)
The SR is probably swarming with DEA types. It seems kind of silly to expect them to advertise their operations or success rate.
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Even still, selling purported illegal drugs that are factually legal is much less serious than selling the real illegal drugs.
Have any citations to back that up? I am 99% certain that if you sell a kilo of sugar to a cop and say it is cocaine, you are going to be charged for selling a kilo of cocaine. I am pretty sure the law doesn't give a fuck what you are actually selling if you sell it as something illegal, as far as illegal drugs go.
Yep! Intent to sell a counterfeit substance.
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(when they arrest you, they will play up any SR angle they can, such as “look how we infiltrated it” to make users worry everyone they deal with is a cop)
The SR is probably swarming with DEA types. It seems kind of silly to expect them to advertise their operations or success rate.
I over-edited my text. I meant they will publicize the bust as being a strike into SR territory, using PR to disrupt member confidence.
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I don't think they're going for "disruption" or "undermining member confidence", SR has become something "iconic" representing all the evil interwebz. They'll lay low, gather themselves, position themselves, maybe a buyer popped here and a vendor popped there just to gain better access. Until they're ready to swoop in in one big fucking media-friendly "international effort against internet drug trafficking".
Trust me, they dun wanna disrupt this site, they want to wipe it out for the world to see, with all the media attention that goes with it, and they wanna do it in a way sending a clear message to all would-be successors.
SR is highly dangerous to them. What would happen if word gets out that adult people that decide to use a certain substance now and then aren't necessarily child-corrupting, gun-toating, maniacal threats to society always on the verge of a drug-induced psychotic breakdown going on killing sprees? That's their whole communications model.
Guys going through weeklong well thought out efforts to get coins, stay anonymous, with lots of patience waiting for a package so they can have a good night at the club are the antithesis of what particularly the US government would have people believe what it means to be a drug user.
Everything that contradicts their projected image of "try it today, and you're a dying fiend sucking cock for a fix tomorrow" is to them, what a "round earth" model was to the Catholic Church a couple hundred years ago.
Just my 2 cents
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Guys going through weeklong well thought out efforts to get coins, stay anonymous, with lots of patience waiting for a package so they can have a good night at the club are the antithesis of what particularly the US government would have people believe what it means to be a drug user.
+1
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Guys going through weeklong well thought out efforts to get coins, stay anonymous, with lots of patience waiting for a package so they can have a good night at the club are the antithesis of what particularly the US government would have people believe what it means to be a drug user.
+1
I second that emotion!
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Even still, selling purported illegal drugs that are factually legal is much less serious than selling the real illegal drugs.
Have any citations to back that up? I am 99% certain that if you sell a kilo of sugar to a cop and say it is cocaine, you are going to be charged for selling a kilo of cocaine. I am pretty sure the law doesn't give a fuck what you are actually selling if you sell it as something illegal, as far as illegal drugs go.
you would be charged, yes. charged =/= convicted :S