Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: FrankTheTank1 on October 10, 2012, 07:33 pm
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GREAT ARTICLE- ENJOY 8)
Getting illegal drugs in mail a crime — if recipient knows it
By Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune reporter
October 10, 2012
Receiving illegal drugs through the mail is clearly a crime — but only if there is proof it was done knowingly and intentionally, legal experts say.
First-class letters and parcels are protected against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and, as such, cannot be opened without a search warrant, said Julie Kenney, regional spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. If there is probable cause to believe the contents of a letter or package violate federal law, postal inspectors can get a search warrant to open it or can ask the sender or recipient for consent to check it, Kenney said. The mail is also checked by drug-sniffing dogs or X-ray machines.
The question of whether accepting a package of illegal substances through the mail can open someone up to a police search or even criminal charges — even if the recipient claims not to know the contents — is among the legal issues surrounding a recent raid on a Beach Park home.
The homeowner, Paul Brown, said the raid, apparently done in search of evidence of pot-dealing, was unjustified.
Police say they got the right house, but that the target wasn't home, and they made no arrests. The search warrant was dependent on someone at the house first accepting a package delivery.
Brown said the package was addressed to someone named "Oscar," whom he doesn't know.
Colin Miller, an associate law professor at the University of South Carolina who edited the latest edition of Illinois Criminal Procedure, said most courts, including those in Illinois, uphold the use of an "anticipatory" warrant, whose execution is triggered by an anticipated action that suggests criminal activity, such as the acceptance of a package containing marijuana.
Some appeals courts don't find sufficient probable cause for such a warrant based solely on the delivery of contraband, Miller said, and might require additional evidence. For a conviction, the courts require other evidence, such as statements from a witness, payments, email or other correspondence showing the recipient anticipated the arrival of the illegal drugs.
"In cases where people come into possession of contraband but don't know it, the courts have consistently found that not a crime," Miller said, citing a well-established legal principle known as mens rea, meaning "guilty mind" or criminal intent. "Just receiving a package without knowing its contents isn't sufficient to be convicted of a crime."
In the case of the Beach Park raid, Miller said that without seeing an investigator's sworn statement describing leads in the case, it's difficult to say whether there was sufficient evidence.
Kenney, the postal inspection service spokeswoman, declined to discuss the Beach Park investigation specifically beyond confirming an agency inspector's involvement. However, she said delivery of drugs through the mail seems to be a growing trend in recent years.
In fiscal year 2011, the most recent reported, the Postal Inspection Service reported 1,327 arrests and 1,102 convictions in drug cases nationwide. Inspectors seized 31,000 pounds of illegal narcotics and more than $14.6 million in drug trafficking proceeds.
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Doesn't stop LE agents trying to snooker you into thinking you're screwed because you signed for a package though.
Don't sign for packages. Prepare a felt tip pen for RTS and package in the hallway/porch for a day. There is no real hurry! Drugs? What drugs officer? I have a package...yes...
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Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
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Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
Looking at it like that makes you feel good haha.
Not that it is ever possible, but it would be cool to know how many packages of drugs are shipped every day and how many are caught.
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Being a little more curious on the statistics of this thing, I found that the USPS moved 172 Billion pieces of mail in 2011, and make 1,327 (we assume drug-related) arrests.... That actually puts the odds of your package getting randomly intercepted to somthing more like 1 in 133 Million. I'm guessing that most of those arrests weren't just magicly discovered. They probably had intel in the first place or the package just simply broke open making your odds even better... I'm guessing more like 1 in 200 million!
This just goes to prove it's people mouths, lack of computer skills and doing stupid things that get them busted. Not what their package looks like
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Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
Being a little more curious on the statistics of this thing, I found that the USPS moved 172 Billion pieces of mail in 2011, and make 1,327 (we assume drug-related) arrests.... That actually puts the odds of your package getting randomly intercepted to somthing more like 1 in 133 Million. I'm guessing that most of those arrests weren't just magicly discovered. They probably had intel in the first place or the package just simply broke open making your odds even better... I'm guessing more like 1 in 200 million!
This just goes to prove it's people mouths, lack of computer skills and doing stupid things that get them busted. Not what their package looks like
The odds of getting hit by lighting in any given year are: 1 in 1 million.
It would seem you are 133 times more likely to be hit by lighting than to be convicted for acquiring drugs on the Silk Road.
However I think this is kind of a statistical fallacy since you are a member of a special targeted group rather than a random person from the population. i.e. this particular lightening tends to hit drug consumers/vendors disproportionately vs the entire population.
Nevertheless... And against that we have the fact SR vendors use sophisticated techniques and planning to ensure their packages are less likely to be intercepted. I would say SR vendors who follow guidance are about ten to hundred times less likely to be intercepted as opposed to the clowns from Topix who are largely our competition (lol).
This is the knowledge the U.S government and other States are extremely keen to prevent broader awareness of. They don't like people knowing they have no real control, and that Operation Pangea is just a big PR stunt with about as much effect as a gnat's bite on an elephant hide, let alone a crafty platypus plot.
I echo your sentiments about OpSec. it is opsec that will determine who gets busted and who doesn't. Ideally a vendor should operate cleanly, completely separated from his or her previous drug connects.
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Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
Well, not really. Yes they process 300 million pieces a day but packages containing contraband are much more likely to be found because of drug dogs and x ray machines, you would need to know how mnay illegal parcels are processed a day and compare that to how many are intercepted.
The number you got represents the proportion of parcels that are intercepted and found to contain drugs, not the odds of getting arrested for having drugs sent to you, although that number is also probably very very low, just not that low!
Sorry to be "that guy" but I took several statistics courses in college so I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to incorrect stats.
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Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
Well, not really. Yes they process 300 million pieces a day but packages containing contraband are much more likely to be found because of drug dogs and x ray machines, you would need to know how mnay illegal parcels are processed a day and compare that to how many are intercepted.
The number you got represents the proportion of parcels that are intercepted and found to contain drugs, not the odds of getting arrested for having drugs sent to you, although that number is also probably very very low, just not that low!
Sorry to be "that guy" but I took several statistics courses in college so I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to incorrect stats.
+karma to the stat geek :D
Getting the true number of people who post product is essentially impossible as far as I can see. I have heard of (3) busts to SR/OVDB vendors, but every one of them was related to something they were screwing up in RL. The problem is that this is a biased sample since somebody intercepted for sending contraband through the post might have been thrown into prison and wouldn't be able to tell us they were caught for something they screwed up on SR for x months/years even if they wanted to. Vendors appear and disappear all the time due to restocking waves, pressure for timeout, long cons, identity obfuscation and so forth so there's no way to distinguish all that noise from people who were intercepted. I mean, there is no benchmark that I can think of.
Wow, if there were 1,327 arrests, and the USPS processes 300 million peices of mail per DAY, then your odds of getting arrested are .000000012% or 12 in 100,000,000. Damn! Those are some pretty good odds ;)
Most of those arrests are for large shipments of drugs, too. Your chances of being arrested for something like 5 ecstasy pills or a gram of coke are basically zero. They'll confiscate the package but it would make no sense to spend resources on a controlled delivery and arrest for what would amount to a sentence of probation.
That might be true... in some circumstances... but as kmfkewm points out, you shouldn't really say it is. I mean, where do you mean it is true? The United States? Which state, which county? There are too many variables jurisdiction-wise to make any remarks like this. For example, you can get a short couple of weeks/months in prison for possessing 1 gram of heroin in the USA, hell maybe even hours of community service, but in other parts of the USA under certain circumstances this would be 20-30 years in prison.
/mini-rant/
That the law is so incredibly variable is largely due to local politics, and that the written law bears little or no similarity to sentences passed down in practice, makes the concept of the law being a deterrent a complete nonsense of the highest order. This is not a phenomena unique to the USA either. In many cases you'd have to be a legal scholar to know whether the payoff for being a product vendor is appropriate or not. For example; let's say you receive 20 grams of weed. You are a consumer who tokes occasionally, this is your winter stash because SR vendor had a good deal going and you took advantage of it. But you happen to be within 500-1000 meters of a high school, and the weed was not sent within your state but over state lines. Now you could be looking at serious time.
Not to piss people off who imagine they've done their research, but in practice knowing the "possession quantity" in your jurisdiction doesn't even scratch the surface of how horrendously convoluted and inconsistent the justice system really is. Could you build a online calculator that gave you an exact number of months/years n for your product quantity and state? It doesn't exist. The truth is that the biggest factor in your trial could be what side of the bed the judge woke up on that morning, there's a study showing that trials in the morning deliver considerably harsher sentencing than those after lunch.
Laws should be simple, clear, prescriptive and universal under all circumstances, and they sure ain't. It'd benefit LE and market participants alike to have clarity, but politics fucks it all up and the result is a higher rate of violent crime "cos better safe than sorry", it's a sorry truth that witnesses to crimes get popped all the time because the shooter doesn't know what the alternative might be, even though they'd be good for a couple of months or even years if it meant they didn't have to knock somebody off. You can't be equivocating when you have a decision like that on your hands, it's a grisly mathematical or economic decision. You'd be thinking "Two or Twenty", and if you don't know the answer you'll probably pull the trigger and rationalize it later.
This is where 3 strikes evolved from in reality, a colossal failure of the American justice system to be remotely lucid and logical. People don't actually like killing people, the army searches for people who do and even they have a tough time finding genuine ones, all that 'gangsta bravado' is just fear and machismo stupidity, but that's part of how it happens sometimes. When I see statues of lady Justitia with the blindfold on, I don't think that is *quite* what was intended for 'blind justice' to mean, but yeah, it sure is fucking blind as a bat. The American justice system is one of the most corrupt in the world despite its incredibly pretentious assumptions about being better than other jurisdictions, but I mean 'legal corruption', it being structurally defunct, not people handing back envelopes with cash although that happens too. The law exists for lawyers. If you don't believe that, you're naive. In my eyes both the prosecution and defendant are victims of the 'justice system'. Most people will never believe this until the 'justice system' happens to them. Then they realize their ideas of American exceptionalism Re: American Justice are a steaming heap of shit of the most pungent order.
You'll have to talk to Stoned Emo, but I think a single tab of LSD means the rest of your natural life in prison in Russia. Those people are mental, as in they have to have some weird mental illness. Reminds me of the Tim Leary quote about LSD causing psychosis, just not in the people taking it.
/end mini-rant/