Forbes has a fascinating interview with The Dread Pirate Roberts, the assumed name of the purported CEO of the Silk Road, a website for the anonymous sale of prohibited drugs and other contraband. Anonymity is the key, and the site relies upon the digital currency Bitcoin. The Dread Pirate Roberts argues that he is motivated by his libertarian philosophy to advance personal and economic freedom, and the opportunity to make what is probably millions of dollars.
The Pirate thinks he is going to change the world in favor of freedom. U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is demanding that the government take down the Silk Road. As this anonymous commerce grows, it may become the alternative justification the NSA/DEA/CIA/FBI/IRS needs to justify to an angry public their massive invasions of privacy.
Take ten minutes and read this and think about the future, and the lessons of the past.
Kudos to Andy Greenberg of the Forbes staff.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Is the Silk Road the infrastructure of a Libertarian future?
Friday, June 22, 2012
Federal agents point gun at head of 11-year old girl: Obama Justice Department says, Okay
Reason.com has a report on the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on the suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress brought by the Avila family against the U.S.
In 2007, DEA agents mistakenly raided their southern California home. Agents burst into the bedrooms of two girls -- one 11-years old and the other 14-years old -- yelled in their typical fashion "get down on the fucking ground," held a police weapon to the head of the 11-year old and dragged her from her bed because she was paralyzed with fear, and then handcuffed them, and forced them to lie face down on the floor for half an hour, while they ransacked the house.
The Obama Administration defended the agents, and in its brief to the court minimized and trivialized the agents' conduct. Dragging a girl out of her bed is described as "assisting her to the floor." The conduct was called "entirely reasonable under the circumstances."
The brief was signed in June 2011 by Laura Duffy, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California appointed by Obama at the urging of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.), and by Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division (appointed in April 2009). On Feb. 27, 2012, West was appointed Acting Associate Attorney General, filling the number three job in the Department of Justice.
Does the Obama Administration have any sense that accountability for the conduct of law enforcement officers is necessary for the law to have legitimacy?
Thursday, June 30, 2011
U.S. Sentencing Commission approves retroactive crack sentencing guidelines
On June 30, 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission unanimously adopted proposed sentencing guidelines that, effective Nov. 1, 2011, would allow prisoners to petition to modify their sentences. This is good news because some law enforcement groups had opposed this move. This is good news because perhaps 12,000 current federal prisoners may get their very long sentences reduced by an average of three years! This is good news because this is one of the biggest steps that the Sentencing Commission could take.
But, sadly, this step is only a small step in the longer journey for justice. First of all, this change will have no effect on the statutory mandatory minimums. Those who are serving a 10 year sentence because they were convicted of distributing, or conspiring to distribute 50+ grams of crack cocaine, will still have to serve the 10 years. Even though the new mandatory minimum sentence starts at 280 grams, because Congress did not make the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive, the statutory minimum sentence in effect at the time of the defendant's crime is not going to change. Congress may have recognized that sentences of 10 years for less than 280 grams were unjust, by contemporary standards, by changing the law but they did nothing about those cases already decided over the previous 24 years.
But the second, and bigger, point is that the enormous focus on the sentencing of crack cocaine cases has been tragically misplaced, because it has focused on the wrong "end" of the justice system. The heart of the problem is that U.S. Attorney offices around the country bring small-scale cocaine cases in federal courts where they can get extraordinarily harsh sentences because of the small quantity triggers (now 28 grams and 280 grams for minimum sentences of 5 and 10-years). A boatload of cocaine seized by the Coast Guard might contain one ton, that is, 1,000,000 grams! The team that organized that shipment is a large scale dealer and they belong in federal court. Small cases do not belong in federal court.
The thousands of small cases brought every year mean that DEA agents and other federal investigators and prosecutors are not working on major cases. Sadly, it seems everybody in Justice and Congress is satisfied with the handful of agents bringing a handful of major cases in a year.
Major cases are vitally important because the people involved are often involved in assassinations of police and political leaders, wholesale bribery and corruption, extensive money laundering, fabulous tax evasion and so forth. But federal agents are unavailable to do those cases when they are busy with thousands of neighborhood crack dealers (and their girl friends) -- dealers who are easily, quickly, and usually replaced soon after their arrests.
People concerned about the "injustice" of the excessively long "crack" sentences should focus their outrage on the U.S. Justice Department which tolerates wasting expensive federal anti-crime resources on unimportant criminals, not be outraged at the federal judges or the sentencing guidelines that have nothing to do with case selection.
Many fewer that one in a hundred American "criminals" go to federal court. The offenders who go to federal court should be those who commit terribly serious crimes. The federal cases should be those involving very complex schemes that require the smartest attorneys and investigators to unravel, and those that have nationwide or international implications.
A guy selling crack cocaine out of a local crack house does not belong in federal court. The crack was probably made in the back room of the crack house or a few blocks away. Local cases belong in local courts. Even the guy who is the biggest crack dealer in the city typically does not belong in federal court. If the Justice Department succeeded in shutting down the operators of the international cocaine pipeline that has been keeping every crack house in America fully supplied then it might be appropriate for it to work on totally local cases.
I commend the U.S. Sentencing Commission for having the courage to make the changes that it can in the face of continued political grandstanding about "crack dealers." Today, a lot of minor criminals selected almost at random by the Justice Department and now serving inordinately long sentences will have a shot at getting home to their families a few years sooner. This is not trivial.
But I fear that too many justice advocates and legal commentators will behave as though this is a problem of the justice system that is now largely solved.
In a way, this is kind of the like distinguishing those who are hurt and those who are responsible in the current financial crisis that has been going on for the past three years. American families lost $9 trillion in wealth in the lost value in their homes, pension funds, investments, etc. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and are still out of work. So unable to pay bills, they are getting evicted from apartments and homes, and being foreclosed on. But the leaders and players in the financial industry who were responsible for the decisions that brought about the calamity are getting record bonuses and salaries, and not being brought into court to fight for their life savings.
Why does our political system not demand accountability from the powerful when they misbehave, but harshly punishes the the low-level people when they go bad?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Major New U.S. Efforts in Mexico -- Intelligence drones
The U.S. is flying intelligence gathering drones over Mexico, wiretapping Mexican suspects, and U.S. agents are carrying weapons contrary to official Mexican policy, The New York Times confirmed in a report March 16.
Yet U.S. agencies are not cooperating with each other - a chronic issue that is 40 years old -- but the DEA has time and resources to raid dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries in Montana and California.
Perhaps this is part of the public relations of the Obama Administration making up to Mexico's President Calderon who was humiliated by
leaked U.S. State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.
Monday, February 14, 2011
"Free Exercise" of Religion?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Familiar, comforting words to us all. One of the great glories of our American way of life. Yada, yada.
If your religion uses a sacrament that is prepared in Brazil and is called hoasca (sometimes called ayahuasca), "free exercise" becomes a very loose term.
Recently, after ten years, the American members of "O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal"(UDV) finally worked out a settlement with various federal agencies on how hoasca can be imported, stored and used. Check it out, and find out how long you can say "free exercise of religion" before you gag with shame.
Imagine what DEA's regulations would look like if it were to recognize the religious use of marijuana in the near future.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
White House suggests Obama backs Leonhart- but doesn't get it
The Daily Caller reported August 18,2010 that the White House is sticking with the nomination of Michelle Leonhart, who has been the Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration since 2007, and Deputy Administrator (the No. 2) since 2003. A few weeks ago, numerous groups called for the President to withdraw her nomination.
The story in the Daily Caller, however, has mis-analyzed why she is wrong for the job. It is not simply that she has overseen DEA while it has conducted raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers in the past year, in apparent disregard of the October 19, 2009 memorandum from Deputy Attorney General David Ogden.
The bigger issue is that Leonhart has demonstrated that she is unable and unwilling to take on the major job of the next DEA Administrator, which is to work with the states in developing medical marijuana laws that make sense. During her entire career in DEA management -- since 1997 -- she has acted as though the calendar were stuck on October 1996 -- before the medical marijuana law that passed in November 1996 and received one million votes more than Bill Clinton did. Her leadership of DEA has ignored the medical marijuana laws passed in state after state after state, and ignored the hundreds of scientific studies conducted that establish the various medical benefits of marijuana.
On the key challenge that the DEA has to address going forward, she is utterly unqualified. That the Obama Administration does not recognize this is very disturbing.
I suspect that what compelled Obama to pick Leonhart is that he could not find anyone competent who was willing to take the lead in reforming an antiquated agency staffed with zealots committed to a hopeless mission. The rumor in D.C. is that everyone they asked turned down the offer.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
DEA and National Security
The Washington Post reports on the reorganization of the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.
The NSC will bring new agencies to the table such as DEA.
Given the centrality of opium and heroin prohibition to the Afghanistan conflict and the prohibition violence in Mexico, this makes a lot of sense.
Elevating the issue can help clarify that the intrinsic ineffectuality of drug prohibition is a serious aggravation of our national security.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
U.S. - Mexico Anti-Drug Blah Blah
Monday, U.S. and Mexican customs officials "unveiled a cooperative effort," to fight the "escalating levels of violence that have turned parts of Mexico into war zones and spread as far as North Texas," reports the Dallas Morning News. The headline: "U.S., Mexico launch unprecedented effort to disrupt cross-border weapons smuggling." (emphasis added).
Will Customs' (ICE) efforts to stop the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico be any more successful than the interdiction of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine from Mexico to the U.S.?
I have no confidence it will. What continues to strike me how the news media and Members of Congress remain blind to the incompetent and half-hearted nature of America's anti-drug effort. It is as though if they looked at how the money is being wasted by ICE, the DEA and the Justice Department by not doing what they are supposed to be doing, they might have to think about the logic of the effort, too.
Texas has four Federal judicial districts. Close to the border, we should expect that the federal drug investigators and prosecutors would be focused on the high-level trafficking organizations that operate along the Rio Grande.
Because of the racial disparity in the Federal government's cocaine prosecutions and the fact that so many of the crack defendants are minor participants in penny ante drug organizations, my July 2006 White Paper was successful in calling upon the Sentencing Commission to look at degree to which small scale cases dominate the federal investigations.
Thus there is interesting data that reveals the small quantities involved in Federal cocaine cases nationwide, compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The average weight of crack involved in a federal crack case (examining all of the 4,262 federal crack cases brought in FY 2006) was 51 grams. This is just one gram more than the 50 grams that trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. How little is 51 grams? It is the weight of a common candy bar, nothing that a major dealer would waste their time with. It is too tiny an amount to make into a Federal case when cocaine is smuggled into the country by the metric ton (1,000,000 grams), that is, too tiny an amount if your head is screwed on right!
Shockingly, nationwide, 35.1 percent of all crack cases involve less than 25 grams.
In FY 2006, the federal prosecutors in Texas were largely wasting their time (and our money):
In Western Texas, there were 127 crack cases, 61 less than 25 grams -- 48.0 percent.
In Eastern Texas, there were 94 crack cases, 44 less than 25 grams -- 46.8 percent.
In Southern Texas, there were 70 crack cases, 31 less than 25 grams -- 44.3 percent.
In Northern Texas, there were 67 crack cases, 21, less than 25 grams -- 31.1 percent.
Remember, the State of Texas knows how to investigate, prosecute and punish drug dealers. They certainly can investigate and prosecute neighborhood crack dealers. And Texas has one of the largest prison systems in the United States, indeed one of the largest prison systems in the world.
Yet in FY 2006, federal prosecutors in Northern and Eastern Texas actually brought more crack cases than powder cocaine cases. They spent more time in federal court with candy bar crack cases than with Mexican cartel leaders. And that means that more minor players fill federal prison cells than cartel leaders. What a waste of the federal effort!
Unfortunately there is no comparable data for marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine. We are unable to see whether ICE, the DEA and Justice Department are especially incompetent and wasteful fighting cocaine by focusing on local crack cases, or if this misfocus is the case with other major drugs of abuse.
Is it any wonder the violent Mexican cartels feel they can operate with impunity in Mexico, and the United States?
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