If simple, basic police methods sufficed here, then why the massive dragnet surveillance the rest of us are caught up in?
Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying.
And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia.
The differential factor of an conspiracy theory, and a plausible event is the matter of indicating clues. In this case, there is not a single indicating factor to point towards the conspiracy theory of parallel construction, so why should it be considered?
An other equally plausible would be that the silk road was a false flag operation, run by a undercover unit. Nothing points in that direction either, but hey, it "could be" right?
I think you're too quick to dismiss the possibility. The point of parallel construction is that the police construct a plausible (and, more importantly, legal) means of finding the evidence that they used in an investigation that masks its true, illegal origin. More importantly, unlike false flags -- where the only "evidence" for their use is the ravings of conspiracy theorists and some internal suggestions by government officials in the 60's -- parallel construction is a technique that we know the government uses by their own admission.
> The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. [...]
> After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
> The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
> A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.
> "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
Given how they talk about parallel construction, it certainly sounds like it's not an uncommon technique, so do you think it's so implausible? I'm not going to say they did or didn't use it, because the simple fact is that I don't know, but given that "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day" that is "decades old, a bedrock concept," it doesn't seem too implausible that they would use it in such a high profile and important case.
One should not quickly to dismiss the possibility. Especially, one should keep a eye out since the proof of parallel construction as a tool is indeed verifiable true.
But in the mean time, one should not jump to it directly when more simpler explanations are available. Using undercover cops to entrap drug sellers is even older, and even more common method than parallel construction. It also extremely simple and effective.
I would also suspect, that entrapping a first time offender, an 47 year old administrator who sells drugs anonymously on-line from his home, to not be very hard. Especially if the undercover cop could impersonate flawlessly established "trusted" drug sellers by taking over their accounts, as it seems to be in this case.
All points toward parallel construction as an something that might had been, but in this case, is less likely to actually have happened.
What's interesting is that the article itself noted the difficulty that the LE investigators perceived when running this case.
Normally they get a specific suspect or possible set of suspects in mind and then get specific warrants to find the evidence needed.
In this case the "proof" was right in front of them on the Silk Road front page but they had no suspects (or alternately, an infinite set). So even in this case "simple basic police methods" are insufficient to be mechanically applied; it was a probabilistic investigation, at best, in this case.
With a few less slip-ups by Silk Road users we may very well not be discussing these arrests at all, except perhaps for the Silk Road admin who accepted delivery. But that alone needn't have fingered DPR, he helped tighten the noose himself with his later actions.
At least legally, I agree. But the dividing line between "spy agency" and "law enforcement agency" has gotten very thin.
Beyond that, so what? The publicly stated goal of the dragnet surveillance is preventing the crime of terrorism. If "back to the basics" police work found out Dread Pirate Roberts, then why the "anti-terrorism" justification for dragnet surveillance? Dread Pirate Roberts and the Silk Road Web Site actually worked at hiding themselves in a technical, engineering, fact-based manner. From what we read, terrorists do not. At least some of them use "Islamic cyphers" and do other superstitious things in an attempt to conceal themselves.
Why not concentrate on basic police work rather than massive surveillance?
The purpose of the National Security Agency is to gather intelligence to protect National Security. Terrorism is but a small piece of it, though it's the one easiest to sell to the public. But even serious terrorism doesn't accomplish much without state support (you might consider the Taliban a "state" for this purpose) and it's well within the purview of intelligence to spy on other states.
But ultimately, the real reason of intelligence? Look at it this way: the US is sitting at a poker table with Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, and so on. Some of the other players might be our friends--Britain and the US have a deal that we'll share each other's winnings and cover each other's losses. But nonetheless, everyone at the table is playing to win. And everyone at the table is trying to sneak a peek at everyone else's cards. This is why the distinction between spying on Americans and spying on foreigners is such a big deal--if you spy on a Japanese industrialist, you get to see some of Japan's cards, and that helps in the game. But there's no reason to spy on your own country because you already can see your own cards. If you're spying on your own people, maybe your intentions are not what you purport them to be.
>If you're spying on your own people, maybe your intentions are not what you purport them to be.
Considering that a non insignificant portion of SIGINT is contracted to companies owned by a handful of private equity firms, I would say that the poker table has more participants who are not nation states who are all vying for their own interests as you say.
Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying.
And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia.