DPR tried to hire a killer for a previous employee he thought was informing. The employee was in fact informing, but DPR didn’t think so until a DEA agent used the employee’s login info to steal money from the drug vendors (p44). The hired killer that DPR turned to was another DEA agent who had also sold him info from the investigation under a psuedonym (p15), was blackmailing him under another pseudonym (p21), and had failed to blackmail him under a third pseudonym (p25). The DEA agents then consulted with each other by text message about getting money laundering advice from DPR (p45).
If this were a TV drama, I would have said this was all ridiculously implausible and stopped watching.
I’m reminded of the mid-90s when the internet was fairly new, and the popular advice was “never buy anything online. you can’t know who you’re dealing with.”.
All of the recent revelations about the NSA as well as local law enforcement seem to indicate that a large percentage of people in law enforcement have ethics no different from the criminals they are tasked with apprehending. Only supervision prevents more bad behavior.
Systems like Silk Road are (or seem like) excellent ways for those with power to turn that power into money. Of course, the existence of secret police powers of all sorts is another important factor. But altogether, agents with secret powers + Bitcoin/untracable-currency seems like a recipe for even more abuse.
DPR tried to hire a killer for a previous employee he thought was informing. The employee was in fact informing, but DPR didn’t think so until a DEA agent used the employee’s login info to steal money from the drug vendors (p44). The hired killer that DPR turned to was another DEA agent who had also sold him info from the investigation under a psuedonym (p15), was blackmailing him under another pseudonym (p21), and had failed to blackmail him under a third pseudonym (p25). The DEA agents then consulted with each other by text message about getting money laundering advice from DPR (p45).
If this were a TV drama, I would have said this was all ridiculously implausible and stopped watching.
I’m reminded of the mid-90s when the internet was fairly new, and the popular advice was “never buy anything online. you can’t know who you’re dealing with.”.
All of the recent revelations about the NSA as well as local law enforcement seem to indicate that a large percentage of people in law enforcement have ethics no different from the criminals they are tasked with apprehending. Only supervision prevents more bad behavior.
Systems like Silk Road are (or seem like) excellent ways for those with power to turn that power into money. Of course, the existence of secret police powers of all sorts is another important factor. But altogether, agents with secret powers + Bitcoin/untracable-currency seems like a recipe for even more abuse.