> what [is] the actual alleged crime...here?

“Attempt and conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances” and “obstruction,” according to the complaint [1]. Creating an encrypted phone is probably legal. Creating an encrypted phone for drug traffickers is not. Intent matters to the law.

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4406486-Vincent-Ramo...

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

One of the other comments in the thread linked that original complaint and yeah it makes the whole thing look even more dubious than the original article did. The evidence presented there seems extremely weak and it will be interesting to see if these charges stick. Clearly law enforcement hates private communications and are trying to put the pressure on companies that provide them on the basis of highly questionable entrapment efforts and tenuous evidence.

This case really highlights how destructive the drug war has been to individual rights. When you have a victimless 'crime' like this where all parties to the transactions are willing participants and there is no victim to complain to law enforcement then the only way for charges to be brought is entrapment, oppressive surveillance or encroaching on fourth amendment rights. The logical progression is to attack parties providing otherwise completely legitimate and legal private and secure communications.

> When you have a victimless 'crime' like this

Consider two knife makers. One sells cooking knives. The other sells similar knives and tells people they're designed for stabbing. (The handles may be made so lifting prints off them is intentionally difficult.) Two stabbings happen, one with each of their knives. The government may have a case against the latter knife maker in being party to the crime.

Trafficking drugs is illegal. (It is also far from victimless.) If you intentionally make devices to aid drug traffickers, and then confess that to a federal agent, the government probably has a case. I say all this as someone who believes in de-criminalising most recreational drugs.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Both knives designed for stabbing people and guns and bullets designed for shooting people exist and are sold in the US and I'm not aware of their manufacturers or retailers generally being held liable when they are used to commit crimes. I don't think your analogy holds.

Selling drugs is victimless in the sense that there is no legal ''victim" bringing a complaint - both the seller and the buyer are generally willing participants in the transaction. This is why so many drug prosecutions must rely on stings, undercover cops, informants, surveillance, etc. This is not to say that nobody suffers any harm as a result of the drug trade.

In this particular complaint there is no victim and all the evidence comes from undercover cops and informants.

While there are certainly guns that are suitable for shooting people, have you seen a gun manufacturer advertise its products as being suitable for any illegal purpose?

They are extremely careful with their marketing language, and I have never seen any reference to shooting another person without it being heavily couched in castle doctrine / home defense language. They're not out there marketing their wares as being better for hitmen.

By that logic, killing a person that leaves nobody behind is a victimless crime as well. Just saying.

The article addresses this:

> Crucially, the complaint alleges that Ramos and Phantom were not simply incidental to a crime, like Apple might be when a criminal uses an iPhone, but that the company was specifically created to facilitate criminal activity.

I don't think it answers my question. There is an implication that selling a product designed for privacy and secure communication is inherently intending to facilitate criminal activity. At what point is the line crossed? There are products with seemingly fewer 'legitimate' uses that don't appear to cross this line such as lock picks, police radar detectors, miniature surveillance equipment, etc.

I'm genuinely curious what the legal basis for determining when selling a legal product with a legal function becomes illegal is. It can't be merely knowingly selling to a suspected criminal. Is it knowingly selling to a suspected criminal who you expect to use it to evade law enforcement? How is that to be established other than through dubious entrapment activities as seem to have been used here?

The article answers this question:

> “We made it—we made it specifically for this [drug trafficking] too,” Ramos told undercover agents, according to a transcript included in the complaint.

You can't say that you intended to make the device for legal uses if you explicitly tell an undercover cop you intended it to be used for illegal purposes. So to answer your question, if you openly confess that the intent of your device is to be used illegally, that's a smoking gun.

No, it still doesn't answer my question. For one, this is the part that looks a lot like entrapment. Putting that aside, it doesn't logically follow that what is effectively a sales pitch about a use of the product for coordinating illegal activity implies that that was the primary intent of the product. The "too" in the quote from the transcript is important there. It implies that there was a primary use case (presumably legal private communication) but that they considered the use case under discussion too.

It's not even clear when the use of the product in this case becomes illegal. Merely using a secure device for encrypted communication is not illegal. If that communication involves planning criminal acts then presumably the parties communicating can be charged with conspiracy but since these were encrypted communications does evidence for that actually exist? Communication does not become criminal merely because it is engaged in by criminals, they have to actually be conspiring to commit a crime and in the case of non drug offenses they have to actually take steps to commit that crime in the US.

Car companies specifically design their cars to be able to exceed legal speed limits. Does that make them liable when drivers break speed limits?

>Car companies specifically design their cars to be able to exceed legal speed limits. Does that make them liable when drivers break speed limits?

They're not being charged with creating an illegal phone, they being charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance. Making an encrypted phone is perfectly legal, it became a conspiracy when they agreed to tamper with evidence for a client who had already stated they intend to use their service for drug trafficking communications (which was explicitly acknowledged.) All they had to do was make it clear to their customers that they didn't want to know the details of what they were using the phones to discuss, and refuse to do business with anyone who mentions illegal activity to them.

>For one, this is the part that looks a lot like entrapment.

How so? The undercover agents asked if they could use the service to communicate about drugs (implying that's what they would use it for) and the company agreed. The agents then asked them to wipe a phone that had been captured by the police and the company knowingly tampered with evidence on their behalf. Merely providing someone with an opportunity to participate in a crime isn't entrapment.

From reading the complaint conspiracy seems like a stretch. There is in general no legal obligation to report a crime that you suspect has been or will be committed. Part of their service is to wipe phones on request. They had no subpoena to preserve evidence and no legal obligation to report suspected illegal activity. Perhaps tampering with evidence or obstruction of justice applies here, it will be interesting to see the outcome of the case.

Again from reading the complaint it looks like entrapment. Most of what they quote looks analogous to a car company saying their car is very fast and then an undercover cop asking if that means it's fast enough to outrun the police if they use it as a getaway vehicle. Confirming that factually yes it would be seems some way short of conspiracy. No "real" crime is committed in answering such questions truthfully. Creating a conspiracy charge out of those answers looks like a stretch to me.

You apparently do not understand the legal concept of 'conspiracy' nor do you understand what 'entrapment' actually means in practice. Until you do it would probably be wise for you to stop sharing your unfounded opinions about the law or else preface them with a big, bold statement like 'I have no idea what I am talking about here, but would like the facts of the case to be read in a manner that matches my political whims regardless of existing laws and precedent.'

If the facts, as presented in the article and linked complaint, hold up in court then the conspiracy charge is likely to stick and any claims made regarding entrapment will not be made by the defense because counsel for the defendant is unlikely to harbor a desire to be laughed at in court by a judge.

> Until you do it would probably be wise for you to stop sharing your unfounded opinions about the law or else preface them with a big, bold statement like 'I have no idea what I am talking about here, but would like the facts of the case to be read in a manner that matches my political whims regardless of existing laws and precedent.'

Given that you have not included links to support your own conclusions, the same could be said about your comment.

A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to engage jointly in an unlawful or criminal act, or an act that is innocent in itself but becomes unlawful when done by the combination of actors. In this case the unlawful act is to knowingly participate in a scheme to violate various drug laws regarding the importation and distribution of controlled substances. In addition to the evidence of mens rea given there are several overt acts (e.g. agreeing to remote wipe a phone that was, at the time of this act, known to be held as evidence in a criminal case) that fulfill the requirements to indict for a conspiracy charge. As for entrapment, such a condition does not apply just by the act of a government agent providing someone with the opportunity to commit a crime but by when they use threats, harassment, or fraud to convince someone to do an act that the defendant can show they would not normally perform. Asking the defendant to wipe the phone was not entrapment, but suggesting that your drug cartel buddies might break his legs if he did not wipe the phone would be entrapment.

If you need links of supporting evidence I suggest you and parent poster try using Google. Easy to understand explanations will be available for you on the first page of hits.

> From reading the complaint conspiracy seems like a stretch.

This "conspiracy" charge is what Law Enforcement uses when they have nothing else.

I think you're outlining one possible legal strategy of the defence.

Don't forget that someone can be arrested on a much weaker evidential and legal basis than being found guilty. Of course, the prosecutors interpret the law in their favour, just as the defence will do whenever possible.

> implication that selling a product designed for privacy and secure communication is inherently intending to facilitate criminal activity. At what point is the line crossed? There are products with seemingly fewer 'legitimate' uses that don't appear to cross this line such as lock picks, police radar detectors, miniature surveillance equipment, etc.

The legal basis depends on the country.

But in general, that line is always crossed when you market your product for the purposes of facilitating criminal activity. Distancing yourself from the consequences of the illegal activities performed with your product becomes much more difficult. That he knew about, actively participated in and marketed the platform for drug trafficking was a large part of what damned the Silk Road op-- he couldn't (successfully) make the "b-b-but I was just running a website!" defense.

There's a behavioral aspect to it too though. The idea is one that you can sell a box of armor-piercing rounds to a civilian and he'll use them lawfully, to go shoot up some pesky armored deer or abandoned cars or something. But if you specifically sell him "cop killer"-branded bullets, you're giving him the idea that this is an acceptable use for the product. We don't want that in society.

Presumably it is based on a totality of the circumstances rather than a single "this act crossed the line". For example the apparent efforts to limit their customer base to only criminals would not play well.

According to the indictment (ok, "complaint"), conspiracy/racketeering. The particular product or service is irrelevant, and there's no implication that the product itself was illegal. If he was a driver, or helped load trucks for them knowing their business was illegal, or sold them gas and delivered it to them at night with that knowledge, same violation. There have been problems with CEOs, for example Tobacco CEOs who knowingly sold to tobacco smugglers (Canadian tax avoiders) in huge quantities. Not to mention the opioid crisis, massive sales to transparently suspicious resellers, if memory serves.

That said, it may make authorities happy to think this might slow the production or sale of safer or more secure phones.

Here's the redacted complaint:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4406486-Vincent-Ramo...

I think aiding and abetting is the most convincing, but I don't have any formal legal experience.

There is no crime. The whole thing is a farce.

If this company's phones were really being used by high level traffickers then the FBI (or someone) would have gone to them and asked for a back door.

Obviously this guy said no, and so they retaliated and made an example of him by setting him up on some b.s. charges. None of which would hold up, but he is facing a couple decades, so will probably plea out to some minor charge.