[t0dd]

He was possibly the first person to ever post about Silk Road. A few months later, that same user is recruiting for a "lead developer in a venture backed bitcoin startup company" conveniently avoiding specifics. If you recall, they also seized a package sent to Ulbricht containing nine fake IDs with different names in July 2013 (he was arrested three months later). Cumulatively, that's probably enough to merit suspicion/the issuance of a warrant to search his e-mail.

[WillNotDownvote]

There is literally nothing unusual about "conveniently avoiding specifics" in a tech recruiting post. It's not even a tiny bit suspicious.

He may or may not have been the first to post about Silk Road on Bitcointalk, or anywhere for that matter, but that seems awfully thin ground for getting a warrant.

I'm surprised HN seems to be in favor of such action.

[ubernostrum]

If someone is the first to post about a particular site specializing in illegal transactions, and it's publicly determinable that they were, before that, soliciting for developers familiar with the kind of infrastructure the site would need, and, that person also is the intended recipient of a package of false identity documents, and...

...things add up and produce enough cause to get a warrant. Given the analysis from opsec people, it's not surprising that there was eventually a warrant and an arrest and a trial; given that he was leaking so much information about who he was and what he was doing, the surprising thing is that the feds didn't catch him even sooner.

[WillNotDownvote]

He made the post mentioning Silk Road on Jan 29, 2011.

He made the post looking for a developer 9 months later, on October 11, 2011.

And as I mentioned below, the fake ID issue seems to have come up after the email warrant was issued, so it wasn't a factor there.

[danielweber]

> He made the post mentioning Silk Road on Jan 29, 2011.

which was apparently the first mention. So, as far as the agent could tell, this was the first person to mention Silk Road on the open Internet. That's what's reasonable.

(Also, from a pure Bayesian POV, the fact that it nailed DPR on the very first try goes a lot towards demonstrating its relevance. NB: this parenthetical is not a legal argument; otherwise you could justify any search that turns up evidence.)

[ikeboy]

Along these lines, someone once tried to convince me that governments should be allowed to use evidence no matter how they get it. He basically proposed that police could go into someone's house to search without a warrant, but if they didn't find anything then the police could be prosecuted, which makes them only do it if they have a really strong reason to think they'll find something. It was a surprisingly good argument for something that many people would instinctively flinch away from.

Anyway, my answer was that if the police really had such strong suspicion of someone and they were right, they've got to have enough to get a warrant anyway, which is similar to what you're saying.

[tempestn]

Also if they expected to face prosecution were they not to find anything, you might expect them to often 'find' things whether they were there or not...

[t0dd]

To you, there might be "literally nothing" suspicious about it, but when that user's previous post on the forum discussed Silk Road, likely for the first time ever, a law enforcement officer, having few leads to go on, might feel inclined to investigate that individual further. Again, there's also the tiny detail about a package with nine fake IDs being sent to Ulbricht in July 2013. DHS agents confronted him about it around that time: "The photos also matched his Texas driving license, which the DHS investigators asked to see. All of this happened around the same time that Dread Pirate Roberts was discussing obtaining fake IDs on Silk Road, the FBI affidavit said. The FBI put the final piece of the puzzle in place by pulling Ulbricht's Texas driving license and comparing it with the license that Ulbricht showed the DHS. The numbers matched. At this point, it must have considered that it had enough evidence." http://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbrichts-silk-road-head-smacki...

[WillNotDownvote]

Lack of leads is no excuse to start digging in people's privacy.

The fake ID thing seems to have occurred after the warrant was issued, so I'm not sure I see its relevance.

[rayiner]

You can't just look at the individual bits of evidence in isolation to determine whether there was probable cause, you have to look at it all together.

[Rylinks]

The suspicious part isn't really that he was avoiding specifics, it's that he was looking for an it professional in a bitcoin startup company.