It's not legal to spy on citizens. Assuming the NSA (and likely not the FBI) held illegally seized data, it still wouldn't be admissible as evidence in a trial.
This was countered, above, in the states own motion.
Basically, 1.) that's not how they did that, 2.) even if it was, it wasn't illegal, as they did not know at the time of the search that the server belonged to a citizen and 3.) Ulbricbht hasn't even admitted the server was his so how could we have violated his rights if the server didn't belong to him in the first place?
People keep wanting to insist the government did something illegal here, but as far as I can tell, there's no evidence that speaks to that.
It actually requires neither. As many lawyers have pointed out in various threads, the defense team could have claimed the server was Ulbricht's property before trial, and had the motion failed, denied so during trial - so long as he never testified.
I suppose it is slightly weird, but it kinda makes sense from a "lawyered!" perspective.
Basically, 1.) that's not how they did that, 2.) even if it was, it wasn't illegal, as they did not know at the time of the search that the server belonged to a citizen and 3.) Ulbricbht hasn't even admitted the server was his so how could we have violated his rights if the server didn't belong to him in the first place?
People keep wanting to insist the government did something illegal here, but as far as I can tell, there's no evidence that speaks to that.