MuckRock: DEA Documents Show Parallel Construction Widely Used

Yesterday MuckRock released a number of United States Drug Enforcement Agency documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents reveal that methods of parallel case construction are widely utilized and trained institutionally within the Drug Enforcement Agency and collaborating agencies, with strong institutional controls in place to prevent knowledge of parallel construction involved in cases from reaching any court officers, including the prosecutors assigned the cases. Continue reading

Ulbricht Show Trial Ends

After being precluded from presenting much of a defense at all a jury has found Ross Ulbricht guilty of running the Silk Road deliberating for around three hours. This falls in line with the money on Bitcoin prediction markets which leaned towards deliberations lasting under six hours. Mainstream press outlets have even begun questioning the competence and intentions behind the way defense lawyer Josh Dratel handled the case over its entire duration.

Phishing With Coinbase

Coinbase has announced their intention to reimburse a small number of users who were the victim of a phishing attack. The attacker, who emailed users a purported new service agreement from Coinbase, used the Coinbase API to fool users into approving full permissions for his 3rd party app so as to withdraw bitcoins from the Coinbase wallet. As a result of the successful attack, Coinbase now claim they will review the approval process for applications using their API. Continue reading