The US law enforcement authorities have discovered where it is Silk Road by finding one vulnerabilitys. So they accessed a server from a non-public route. If some others do the same, the government calls it a felony.
About 18 months ago, 27man Andrew Auernheimer was found guilty of conspiracy when he gained access to servers of AT&T Inc without the consent of the company. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison, with a fine and parole.
The federal government recognizes the above act as a felony, namely “unauthorized access under the Cyber Fraud and Abuse Act. That's why we have to ask ourselves if the same logic applies to the FBI, especially when it gained access to servers of Silk Road on Tor. The government claims it gained access by following the leaked addresses because the server was not set correctly.
Professor Orin Kerr of George Washington University Law School, he wrote in the blog Volokh Conspiracy, that if Auernheimer was found guilty of unauthorized access, then that FBI is illegal, because he did exactly the same.
Of course we can not know what the end of history will be, as its case Ross Ulbricht administrator of Silk Road, is still on trial. We just wonder if Kerr's reports will affect his defense Ulbricht. Does the law apply to everyone, or does “the end justifies the means?” apply on a case-by-case basis?
To see how they do with the "windows" in America.
