Sigh my computer restarted part way through a really long reply T.T here goes again
setup the government as the boogeyman
...
Of course, you'll only consider that if you are prepared to give the authorities the benefit of the doubt, and I understand that many people are not so incliend.
The benefit of the doubt only goes so far. It is disingenuous to say that someone who is skeptical of an agency, which has been proven in court to have lied about parts of its investigation, is someone who wears a tin foil hat and creates boogeymen.
The government agencies involved in the investigation have already been proven to be untrustworthy, not just in general, but in this specific case multiple times.
They stole assets during the investigation, extorted Ross Ulbricht, acted independently and contacted Ross Ulbricht revealing portions of the investigation to him and threatening to reveal his information. If they are willing to take evidence, who's to say they aren't willing to plant evidence? If they are willing to lie about personal communications with Ulbricht, who's to say they aren't willing to lie about other parts of the investigation they were involved in. Who's to say they won't obfuscate the legality of things they did just like they obfuscated the legality of other things they did?
These are reasonable questions and doubts, even for someone who gives agencies the benefit of the doubt.
it's difficult to argue that the image of Ulbright as a technical amateur is purely an FBI fabrication
One mistake/lapse in paranoia before the Silk Road was created does not make Ulbricht a "technical amateur". That completely ignores all of the extremely technically complex things involved in creating and maintaining the Silk Road. Ulbricht was an engineer, getting his masters in materials science, quit to start video game firms (which he coded for), created his own book selling business (which he coded for), was involved in day trading. This was not some random guy following an idiot's guide to making black markets. He was on the frontier, and created extremely complex systems, security measures and fail safes. Many aspects of the Silk Road are still used in current dark net marketplaces which have long surpassed Silk Road's peak usage/listings. His mistake was not being paranoid enough before the operation began.
It's also difficult to see much room for multiple DPRs in the dangerous political world into which the Silk Road ultimately devolved
Wat. How is it difficult? "the dangerous political world into which the Silk Road ultimately devolved" the world of black market drug dealing? There are many darknet markets that exist, many of which are bigger than the silk road ever was. There are hundreds of people doing what he did, why would it be unreasonable to believe that there would be other people willing to do that with him? Especially when you consider that there were other people already involved in the Silk Road team, why would it be out of the question for one or more of them to also use the DPR handle? That doesn't make sense.
If we accept that premise, then a whole realm of possibilities opens up in which the outcome doesn't inhere in any technical document but rather in Ulbright's human frailties.
That's literally the whole point. They released technical documents that were trivially disproved, and they have altered their claims. If they discovered it in a technical manner, then why can they not produce sufficient evidence?
If it wasn't done through technical means, that means they have fabricated evidence. This is called parallel reconstruction. Why would they lie? If they are willing to make up parts of their prosecution and investigation that never happened, why wouldn't they be willing to lie about other parts of their investigation?
If authorities became aware of things through Ulbricht's human frailties, where are the warrents that support this? If information was obtained through someone else, where is their testimony and where is the court order given based on that information?
maybe the vulnerability wasn't a persistent part of the site but instead a temporary regression introduced by mistake
There are logs of these things. There were thousands of people trying to attack and find vulnerabilities the Silk Road, doing this would be potentially very lucrative. There were people who would constantly attack and search for security flaws, or even potential things that could eventually lead to security flaws every day to report it on the Silk Road as well. There were hundreds/thousands of people attempting to attack the Silk Road all around the world all around the clock. The thing the FBI claims to have done was being done by bots and real people all around the world all day, at the specific time frames the FBI claims to have done it, and the way the FBI describes they did it doesn't completely make sense.
Again, it is possible that not even the FBI fully understands how this information came to them
That isn't a reason. There are legal guidelines they must follow. A police officer can't just say "we have, in our possession a gun with the serial number scratched off. we know it belongs to /u/BearlyBreathing and was used for crimes. we do not fully understand how it was found, or how our department came into possession of the weapon, but we know the weapon was located in /u/BearlyBreathing's bedside table before it came into our possession. No we do not have a warrant for /u/BearlyBreathing's home, or a warrant for trying to find this weapon."
They are a publicly funded government agency in a public criminal court. If they do not follow these legal guidelines, that is grounds to throw out the evidence and the case.