Quote from: gwern on April 14, 2015, 11:15:51 PM

Quote from: odolvlobo on April 03, 2015, 06:38:47 PM

Is that normal? What are they protecting/hiding?

It's a little unusual. Not hugely unusual in the black-market cases I've looked at. It's routine for stuff to be sealed indefinitely and when they're unsealed, often they're boring procedural stuff with only the barest summary of the facts. For example, there was a recent OD in North Dakota linked to an Evolution buyer which resulted in the sellers also being arrested, which make up 3 or 4 different cases in PACER, and while many of the filings are sealed, there are enough unsealed complaints or plea agreements that in conjunction with news articles you can figure out most of what went on; on the other hand, there are sealed documents which turn out to be mind-blowing, like in the Ulbricht trial where we noted some interesting-sounding sealed documents filed in advance of the trial and which turned out to be about the DEA corruption/embezzlement scandal; and more usually in cases where there's informants or undercover agents, nothing gets released or the case itself is sealed/hidden - eg for the former, the digitalink case began ~Jan 2012 and he cooperated somehow and despite everyone starting to serve their sentences all the key filings are *still* sealed, while for the latter, we know from mentions elsewhere that there exist cases regarding 'dripsofacid', 'moveitnice', 'alllove', 5 NZ arrests, 'TrustusJones', 'Aspire28', Scout/'cirrus', 3 UK arrests for SR1, 6 for SR2, 'Dark_Mart' etc etc, but we know nothing about them and probably never will.

In this case, the consistency of the sealing suggests that something interesting could be in them and the prosecutors are taking pains to make sure no hints leak. Or not.

We'll know eventually. That stuff always leaks out. Usually, by the time its leaked no one cares.