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Shedding light on the dark web

economist.com

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Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#11

Post by dopamean »

Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing process for the purchaser and the seller.

From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often unsavory people just to get high. From the seller's perspective you have to make sure that the buyer isn't law enforcement and also not someone who is going to rob you because you have zero legal recourse. It's really a shitty experience for everyone involved. Considering how shitty that experience is it says a lot about people and their desire to take drugs that the market continues to exist and basically never stops serving the customer.

It really seems like when confronted with something inevitable, like drug use and sales, the effort to prevent it may be more costly and damaging than just allowing it to happen in a more controlled environment.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#12

Post by puddintane »

sremani wrote: post #3

Darknet markets are like Hydra with 10 heads, when Silk Road is taken down, more players entered and when one other dark-market owners closed shop and jumped with vendors bit-coins, new ones with multi-escrow showed up. Again, with each take down people are improvising and making the system a bit more resilient.

You gotta wonder if many of these owners who jump ship with vendors money, are the ones who show up suddenly with funds to "save the day".

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#13

Post by abfan1127 »

dopamean wrote: post #11

Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing process for the purchaser and the seller. From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often un…

Please see Alcohol Prohibition in the United States (at least back then they amended the US Constitution to do it legally).

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#14

Post by twinkletwinkle »

Cerium wrote: post #6
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #2

Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.

Doesn't that leave a huge paper trail?

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#15

Post by cloudjacker »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #2

Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

The sellers drop the packages off in mailing boxes, ideally far from where they actually live. This would render your idea less worthwhile.

There have been arrest of sellers and buyers, primarily due to noobish mistakes. All told, the risk for the seller is much lower than dealing with a variety of forces in the street in their local jurisdiction.

Therefore your idea becomes a war of attrition for law enforcement. Where the yield is too low to justify the cost. This is why more effort goes into shutting down the marketplaces, but even this has become a war of attrition ever since the Silk Road 1.0 bust.

The federal government operating through just one agency got 80 million in bitcoin from that bust.

The next year, the FBI required cooperation with 16 agencies across Europe in a dragnet bust that only got 1.2 million in bitcoin, with most sites being back online in a week.

The trend continues, and every enforcement action simply prompts consumers, merchants, and site providers to implement UX and security practices that they already knew they should have been using (multisig addresses instead of human escrow, use of tails/whonix, not logging in as admin from a public library, etc)

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#16

Post by idlewords »

abfan1127 wrote: post #13
dopamean wrote: post #11

Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing process for the purchaser and the seller. From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often un…

Please see Alcohol Prohibition in the United States (at least back then they amended the US Constitution to do it legally).

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#17

Post by [deleted] »

Cerium wrote: post #6
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #2

Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.

[deleted]

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#18

Post by rhizome »

idlewords wrote: post #16
abfan1127 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see Alcohol Prohibition in the United States (at least back then they amended the US Constitution to do it legally).

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success.

I don't know about that, didn't lead poisoning go way up?

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#19

Post by dublinben »

Cerium wrote: post #6
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #2

Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.

Anonymous remailers have been around for decades. They were largely supplanted by online communications, or shut down.
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