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Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

politie.nl

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Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#71

Post by ceejayoz »

kazagistar wrote: post #57
bahjoite wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the banner must have been placed there after the server was seized. Keeping the server running long enough to gather evidence of the actions of their high-value targets was probably a higher priority than sweeping-up as many customers as possible.

Possibly there are laws related to entrapment? Allowing new user signups on a police controlled website might cross the line, where allowing existing users to finish their deals might not?

That's not how entrapment works.

Entrapment requires the cops to push someone into doing something they wouldn't otherwise have done.

Cops buying drugs from a dealer isn't entrapment, but repeatedly begging someone to sell you some drugs after they initially say no would be.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#72

Post by rhizome »

wybiral wrote: post #58
atemerev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything that is illegal is wrong. E.g. being gay is illegal in many places.

True. It sounds like the site was mostly dealing in drugs, which for small time dealers I feel is a waste of time to prosecute... But the problem is that larger organized criminals often get their funds to do worse things from the drug market.

Wait, it sounds like you're saying big drug dealers are just selling drugs to get money to, I don't know, go on murder sprees? I'm not saying violence is not a part of these kinds of crimes, but I don't think the purpose of their participation is just to enable other, more serious crimes.

That is, I don't think it's very common for someone to say "I want to sell a lot of drugs because I can't afford to kill enough people otherwise," rather than what I think is more common, "I want to sell a lot of drugs because I want to buy a house without a lot of effort."

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#73

Post by z3phyr »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #18
5_minutes wrote: post #10

The clever thing is that they took it over and for one month monitored it without the users knowing. Everyone on obfuscating their persona with Tor and bitcoins, still had to enter their postal addresses on the website, to receive the goodies. That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement.

> That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement. Because obviously people buying a few pills of ecstasy or a tab of LSD are a serious danger to society and should be taken of the streets. /s

People under influence do indeed pose danger to other people. Even the influence of alcohol is potentially dangerous in certain situations leading to incidents ranging from hit and run to domestic violence.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#74

Post by zo1 »

mfoy_ wrote: post #64
madez wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has the right to expect a fair and reasonable treatment and punishment. If that can't be guaranteed it might be imperative to not share the identity, because sharing it would imply another injustice without righting any other.

I mean... if they released the addresses publicly, sure. But they just passed them along to Interpol...

And interpol would do what with them? Probably pass them along to the police-services of the respective countries that these people live in.

Some countries execute people for drug possession alone.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#75

Post by GordonS »

mschwar99 wrote: post #22
5_minutes wrote: post #10

The clever thing is that they took it over and for one month monitored it without the users knowing. Everyone on obfuscating their persona with Tor and bitcoins, still had to enter their postal addresses on the website, to receive the goodies. That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement.

From what I remember poking around at Hansa that's not true. Each vendor / user had a public key associated with their account. All text communication through the website was supposed to be with GPG encrypted text secured by private keys unavailable to website. So law enforcement has lots of encrypted text along with some clear text from users not informed enough to follow any kind of opsec.

This is true, but if they had taken over the site, they could decrypt anything that the site had 'encrypted' (some sites let you either encrypt stuff yourself, or let the site do it for you... which isn't a very sensible option)

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#76

Post by rhizome »

GordonS wrote: post #62
ipnon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to compare damages caused by the release of this information versus damages caused by the production, sale, and usage of the drugs themselves.

How would you measure either?

I think they were saying it more as a thought experiment.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#77

Post by amelius »

guelo wrote: post #25
aqme28 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you would construct a switch that couldnt be bypassed by the police once they have full access to the servers.

A dead man's switch could wipe the server and all backups to erase evidence. The police in this case let the server run for months to catch other sellers. A well hidden software trigger would have been hard for the police to notice without a thorough inspection of all the source code.

Unless the police made a backup immediately.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#78

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

nailer wrote: post #60
squegles wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If users were smart they would have PGP encrypted their address with the seller's public key.

If law enforcement were smart the "seller's" public key would be part of a keypair made by LEOs.

As I understand it, most sellers have their public keys available from several sources and savvy buyers will cross-verify them. It would probably raise too much suspicion of LE swapped out the keys and there was a discrepancy with the cross-references.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#79

Post by vkou »

z3phyr wrote: post #73
forgotpwtomain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That database must be a wet dream for law enforcement. Because obviously people buying a few pills of ecstasy or a tab of LSD are a serious danger to society and should be taken of the streets. /s

People under influence do indeed pose danger to other people. Even the influence of alcohol is potentially dangerous in certain situations leading to incidents ranging from hit and run to domestic violence.

People with _______ pose a danger to other people. It is incredibly hypocritical to come down on someone for consuming LSD in their own home, but not on someone getting pissed drunk in their own home. Tens of thousands of people are killed by people under the influence of alcohol in the United States. How many people are killed by people under the influence of LSD?

(I have never used drugs, other then alcohol.)

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#80

Post by abrkn »

delegate wrote: post #23

> Some 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers were passed on to Europol. That's really bad, because not all countries are Holland, which is famous for its 'relaxed' attitude towards drugs in general, so some users might have their lives turned around by this - followed, arrested, jailed, extorted, etc.

There's still no proof of payment. How could you win the case? I could easily order drugs to someone I don't like.
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