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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

#151

Post by joosters »

zo1 wrote: post #74
mfoy_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be a great reason not to order drugs online from these countries then.

Whether or not you approve of the law, you have to realise that you are putting yourself at risk if you are breaking the law.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#152

Post by valuearb »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #145
atemerev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Buying drugs can fund actions far worse than just creating drugs. From human slavery (drug mules) to murder. Some of the other things on that list are bad not because the actual item being traded is bad, but because of what the trade enables. I'm not seeing a significant difference between the markets in this regard, except for popularity. Compared to the example you gave, where no one is harmed and no further harm i…

Buying drugs doesn't fund those actions. Making drugs illegal does, just like when Prohibition started murderous gang wars, gave us the highest murder rate in modern history, caused thousands of deaths from adulterated spirits, and funded the modern mafia.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#153

Post by valuearb »

wybiral wrote: post #89
rhizome wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

> 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 No. I'm just saying that the people upstream manufacturing massive quantities of meth and heroin probably aren't the kinds of organizations that you want to be making that kind of money.

Then legalize drugs so they can't make that kind of money.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#154

Post by joosters »

jug5 wrote: post #9
jorrizza wrote: post #4

Services like these give Tor and related projects a bad name. Taking down illegal market places is part of the police's job and this is definitely a success story. The article is lacking in details a bit, but it seems they've taken it down using regular old police work as they mention an "undercover operation". This proves once more that the weakening of security for everybody is not needed to catch criminals.

You mean they used parallel construction to make it seem like they used "regular old police work"

'Regular old police work' might well be good enough to hunt down a drug seller or even a whole marketplace.

For example, a vendor was recently caught because of the packaging they used when posting drugs: http://www.k5thehometeam.com/story/35528504/affidavit-reveal...

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#155

Post by valuearb »

rfrank wrote: post #130
rhizome wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

> 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," This depends very much on who you're talking about. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ana-davila/drug-cartels-where-...

You are correct. Making drugs illegal has funded the creation of massive cartels who use that funding to pursue other crimes and to war against any competitors.

The solution will never be shutting down darknets and arresting people.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#156

Post by valuearb »

jandrese wrote: post #90
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good argument for legalisation....

The counterargument is that if drugs are legalized then the crime syndicates will need to find a new line of work. It's possible they'll go "legit" like the mob did after prohibition and get into the Casino business, but it's also possible they'll switch to human trafficking or gun running or some other harmful trade. This is an especially big danger if you're talking about a gang that currently deals mostly drugs bu…

If they could expand the side business, they already would have. The massive profits of illegal drugs gives them the capital to invest in new side businesses, take that away they can't expand anything.

The Mafia was all about prostitution, gambling, and protection rackets. The prohibition gave them a business where you could make far more than all the others combined, and all you needed to do was to kill people who got in your way.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#157

Post by mikeash »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #147
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

They fund the ones supplying those drugs which involves a significant harm to society. Just look at people who are unwilling participants in the drug trade or those who receive funds from selling drugs to sell other things such as weapons or even humans. (Yes, I realize legalizing local drug production and distribution would undercut the market, which is one reason why I am for legalization. But that does not excuse…

I'm aware of the huge criminal activity that goes along with drugs like cocaine, but are ecstasy and LSD makers in the same category?

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#158

Post by bahjoite »

indigochill wrote: post #120
theEXTORTCIST wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law enforcement could have easily MITM'd the PGP. They replace the public key of a vendor with their own public key (on the vendors's page, without the vendor's/buyer's knowledge), then the buyer address gets encrypted with that public key. Then they decrypt and resend the message using the sellers original public key. I really wonder if this happened at all

This has me curious (as a complete crypto noob): how would one defend against such a MITM attack in general? Only send messages to vendors with known "trusted" keys and don't trust new keys? So in general, use a trusted channel for key exchange separate from the communication channel so that a MITM needs to control both channels?

Correct. This is what the PGP "web of trust" is supposed to assist with: a trusted key is either one which you have verified, in person, as belonging to your correspondent, or one which has been signed by a number of other correspondents whom you trust to verify keys (and whose keys you have verified in person).

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#159

Post by mfoy_ »

romanovcode wrote: post #84
mfoy_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair... If you commit a crime, you have to expect there's a risk of being caught and punished. So how is this "really bad", except from the POV of the users who may face repercussions?

The problem with this example is that if I knew your address I could order drugs to you.

That's why it's circumstantial. It like trying to tie an IP address to an individual. It's, at best, a proxy measurement of "who".

For example, maybe people ordered drugs to their neighbour's address then waited for the delivery guy and intercepted the package.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#160

Post by valuearb »

rfrank wrote: post #70
wybiral wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And 'small time' drug dealers get their supply from the bigger fish. The value in prosecuting them isn't in stopping end users or sales that max out at like $200, it's in working towards shutting down large international suppliers. Because they don't just ship drugs, they ship people and weapons too. Regardless of how one feels about drug use, the realities of the trade are grim. I think there's also value in definin…

The reality of illegal drugs is by making them illegal you give massive amounts of capital to the worst people in the world, who invest those profits into other awful trades.

You legalize drugs, you take away their massive cash flies and cripple their organizations.

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