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Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

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Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#211

Post by 09bjb »

aleksei wrote: post #185
mikeash wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is it the only legal drug? Nicotine is often regulated but legal nearly everywhere, and I don't think caffeine is banned anywhere.

I get this is (mostly) a tech site, but do we have to argue semantics every time?

It's not a semantic argument. It's important to make it plain, before having a reasoned discussion, that there are legal drugs that people use every day but wrongly categorizes as "not drugs." Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine being the main culprits. Food, exercise, and social media also cause experience-shifting changes in neurotransmitters (the drugs that are always mediating your experience). It's important to get this straight before lumping things that are illegal into a poorly-conceived category.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#212

Post by tw04 »

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.

Like the CIA?

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#213

Post by problems »

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…

Ultimately though I think any effect there would be temporary - there's less money available and sooner or later they'll go out of business.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#214

Post by nissimk »

Analemma_ wrote: post #170
nfbush wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks (e.g. Silk Road captcha IP leak, DPR's advertising of market being linked to his personal email address). AlphaBay Which got taken down first in this operation was due to a personal email being included in the header of the welcome email sent out to new users 3 years ago [1] [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release…

> Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks ( This is true, but it dangerously misses the point. Every time someone gets taken down, the know-it-alls on various fora sneer and go "Ha! What terrible opsec! I wouldn't have made that mistake!" No, you would've made some other mistake. To run a darknet market and not get caught, your opsec has to be perfect . Every…

I'm sorry to nitpick and I mostly agree with you, but similar to a casino game that favors the house, if you are lucky and quit while you're ahead, you can avoid capture. Your statement is only true in the long run. Of course criminals usually become addicted to their risky behaviors just like gamblers... It's a frequent trope in crime movies: one last job before the criminal retires, but that last job is the one where he makes a key mistake.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#215

Post by mfoy_ »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #202
mfoy_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not outraged at the laws, outraged at being persecuted. If you know something is illegal, and it carries a fine of $1,000 and you do it, you get caught, and they fine you $1,000 you can't be like "What?! How DARE you catch me and fine me like the law says?! ARRRGH!"

Part of the issue with this line of reasoning is selective enforcement. If the law is unjust and commonly broken, it is fair to be outraged if they choose to target you for punishment. Drug laws are broken every day, and in some cities LEOs are even working with the dealers. Unjust laws allow them to pick on people they don't like and people that threaten their business. Given these circumstances, I think it's still…

Fair point. Sometimes I think the police state that America has become was in large part facilitated by this kind of thing. Almost everyone is in violation of something these days. If the police or the state don't like you then surprise surprise... you're getting arrested for that thing you've been doing for the past decade that half your neighbours do too...

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#216

Post by maratd »

Analemma_ wrote: post #170
nfbush wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks (e.g. Silk Road captcha IP leak, DPR's advertising of market being linked to his personal email address). AlphaBay Which got taken down first in this operation was due to a personal email being included in the header of the welcome email sent out to new users 3 years ago [1] [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release…

> Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks ( This is true, but it dangerously misses the point. Every time someone gets taken down, the know-it-alls on various fora sneer and go "Ha! What terrible opsec! I wouldn't have made that mistake!" No, you would've made some other mistake. To run a darknet market and not get caught, your opsec has to be perfect . Every…

> That is simply not possible once an operation exceeds a certain size.

A good argument for not getting too greedy and keeping things small. It's the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#217

Post by problems »

burger_moon wrote: post #194
bripeace wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where did they get the 3 year old email. 1) They were investigating AlphaBay for nearly 3 years 2) They came upon somehow control of an email address which contained 3 year old mail that contained the password reset email 3) They are capturing and storing large amounts of tor traffic much like the NSA does on clearnet see: xkeyscore This isn't really explained in the indictment

This is a really interesting question. Knowing how they got access to such an old email from an external source.

Honestly it doesn't seem that interesting - browsing /r/DarkNetMarkets, dnstats and just signing up yourself is enough. I've signed up for a few for shits and giggles but never bought anything, browsing is pretty interesting. You just need to find one person like me who'd be willing to give them the email... not exactly hard.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#218

Post by rfrank »

valuearb wrote: post #204
rfrank wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You legalize drugs, you take away their massive cash flies and cripple their organizations. I'm not convinced this is true, there's lots of ways to make a big profit illegally, drugs are just comparatively easy. I'm a proponent of full drug legalization (it's a space where I have large amounts of first hand experience that won't be discussed on HN), but it's still important to separate an ideological position from…

Drug trafficking funds human trafficking. It's not the other way around. Removing profit incentives from bad behavior is an easy way to improve human behavior. Our murder rates plunged after prohibition was repealed, for example. And human trafficking is for a purpose, take away it's incentives and it mostly goes away too. Legalizing prostitution eliminates a big incentive for human trafficking. Rationalizing immigra…

Extortion, money laundering, racketeering, human trafficking, illicit organ selling, slavery, gun running, piracy (Somalia not Napster), poaching, assassinations, political violence for hire, etc. are all independently profitable. There will be profit incentive for bad behavior as long as laws exist that people don't want to abide by. People are terrible to each other on a daily basis, the world over.

> Rationalizing immigration laws eliminates most of the rest.

This is indicative of what I'm taking about, approaching these problems in an extremely reductive way. Did you know there's an estimated 21 million slaves in the world today?

http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#219

Post by fiatpandas »

bripeace wrote: post #165
nfbush wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time a market has been taken down it's been due to OPSEC failure and other information leaks (e.g. Silk Road captcha IP leak, DPR's advertising of market being linked to his personal email address). AlphaBay Which got taken down first in this operation was due to a personal email being included in the header of the welcome email sent out to new users 3 years ago [1] [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release…

But where did they get the 3 year old email. 1) They were investigating AlphaBay for nearly 3 years 2) They came upon somehow control of an email address which contained 3 year old mail that contained the password reset email 3) They are capturing and storing large amounts of tor traffic much like the NSA does on clearnet see: xkeyscore This isn't really explained in the indictment

They could have gained knowledge of the email address through classified means, and made up the email header story to hide their method of initially obtaining it.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#220

Post by rhizome »

freeflight wrote: post #206
rhizome wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm saying that it sounds like you think "the kinds of organizations" are using drug money to enable worse crimes. I mean, it's no secret that the purpose of certain laws are to prevent anybody from making "that kind of money," but to me your comment read as if there was more to it.

Because that's also the case. Big organized crime groups often have access to exactly the kind of logistics required to manufacture and smuggle drugs across large distances. They have the muscle to stay competitive in a market where there is no state authority to give you guarantees on anything. This isn't an outrageous claim at all, rather it's a well-known fact: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Stu…

Most drug dealers are not "big organized groups." I don't know from Hansa, but I'm betting a big organized group is not likely to use them as a single point of failure.
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