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Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

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Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#61

Post by kuhhk »

tribby wrote: post #45
monotone666 wrote: post #37

Dead drops can’t compete with USPS. They require a court order to open your package and even then can’t charge anyone with possession. All they do is send you a “love letter” and people have reported receiving future packages just fine. Millions of people use dark net marketplaces. The war on drugs has fueled their growth and more serious crimes like identity theft have benefited from it.

> All they do is send you a “love letter” and people have reported receiving future packages just fine. well, that's what the end user sees, but we can't pretend to know what happens behind the scenes from a data perspective, and how that data might be used in the future. > They require a court order to open your package and even then can’t charge anyone with possession. this is not true. only first-class mail (13oz…

> 4. Can Postal Inspectors open mail if they feel it may contain something illegal? First-Class letters and parcels are protected against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and, as such, cannot be opened without a search warrant. If there is probable cause to believe the contents of a First-Class letter or parcel violate federal law, Postal Inspectors can obtain a search warrant to open the mailpiece. Other classes of mail do not contain private correspondence, and therefore may be opened without a warrant.

Whoa, that's news to me. I didn't realize that any class of mail besides First class is considered to not contain private correspondence.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#62

Post by 6nf »

zzzcpan wrote: post #31
perlmutterlabs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a great story, but machine vision + machine learning + surveillance could pull the rug out from the dropgangs market in a second. But really, other than this fatal flaw, it's a great narrative of the internet spilling into and interfacing with analog markets

It's not a fatal flaw, unless they choose a location with police surveillance, but why would they?

Well you're still vulnerable to stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZwAI8H9jA

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#63

Post by 6nf »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #10
drcode wrote: post #3

I wonder if dark web markets will ever establish a comprehensive alternative parcel system... that seems like the natural, final extension of these ideas. The technical challenges to this would of course be significant (I'll refrain from listing them and suggesting potential workarounds since I don't really want to give anybody any specific ideas on this LOL)

There are quite a few holes in the scheme as outlined in the article. The author asserts that dead drops are better than post office boxes because they're harder to surveil, but what keeps law enforcement from signing up their own personnel as distributors? Then it's just a matter of staking out their own dead drop and arresting whoever shows up. This is why the first rule of opsec has always been, "Involve as few pe…

> what keeps law enforcement from signing up their own personnel as distributors?

This only catches the end users, and that's not a great use of police resources. The police would much rather target the distributors, not the end users picking up a small amount of drugs for personal use.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#64

Post by 6nf »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #35
bigiain wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as there's sufficient profit margin to allow for an acceptable "shrinkage", it just becomes a cost of doing business. The benefits in terms of privacy/security for the typical darknet vendor probably make it well worth low double digit percentage losses, given the assumed margins from source to end user...

I don't know how secure it is when a cop sees you drop a bag of heroin behind a bench instead of just shipping people stuff.

They wouldn't drop at a public bench with people around

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#65

Post by CryptoPunk »

crowbahr wrote: post #2

Very interesting reading the obstacles faced by the black market drug trade and how they're overcoming them. It seems like the producer layer is most susceptible to penetration as it is essentially identical to most gangs. It's entirely glossed over here but procuring the product seems like a difficult problem for an anonymized distributor: How do you make sure the product gets to your support layers? As interesting…

I think the right (though not necessarily the most likely) solution to the problems you allude to is more powerful local governments able to monitor the goods coming into/out-of their jurisdiction, a sort of return to the more decentralized political structure of the feudal era.

In this sort of arrangement, a jurisdiction's authorities could require shipments to be bonded, with forfeiture of the bond if it is found to contain a restricted substance. This would result in policing happening at the edges, by those providing the bonds, and likely relying on trust networks to assess the risk that a package originator is a terrorist.

Such a world would have a lot more trade friction than an idealized world govermment that centralized control of the movement of goods to prevent malevolent behaviour while allowing free trade of benign goods, at least in the earlier stages where localized solutions are not well-developed/efficient, but it would mean a far lower chance of a significant fraction of the world coming under the tyranny of a single malevolent government.

An all-powerful central govermment will always pose a far greater threat to the advancement of society than chaos IMHO.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#67

Post by yownie »

yownie wrote: post #66

Few years ago it was revealed USPS was photographing all senders and recipient addresses on all mail in order to 'backtrack' packages in order to aid in investigations. https://www.offthegridnews.com/privacy/vast-postal-surveilla...

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#68

Post by kodablah »

gammateam wrote: post #59
monotone666 wrote: post #37

Dead drops can’t compete with USPS. They require a court order to open your package and even then can’t charge anyone with possession. All they do is send you a “love letter” and people have reported receiving future packages just fine. Millions of people use dark net marketplaces. The war on drugs has fueled their growth and more serious crimes like identity theft have benefited from it.

Dark net marketplaces also compete with clear net marketplaces for benign things Millions of people know this and routinely check them for good deals, the propaganda machine has failed to make them "scary"

> Millions of people know this [...]

That's a pretty big number, would be curious if based on anything more than a guess.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#69

Post by stcredzero »

The current method of reporting sales experience on forums is open to spamming and manipulation since it is hard to show that a deal even took place.

It is likely that forums and merchants develop best practices to solve this problem. There is the potential that merchants will start to issue “proofs of sale” in a cryptographic form, that customers then use to make statements about the performance of the merchant in public forums.

Could a blockchain or some other kind of public ledger be used to create a public sales rating record? I don't see how such a thing can respond to spamming and deliberate manipulation, however.

Another thought I just had: could some combination of drones and self driving cars revolutionize dead drops?

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#70

Post by yownie »

yownie wrote: post #67
yownie wrote: post #66

Few years ago it was revealed USPS was photographing all senders and recipient addresses on all mail in order to 'backtrack' packages in order to aid in investigations. https://www.offthegridnews.com/privacy/vast-postal-surveilla...

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_cover
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