Earlier quoted context omitted.
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_cover
Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
71–80 of 195 posts
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It just echoes what the parent post said, which states millions of people use darknet marketplaces. they see the whole catalogue whether they go straight to the opioids section or not.
sometimes they even list! lower fees than Ebay. Maybe Ebay and Amazon write those Ask Reddit posts about the "scariest thing you've seen on the dark web" to perpetuate that its scary.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#73Excellent summary. I'm reminded of the old saw, "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed".
"Old saw"? I remember that quote being new, it's not _that_ old...
It's from 2003.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/681-the-future-is-already-h...
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
I'm interested, do you have some examples of what kinds of products you are talking about?
odd goods like you might find in craiglist's for sale section. shared passwords or accounts for streaming websites. books. paintings. collectibles. there are often good deals on any dark net marketplace that pops up. All the way back to Silk Road 1.0.
cheaper than listing on ebay.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#75The elephant in the room that this article highlights, but never addresses. A mobile phone has become a de facto a requirement for illegal commerce, as described, and to me presents a pretty huge single point of failure. And yes, I know, EVERYBODY has a phone. But I don't. Why would I want to carry a police officer in my pocket? Especially if I'm a criminal.
That's why you'd use a burner.
Depending on your adversary, you need to be super careful to not make the single mistake that'll blow your cover there. If that burner ever gets switched on or off at your home, or if it only ever gets switched on/off at the same location as a phone registered in your name, or if it commonly travels exactly the same route as your phone...
I'm guessing "they" won't go to those sort of investigative lengths for theoretical retail customers of a theoretical Dropgang. I'd expect a vendor to be targeted using those sorts of techniques though.
And none of that data ever goes away... Who knows what law enforcement might choose to do with those sorts of leads in the future?
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#76Very 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…
>As interesting as it all is, it's also very concerning for Law Enforcement. it seems better from their perspective than street gangs shooting each other over turf imo. an improvement for everyone involved, frankly. >How do you make sure the product gets to your support layers? through dead drops, of course ;)
I'm not seeing why this would particularly reduce violence. Some gang violence isn't about drug sales, but the same sort of territorial control that nation-states like to fight over too. And for the violence that is about drug sales, I'm not seeing why that wouldn't continue. Dead drops are just as local as corners are, and there's just as much incentive to fight over business as there was previously.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#77How do you defend against the eye in the sky, video surveillance or location tracking ? There seems to be conflicting objectives. When hiding an object you don't want too many people around to see where you hide it. Yet if you record only two person going to exactly the same non standard spot it's pretty much a red flag, then you follow the person in the recording to identify them. Most buildings are probably not val…
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
London is the most surveilled public space on the planet with full access for law enforcement. Somehow crime still happens there.
Technology is not a magic bullet. It also is also neutral and does not choose sides. Crime will exist for as long as it is profitable. There's even crime and black markets in highly secure, structured environments like prison. "Arms Race" between law and outlaw will continue.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>As interesting as it all is, it's also very concerning for Law Enforcement. it seems better from their perspective than street gangs shooting each other over turf imo. an improvement for everyone involved, frankly. >How do you make sure the product gets to your support layers? through dead drops, of course ;)
I'm not seeing why this would particularly reduce violence. Some gang violence isn't about drug sales, but the same sort of territorial control that nation-states like to fight over too. And for the violence that is about drug sales, I'm not seeing why that wouldn't continue. Dead drops are just as local as corners are, and there's just as much incentive to fight over business as there was previously.
In the current system, you have to have dealers hanging out on the corners. To take territory, you shoot at the dealers and either kill them or scare them away.
In this system, you have drops. How does a rival gang know where they are? They'd have to buy the product to discover the drop and drops shouldn't be used multiple times. They could watch a user find one, but then that drop wouldn't be used again so they couldn't stake out and wait for their rival to refill it.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#79It's cool to see serious tradecraft applied to this stuff. Especially compartmentalization. And yes, using traditional shipping systems is a serious problem for old-school dark markets. I've thought off and on for several years about the potential for using dead drops with accurate GPS. I mean, geocaching. Many years ago, when I was dealing LSD, it was pretty common to use dead drops. But then, they were typically re…
> However, it's ~clueless customers and low-level distributors who'll most likely get pwned.
INTERPOL has made some large busts in the past, but afaik it always has come down to failure to maintain proper OPSEC.
There's also the issue of possible directives in the future to prosecute customers en masse after major domestic busts using backlogged USPS analytics. As traffic obfuscation methods continuously improve, the economics of such directives will begin to look more and more reasonable when the goal is not to stop trade directly, but by establishing fear with precedent.
The problem with dead drops is that on a large scale where the level of trust is sufficiently low, it inevitably requires an escrow and resolution system with human moderation. And then you've just centralized trust instead of circumventing it. Dropgangs in the form described by the article do not provide the full package.
The article itself claims dropgangs and off-market platforms are the future and then goes on to state:
> Cryptocurrencies are still the main means of payment, but due to the higher customer-binding, and vetting process by the merchant, escrows are seldom employed. Usually only multi-party transactions between customer and merchant are established, and often not even that.
The author doesn't seem to make the connection that higher levels of trust means less scalability. The success of these platforms however is directly related to their scalability. Yes, this is a dangerous, criminal activity for both parties and I definitely do not appreciate the explosion in popularity of these kinds of markets. I have seen regular people get serious federal prison time due to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The barrier for entry is much higher for new distributors as well, because A) at this membrane exists highest ratio of undercover law enforcement and B) establishing initial trust is key to something like dead drops, which typically will involve high-dollar, distributor-to-distributor transactions. Open markets help to facilitate initial trust-building by providing a trustworthy platform.
Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
#80Pokemon Blow!