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U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#31

Post by doyoulikeworms »

taligent wrote: post #20
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dangerous to compete with state-protected real drug cartels. In all seriousness... does anyone think the present-day prohibition racket isn't just as corrupt as what was going on in the 1920s? Drug Enforcement Agency... who do you think they're enforcing for? It's almost impossible that it wouldn't be that corrupt. There is just too much freaking money involved, the stakes too high, for massive numbers of people…

Seriously. Why don't you just wake up and get a grip. The majority of the countries on this planet have similar drug policies to the US. They aren't all corrupt and in many countries the policies are quite effective. So to rant on like a crazy person about corruption and conspiracies just makes you sound unstable. There are many practical areas that the US can focus on like better border controls rather than opening…

And here I thought ending drug prohibition was about putting the worms back into the can.

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#32

Post by BigTigger »

milesskorpen wrote: post #7

5,200 orders valued, in total, at $1M. Over a ~2 year period. That's it? Hardly seems like much of a story. Particularly since Tor is of limited use when your system depends on electronic payment systems.

I believe they were using bitcoins to anonymize some transactions.

The hardest thing for a regular consumer I would think would be finding a drop point. Drugs and things sent through the mail would be fairly easy to track to a consumer who could then be charged for possession.

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#33

Post by BigTigger »

TillE wrote: post #4
rdl wrote: post #2

I'm curious how they attacked this network -- I'd assume the payment side is still the easiest, and they could look for some patterns and then set up physical surveillance at WU or other locations to catch cash transactions.

> accepting payment through PayPal Uh. How did they expect to remain anonymous with a PayPal account?

When I first heard about this, I heard they anonymized their payments through bitcoins.

PayPal seems a bit of a move to widen their market

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#34

Post by api »

taligent wrote: post #23
api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't "run countries," but there is massive corruption. Prohibition is basically a price-fixing scheme, and makes illegal drugs obscenely profitable. Years ago I knew a friend who got into it, and he made over $20,000 in one weekend by simply driving a car across the border once. (He ended up getting in trouble unfortunately, though he's much better now and no longer involved.) If a person is willing to put up w…

But of course you have ZERO evidence of US cops, judges, officials being involved in large scale drug trafficking. And how exactly does a corrupt judge work given the appellate process?

One Google query and 30 seconds of browsing netted:

http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/police_corruption_repor...

and

http://articles.cnn.com/2006-11-02/justice/sheriff.indictmen...

and

http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/11/1107.html

It's not hard to see the source of the temptation...

http://www1.salary.com/police-officer-Salary.html

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#35

Post by api »

philwelch wrote: post #16
watty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State-protected real drug cartels and prohibition rackets... can you expand? These drugs aren't just illegal here, are similar drug cartels running countries around the world?

The money goes from the tobacco, and alcohol manufacturers to the lobbyists to the reelection campaigns for the politicians that eliminate their competition. Pretty decent racket. There are similar rackets for Hollywood movies, petroleum, automobiles.... As api points out, there are also drug rackets and cartels that sell the nominally illegal stuff. Those guys can bend cops to eliminate their competition as well.

Yeah, that's a whole other issue...

Having seen people who smoke a lot of marijuana and people who drink a lot of alcohol, I can say with absolute certainty that alcohol is a far more dangerous drug. Ever known a hard-core alcoholic? That stuff eats your soul. It's at least on par with heroin.

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#36

Post by knotty66 »

Retric wrote: post #28
pjscott wrote: post #6

That's a shame. These guys' lives are going to be seriously messed up by this, and from the drug list, it looks like they were selling fairly ethical stuff; according to the article, they sold "LSD, ecstasy, fentanyl, mescaline ketamine, DMT and high-end marijuana".

Ecstasy is horribly nasty stuff. People rarely OD, but it can vary quickly do significant and permanent brain damage with heavy use. The real problem is when the symptoms show up they are basically permanent. Honestly, prolonged heroin use is significantly less harmful, the only good thing about ecstasy is the unpleasant side effects and fairly long high limit how much people take.

MDMA (if that is what you mean, as street 'Ecstasy' can contain any number of other ingredients) is by most metrics one of the safer recreational drugs out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#38

Post by icebraining »

thinkdevcode wrote: post #27
taligent wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Why don't you just wake up and get a grip. The majority of the countries on this planet have similar drug policies to the US. They aren't all corrupt and in many countries the policies are quite effective. So to rant on like a crazy person about corruption and conspiracies just makes you sound unstable. There are many practical areas that the US can focus on like better border controls rather than opening…

There are quite a few studies that show the correlation between legalizing drugs and domestic crime - Portugal being one of the most cited - and it's been shown that legalizing drugs actually decreases crime. We should be sending drug addicts to rehabilitation centers... Not prison, where drugs are rampant and only further increases the drug addicts dependence on narcotics.

Nitpick: Portugal didn't legalized drugs; "we" just decriminalized the possession of small quantities. It's still a crime to grow, cook, distribute and sell them.

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#39

Post by cookiecaper »

loverobots wrote: post #37

Looks like Hushmail was their weak point. Feds got court order from Canada based on treaty and it flowed from there. But yeah, between advertising, shipping, getting paid and moving money around it's hard to stay anon .

I never understand why people have such a fundamentally difficult time grasping the concept of plaintext and/or subpoenas. If someone knows enough to trade drugs on Tor, they definitely should be using strong encryption on anything and everything pertaining to it, including email.

Month after month handfuls of new stories come out about someone outed and/or owned by emails or other plaintext communication that was not encrypted or cryptographically signed. You'd think it'd sink through after a while.

You have no reasonable expectation of security for anything that is not fully encrypted with vetted, real-world strong encryption. While you may want something to stay under wraps, you're just leaving it there for the taking unless it is stored on permanent storage only in encrypted form.

Re: U.S. busts Tor drug market, arrests eight

#40

Post by rufugee »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #29
pjscott wrote: post #6

That's a shame. These guys' lives are going to be seriously messed up by this, and from the drug list, it looks like they were selling fairly ethical stuff; according to the article, they sold "LSD, ecstasy, fentanyl, mescaline ketamine, DMT and high-end marijuana".

The entrepreneur in me really feels for them. They're true entreppies. Risking literally everything. Sure we risk our life savings and sacrifice having a normal life but they risk losing all that AND the chance at being thrown in jail for the rest of their lives. Every time you hear a new drug commercial on TV, pay close attention to its side effects: permanent lung damage, eye damage, brain damage, death, heart atta…

You know...I have always hoped that as the older lawmakers died off, drugs would be decriminalized. However, I've since accepted that the huge amount of propaganda being shoved down our throats on a daily basis and the willingness of much of the population to not question what they're told/shown means the system will just recreate itself when that happens. Most voters are simply network repeaters...they happily echo messages/misinformation created by various sources who have a vested interest in seeing us continue to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and eat unhealthy foods. And the moment any of these repeaters get out of line, the sources simply need to throw up a "it's killing our helpless children" argument to get them back on track.

It's tiring and sad to watch. All of us came into this world on equal footing, in that we opened our eyes and had to learn about what life really means. The fact that we allow a controlling entity to tell us what we can and can't do with our own bodies is ridiculous and honestly downright scary. Why should they know better than I what's right for my own body? And I say this as someone who has a family, loves his children, and doesn't do drugs, but respects and values what I consider a basic human right. What you do with your body, as long as it doesn't impact others, should be your business.

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