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Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

arstechnica.com

51–60 of 73 posts

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#51
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge isn't locating or identifying average users, though, since they'll gladly send you their name and address. The challenge is finding the distributors, who are (presumably) more careful to follow the rules. It sounds like this technique can't really do that in the general case.

Even distributors probably do not know all the ways that Tor can be attacked. Look at the Hushmail/DEA case: you had a reasonably big steroids distributor using Hushmail, sending mountains of incriminating evidence through that system apparently unaware that there was a major security problem. Is it really so hard to believe that the police might be able to get a Silk Road distributor to follow an off-site link?

A distributor, sure. Some people are that dumb. But enough to make a dent? I doubt it.

There are site rules and best practices and distributors are ranked (among other factors) on how well they keep to those. The rules say (among other things) to only communicate through the site, to PGP encrypt any sensitive information, and never to store any information longer than necessary to complete the transaction. I'm not saying there are no possible attacks against that surface, but I don't think the one you've described gets there.

Anyone who breaks those rules puts themselves and their customers at risk. If a distributor got busted because they clicked an off-site link, I imagine the community would say good riddance. And keep trading drugs.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#52
post #30

Talk about bad press for Bitcoin. Silk Road is probably the number one reason regular Joe's would ever hear them mentioned.

Somebody help me out here: Isn't Silk Road also the number one reason Regular Joe would use bitcoin?

chirp chirp

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, do police agencies have people who know enough about the mistakes people make with Tor and Bitcoin?" I met a researcher who did some work on attacking Tor, the results of which were given to law enforcement agencies. He was a bit light on details, but the basic idea of his approach was this: 1. You narrow down the geographic location of your target. Not hard in the case of the Silk Road, since there is a physica…

Clever. Good to know they aren't totally clueless.

Yes they are. He said a researcher shared that information with police officers, not that they did anything but say "thanks a lot, this will help". I'm willing to bet no officer on the drug enforcement team even read the paper.

No law local enforcement agency will known how to even begin step 2, and none will waste the time and resources for step 3.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#54
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that prohibitions against any value exchange are purely evil or misguided, so they should be routed around.

Wait, what ? There are no transactions that should be blocked? Preventing the sale of napalm to a triple-arsonist is evil? I know I'm being a little extreme, but again- what!?!

You use an extreme example as a red herring. There are very few aggressive napalm-obsessive maniacs (outside the military agencies), but there are tons of regular folks who do no harm to anybody, but are constantly threatened by quirks in the laws. Do you know for 100% sure that you have paid all your taxes and filled all the forms correctly and never misspelled or accidentally lied in some gov. paper? So that if someone would want your ass, they would never find anything in your history against you? With such amount of laws, regulations, police abuse and complex expensive judicial system, you can never feel safe. So please don't think that some abstract triple-arsonist is your biggest threat. Your biggest threat is IRS. When your govt wants to kill some arabs, they will force you to pay for that and you cannot unsubscribe. And then you, not the govt will receive terrorist bombings in response.

And while I don't think that taking drugs is a good idea, I don't think paying for fighting them should be compulsory on the part of general population outgunned by the police and brainwashed in public schools.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#55
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that prohibitions against any value exchange are purely evil or misguided, so they should be routed around.

Wait, what ? There are no transactions that should be blocked? Preventing the sale of napalm to a triple-arsonist is evil? I know I'm being a little extreme, but again- what!?!

Why would a triple arsonist be walking around free?

If someone sets fire to 3 buildings I expect them to be in prison.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#56
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody help me out here: Isn't Silk Road also the number one reason Regular Joe would use bitcoin?

chirp chirp

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't expect a huge response to this one :P

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what ? There are no transactions that should be blocked? Preventing the sale of napalm to a triple-arsonist is evil? I know I'm being a little extreme, but again- what!?!

Wait, what? There are no transactions that should be blocked? I'll be a little bit extreme here and agree that there are no voluntary transactions, made between consenting adults, that should be blocked. Any use of force (or threat of force) to try and achieve some social or political end is evil, IMO. Even if the "end" is a noble one, like preventing arson. It's the act of the arsonist which is evil, and intervening…

How can you be radical if you feel "a bit biased"? I am radical voluntaryist myself because it's the only way to figure out what is right or wrong, what works and what doesn't. Whenever you have coercion, you cannot have study of human choices (that is, economics and ethics). It is as simple as that. If one wants to be coercive and violent - it's their choice, but it is illogical to claim that it's for someone's good. Because the only way to know anything about good is when you put your guns down and apply reason.

Am I being a bit biased with this idea? Can anybody study human choices by not giving them choices?

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#58
post #45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silk Road is a burden. Most serious Boitcoin discussion forums and chat channels will ban you for mentioning it. We're trying to change how cash transactions work, not help teens go to rave parties.

That doesn't mean it's not true though, right? I mean, help me along with this. Bitcoin is like cash, but you need to use a computer. If I'm already using a computer, there are many reasons I might prefer to use another payment system: Traceability, reversibility, confirmability, et cetera. These are generally very useful features that translate directly into me paying less for stuff. It seems to me like for most peo…

Some people don't like having everything they do tracked, just on principle.

Also, drugs aren't the only black market trade.

Re: Police crack down on Silk Road following first drug dealer conviction

#59
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en tl;dr hidden services are anonymous

If they're smart, they'll just focus on compromising the site itself or using fake buyers/sellers. There are tons of ways to attack a site like that which do not rely on attacking tor.

Like what?
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