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Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

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Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#101

Post by eru »

dobbsbob wrote: post #81
Torgo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because you're flaunting yourself, you're daring them to do something, and they hate that even more.

>I think it's because you're flaunting yourself, you're daring them to do something, and they hate that even more. Exactly. Everytime DPR gives an interview, it kicks the DEA in the balls and announces to the entire US through the media how inept they are. With this interview they can now go and get greenlighted double the resources to go after him. A guy here who was shipping seeds to the US was the only vendor caug…

What's the carding world?

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#102

Post by clarkm »

mrb wrote: post #34

Interesting. I have had a theory that DPR is Satoshi (who invented Bitcoin): https://plus.google.com/100577178258662783679/posts/76UcUX4P... But now DPR claims he inherited the site from someone else. DPR could be trying to disassociate himself from the "Satoshi" identity :)

Satoshi would never give an interview like this. He hated drawing unnecessary attention to Bitcoin.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#103

Post by mr_spothawk »

dobbsbob wrote: post #85
rdl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way a proper counterintelligence effort goes after someone like this is to develop a list of candidates based on known facts, then use surveillance, statistics, etc to rule people out. I could ID DPR for $500k with a few staff in a year, either by breaking the law or as an official state entitity breaking the laws of other countries.

I would start by examining where all the major Tor exit nodes are, since that's likely where you would hide your heavy trafficked Tor hidden service, right beside a giant exit node to blend in with the other traffic. Feds already know this, this is probably how they caught Freedom Hosting. Failing that go looking for hosting services that accept bitcoin, or online wallet services esp one's coded in php, since this gu…

> He also doesn't give interviews

Unless he's DPR.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#104

Post by etherael »

dobbsbob wrote: post #17

The name Dread Pirate Roberts should've given away the fact the site is supposed to be handed down to different operators if you read/watched Princess Bride. This guy is making a fatal mistake of talking to the press. History shows all blackmarket admins like Max Vision go down shortly after press articles come out with interviews. Now he went from guy running a drug site to "subverting the US with propaganda" so the…

The kinds of things he is saying are very widely espoused by people of similar mindset. If you were trying to profile based on political beliefs and agitation he could easily be me.

(he isn't, for what that's worth, I personally know thousands of others that fit in the exact same category and I am sure there are many, many more.)

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#105

Post by rlwolfcastle »

dobbsbob wrote: post #32
sirsar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interviewer didn't even get the operator's first name. I think he (she? they?)'ll be fine.

We know he found a wallet bug so that immediately gives away what level of competency/expertise to look for on the bitcoin forums which he undoubtedly posts there too. How he discovered the site is relevant and will give away how long he has been on bitcointalk since the orig dpr advertised there. We know his book recommendations from the forum which he prob recommended on clearnet in the past, or attached to his FB…

I wouldn't believe any of what DPR said is actually true.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#106

Post by dscrd »

shubb wrote: post #76
chrischen wrote: post #14

Whether it's a victimless crime or not depends on where they source the drugs. You could argue that aggressive law-enforcement is what causes reprisal violence, but that still wouldn't justify supporting it in another way.

So I smoke normal, legal cigarettes. About 10 a day, 20 when I'm stressed. I started about 20, borrowing them off friends, and it's been maybe 8 years now. The first 2 years, I didn't realize I was addicted to them. I just smoked when I wanted, which was between every lecture and with my friends in the evening. Then I tried to stop. Quitting smoking is weird because sometimes you can just stop, and don't feel the nee…

"If I were not hooked on cigarettes, as a smart, otherwise disciplined person, I'd be more sympathetic with this libertarians on drugs."

Ok, then... if you could do any political change in the society without stripping essential freedoms, what change do you think would be most effective in stopping/alleviating the drug problem? It seems to me that the best way would be to legalize them all: it would make it possible to control the supply, detect problem cases, remove a lot of criminal markets and thus actual crimes with victims, and get more taxes. Even the "think of the children!" aspect seems to be better covered by this, since it's quite a lot easier to enforce ID checks in legal shops.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#107

Post by josephagoss »

chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

When zerocoin is implemented things in this space will change a lot.

I personally think any technology such as zerocoin that can mask the transaction path 100% would increase the value of the currency by 100x

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#108

Post by captn3m0 »

geetee wrote: post #50
chrissnell wrote: post #26

The Dread Pirate's curse is that he'll never be able really spend much of this pile of currency that he's accumulated, at least not without drawing attention to himself and getting busted. History has shown that these guys eventually get busted but rarely for drug dealing; it's usually the IRS that busts them for tax evasion. If you're buying fancy cars, big houses, yachts, or businesses, eventually someone is going…

I heard he's buying a car wash operation or two.

Breaking Bad reference on HN?

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#109

Post by rdl »

eru wrote: post #101
dobbsbob wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it's because you're flaunting yourself, you're daring them to do something, and they hate that even more. Exactly. Everytime DPR gives an interview, it kicks the DEA in the balls and announces to the entire US through the media how inept they are. With this interview they can now go and get greenlighted double the resources to go after him. A guy here who was shipping seeds to the US was the only vendor caug…

What's the carding world?

People who steal credit cards (usually in industrial quantities, often mag stripe data), then use those credit cards fraudulently. You get credit cards by retail theft (corrupt waitstaff, etc.), site breakins (particularly before PCI and vaulting, when every crappy ecommerce site had a bunch of card data lying around), compromises at network participants like acquirers, corrupt staff, etc.

There are whole communities of people in this space -- it tends to be fairly large and organized groups, since the actual monetization side involves printing a bunch of plastic cards and distributing them to people to make purchases (at retail).

It's related to the ATM skimming/theft/etc. world, and overlaps a lot with "traditional organized crime". Lots of Eastern European presence, too.

Carding sites and forums exist to make a market in credit cards, exploits to get more credit cards, tools to monetize them, etc.

Re: Meet the Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road

#110

Post by stromstad »

etherael wrote: post #104
dobbsbob wrote: post #17

The name Dread Pirate Roberts should've given away the fact the site is supposed to be handed down to different operators if you read/watched Princess Bride. This guy is making a fatal mistake of talking to the press. History shows all blackmarket admins like Max Vision go down shortly after press articles come out with interviews. Now he went from guy running a drug site to "subverting the US with propaganda" so the…

The kinds of things he is saying are very widely espoused by people of similar mindset. If you were trying to profile based on political beliefs and agitation he could easily be me. (he isn't, for what that's worth, I personally know thousands of others that fit in the exact same category and I am sure there are many, many more.)

>[You] personally know thousands of others that fit in the exact same category.

"personally know thousands". Let that sink in.

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