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Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

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Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#111
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have the most chilling effect on a 3.0.

WANTED: rockstar programmer for new e-commerce startup. still in stealth mode, but think silk road with less php and more rails. bitcoin experience/enthusiasm a plus. message for details. no feds please.

Better watch out, law enforcement isn't exactly known for their sense of humour.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#112
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which the purpose of the press release (and bust) is revealed: to threaten the public and make an example. The usual stuff you expect out of an upstanding agent of democracy.

Shame on the US government for threatening the public with the enforcement of its own laws.

Not sure what your point is. It's okay for government representatives to threaten citizens for circumventing laws that are demonstrably foolish? Regardless you should step back and think about how a representative democracy should function.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#113
post #106
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely nothing untowards or abnormal about their claim, nor are they threatening the "public", which overwhelmingly doesn't operate black market sites. Law enforcement absolutely includes an element of making examples, and deterring crime. That is one of the major purposes why organizations like the FBI exist. Not quite sure what this has to do with democracy.

There is absolutely nothing untowards or abnormal about their claim, nor are they threatening the "public", which overwhelmingly doesn't operate black market sites. Sure, most people don't operate black market sites. But the problem is that if the government is able to use technology to have near-perfect knowledge of what everyone is up to then bad things happen when you get a bad person in charge of the government.…

The government is saying that they will pursue people who break the law through any means possible. In this case, they apparently socially engineered their way in.

And? How is this possibly a problem? Is it really an attack on potential legitimate uses of anonymity? Is it really useful to conjure up a murderous prolife president?

To all of those the answers is of course no.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#114
post #90
post #71

"On or about October 7, 2013, the HSI-UC [the undercover agent] was invited to join a newly created discussion forum on the Tor network, concerning the potential creation of a replacement for the Silk Road 1.0 website. The next day, on or about October 8, 2013, the persons operating the forum gave the HSI-UC moderator privileges, enabling the HSI-UC to access areas of the forum available only to forum staff." They we…

That sounds like the FBI had already infiltrated the Silk Road 1.0 community so they were invited into 2.0 at the beginning.

HSI refers to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Not to say it wasn't a joint effort with FBI, but it was an HSI undercover.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup; as long as it takes only a few weeks to set up something like this but a year to take it down, I don't think this idea is going away. The business model obviously works, and there is definitely a market.

And there is no shortage of people who think they can outsmart the FBI, but one slip and there goes your life. I sleep better working for a living.

Can someone be charged with drug trafficking for simply running a website on which drug trafficking occurred?

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#117
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame on the US government for threatening the public with the enforcement of its own laws.

Not sure what your point is. It's okay for government representatives to threaten citizens for circumventing laws that are demonstrably foolish? Regardless you should step back and think about how a representative democracy should function.

>It's okay for government representatives to threaten citizens for circumventing laws that are demonstrably foolish?

When they threaten citizens with arrest and a trial, yes. "Demonstrable foolishness" is not a get out of jail free card.*

*IANAL, but i'm pretty sure.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#119

They located Silk Road 2.0's server in an unspecified way, not directly related to their undercover agent on the support staff. Given that two other darknet markets (Black Market and Cloud9) have been shut down today, and they didn't specify how they located the SR2 server, it seems plausible that law enforcement have a vulnerability to locate servers over the Tor network. From the complaint: "In or about May 2014, t…

> service outages at the time the imaging was conducted That whole "correlation is not causation" maxim comes to mind here.

It's part of a greater collection of evidence. Evidence doesn't have to be mathematical proof.

A common theme (from what I can tell in law) is that something can never be proven to the rigor of a mathematician, so what happens is you build up piles of "coincidences" until a reasonable person would be hard-pressed to believe they are only coincidence.

Re: Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

#120
post #17

I won't link to them directly, but his accounts on most social networks are not deactivated, are publicly viewable and all mention bitcoin in the bio. In the wake of DPR 1.0 I find this a bit hubristic.

Most crimes are never solved. The criminal has to practically fall asleep in the getaway car.

...or to post a basis for reasonable suspicion on their social media accounts.
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