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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

#201
post #51

Quote from http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/gardai-sei... An international day of action to disrupt global activity on the Darknet and remove certain websites and forums is to conclude within the next 24 hours under the FBI/Europol operation codenamed "Onymous".

Very impressed with the codename.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> made a down payment of approximately $70,000 in Bitcoins towards the purchase of a Tesla Model S Way to lay low.

This is a lot of major crimes investigations: if you want to participate in an organized criminal effort (which is what SR2.0 is), you're only as secure as the weakest link in that effort. Worth remembering when SR3.0 comes out. Is it being run by someone else who will put out a hit on a rival, or plow $70k of revenue into a Model S.

You are also, by nature, associating with people with a vastly higher than average risk of being arrested independent of your own conspiracy, and hoping that they will not mention your conspiracy for leniency in problems they got into without you.

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

#204
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds no different than the undercover police, detective work the FBI has been doing since its establishment. Infiltrate the perp, take him down. They used the same tactics on gangs, mobs, etc. Now violent crime is slowing, but they have hoardes of agents trained in these protocols, so they're redirecting energy into catching so called "cybercriminals." A bunch of people who infiltrated the mob are now infitrat…

> By the way: If the FBI is so successful using traditional police tactics to infiltrate "cybercrime syndicates," why do they need a "front door" to our devices? Just like the old-fashioned police work they did here which you mentioned, the FBI in the past has been able to use warrants to obtain unilateral access to safe deposit boxes, drill open personal safes stored at home, search through a person's desks, closets…

> The cryptographic technology necessary to do so already exists, in a way that would limit access to the manufacturer, so that's not the issue.

This is a genuine question: Does it really? Everything I've read on the topic has shown that that's not really the case, at least not without implementing it in such a way that it has some rather serious human weaknesses anyway. However, I'm rather ignorant on the topic, so I'm genuinely curious.

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

#206
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A software engineer at Space X [1] is also behind Silk Road 2.0? Crazy [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277371

"when I look back I will clearly view the code I've written here to be way more important for humanity's progress than the code I've written for entrepreneurs' selfish attempts at billion dollar exits"

Everyone should note that he worked at SpaceX for 5 months..

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

#207
post #89

Good news for bitcoin though, all these hidden service seizures and the price has barely budged. It is actually up a bit since this morning.

I think "Good News for Bitcoin" should be attached to a little trademark icon every time the phrase is uttered.

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

#208
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps, but that kind of joke gets made all the time on the Internet without bringing down black helicopters.

I made a joke like that on Slashdot once and the black helicopters did show up. Well, the Secret Service, anyway.

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

#209
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...when it consistently and unfairly places itself and its cronies above said laws.

Nevertheless, selling illegal drugs on the internet is illegal. I don't think you can say that attempting to bring down darknets is an example of government corruption in this case, notwithstanding the inevitable argument that the government is corrupt in any case.

There are many cases of drug-police taking bribes from drug dealers. If you can't believe that happens in the US, at least accept that it happens in other places.

Just a few years ago the President of INTERPOL was convicted of taking bribes from a drug dealer.

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

#210

I cannot imagine a way in which a single-server hidden service is safe from a global, active adversary like FBI, NSA & Friends. This [1] discusses passive analysis over time. Isn't it really easy to locate one if you can perform active attacks on the global infrastructure? (introduce latencies and/or break links temporarily) If your hidden service is served by a couple of mirrors on each continent, though... then may…

I wonder if the next step in service hiding is to do this on a service more like freenet?

I haven't checked the status of the project in a long time, but one of freenet's features was distributed hosting, with encryption making sure that nodes could not inspect their own content. I don't think you can do a lot more than disseminate documents that way though, rather than actually useful sites...

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