Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that the same gwern with the blogs that showed up on HN from time to time?
Yes.
The reply was kinda spooky and epic :-)
Good luck with everything.
Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
111–120 of 221 posts
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
WoT is pointless when people can manufacture identities that trust each other and build a fake trust score for an id used to spam or whatever.
WoT can't be effectively spammed, unless those spam accounts are trusted by people you trust. The spam accounts can vouch for each other all they want (a la Twitter), but you control whose trust you value.
I was thinking about this the other day. From an information perspective, it shouldn't be impossible to design the system you describe (including the implied nuances) because spam usage patterns do and must look different than normal usage patterns under any system that penalizes new accounts.
Hypothetically, the worst you could do would be astroturf. (aka the US/Chinese military style "slightly biased posts from a large number of centrally controlled but seeming unrelated accounts")
However, the idea of slight bias over longer periods is somewhat antithetical to the idea of a spam. In that it might influence you to buy Sparkle towels (honestly, with Amazon prices that low and shipping that easy... [meta :p]) over a competitor, but isn't going to convince you to navigate to {insert sketch get-rich-quick spam scheme here}.
Weeding out astroturf is an entirely more interesting problem though...
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
(By the way, I would bet these people were using Tor and this subpoena is useless.) Based on how poor the opsec of previous darknet admins has been, I see no reason to assume theirs was any better.
You can't register via Tor on HN. I wonder if you can do that on reddit. Then there's always the email account thing, but if you were careful from day one, you could get away with it. Hosting AMAs is both stupid and provocative IMHO when you're a drug dealer.
> Hosting AMAs is both stupid and provocative IMHO when you're a drug dealer.
Unless your endgame, as would seem entirely reasonable as a logical illicit dealer, is pump sales and dump the entire business as quickly as possible.
In which case the additional attention and growth might offset the additional risk over short time horizons.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason I know you're lying is that anybody that I have met that has done any time says they wouldn't wish it on their worse enemy.
So your anecdote has become irrefutable evidence? Some people enjoy prison. I imagine they're not common.
They're habituated to it maybe. It may be "comfortable" because they know it well and that familiarity allows people who likely had unstable home situations to appreciate the comparatively stable situation of prison to be preferable.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
They likely disagree that their "crimes" ought to be illegal, and do not accept the legitimacy of any punishment for such behavior. They should probably still accept the reality of the punishment, at least until the law is modified. Disobeying a law for moral reasons is only the first half of civil disobedience.
That's a view I would see nothing more than government propaganda. 'If you don't like the law, then you should break it and peacefully accept any punishments.' Should we tell homosexuals in some areas of the world that they should go ahead and draft up their wills and turn themselves to be executed because they should accept their punishment for their crime?
You seem to be assuming the government wants people to break its laws, so it gets to punish people.
It costs the government money to put people in prison; not only the cost of their food, shelter, supervision, etc. but also the cost of removing a taxpayer from the workforce. Furthermore, a democratically elected government that is increasingly imprisoning more and more of its people is not likely to remain popular. It is in the government's best interest to only enforce laws that the majority of people are happy to obey.
Civil disobedience is a technique that protesters who think a law is unjust use to take advantage of this interest. By deliberately disobeying the unjust law and accepting the punishment for it, they help put pressure on legislators to change it. The government prefers a situation in which no laws are ever broken--that's why it makes such an extensive effort to incentivize citizens not to break them--but in the case where enough people feel it is in their best interest to break the law even with the punishment that comes with doing so, as people who use civil disobedience do, then the law must change if it is to reflect the will of the people.
The example you gave re: homosexuals/death penalty is extreme, but follows the same principles, as long as that government is democratically elected. Most democracies don't get to the point where they're throwing the death penalty around willy-nilly though, thank God.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#116We (speaking as a netizen) need Usenet 2.0; eg: something that can fulfill the role of reddit that is decentralized/distributed. Perhaps reddit can even transition into being a reader (a la google reader) for people that don't want to set up their own node. I'm not saying that drug discussion is the quintessential act that deserves to be protected, but I am worried that the government has such an easy avenue to get t…
If you're interested in decentralized applications, you need to be paying attention to Ethereum, Whisper, Swarm, and IPFS. The building blocks for what you're describing are being built. It will happen.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#117From NSWGreat's AMA linked in the article: > The Darknet is amazing, its changing the drug scene for the better. Its taking away the violence and the dangers that are inherit with buying drugs. Never thought about it this way, but as everyone is talking and writing endlessly about how taxi rides will be revolutionized by billion-dollar Silicon Valley start-ups I found this insight about the drug-market fascinating. O…
>Never thought about it this way
I'm trying to be better about reading too much into a single comment, but I think this means that you either have a long-held belief on the 'war on drugs' (one way or the other) or that you've simply never given it any thought as it may be a matter which you may feel does not concern you (it actually affects almost everybody).
In either case, here are a few materials that you might find interesting.
Milton Friedman on the 'War on Drugs' (1 of 3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyystXOfDqo
Noam Chomsky on the 'War on Drugs': http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199804--.htm
To be honest, it's been a while since I've read/watched either of the above, and there might be a good amount of overlap between them.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#118From NSWGreat's AMA linked in the article: > The Darknet is amazing, its changing the drug scene for the better. Its taking away the violence and the dangers that are inherit with buying drugs. Never thought about it this way, but as everyone is talking and writing endlessly about how taxi rides will be revolutionized by billion-dollar Silicon Valley start-ups I found this insight about the drug-market fascinating. O…
Along with keeping prostitutes and their customers safer:
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/redbook/
The Internet will always try to route around any roadblocks and form more efficient markets. Governments have to aggressive act to stop it from happening.
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Web of trust-based spam filtering takes some effort to use, but is a workable solution.
WoT is pointless when people can manufacture identities that trust each other and build a fake trust score for an id used to spam or whatever.
There are trust metrics for web-of-trust systems that are resistant to attackers who can create unlimited dummy identities that trust each other. For example:
Re: Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum
#120If you're having problems using Reddit through Tor, use HTTPS. Better yet, force the HTTPS redirections in the Reddit settings. This info is, of course, redundant or too late for the people talking about illegal activities on that particular subreddit, but it might come in handy for when they come searching for you.
Not sure why you are giving this advice. HTTPS won't do anything to stop a subpoena for IP information(?)
I believe he's saying that accessing Reddit using Tor with HTTP is sometimes problematic but using HTTPS can fix the problems. (It's been a while but I think that might mirror my own experience.)