21–30 of 264 posts
"Benthall should have known that those who hide behind the keyboard will ultimately be found." What a weird tone...
The usual stuff you expect out of an upstanding agent of democracy.
"Benthall should have known that those who hide behind the keyboard will ultimately be found." What a weird tone...
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.
What does this mean in the wake of Prop 47?
Nothing. Prop 47 is a state measure for simple possession. This is conspiracy to traffic, interstate wire fraud, federal crimes prosecuted under federal statutes. Even if these were state charges Prop 47 didn't really change much (or anything) sentencing for sales.
Wire fraud? If it's the sale of something illegal I don't think that suddenly makes it wire fraud. Further, he's not charged with that. The sale is still completed. It's an illegal sale, but not fraud. Fraud would be if someone said they were going to sell you cocaine and instead shipped you powdered sugar.
"Benthall should have known that those who hide behind the keyboard will ultimately be found." What a weird tone...
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.
"Benthall should have known that those who hide behind the keyboard will ultimately be found." What a weird tone...
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.
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.
From the complaint:
"In or about May 2014, the FBI identified a server located in a foreign country that was believed to be hosting the Silk Road 2.0 website at the time. On or about May 30, 2014, law enforcement personnel from that country imaged the Silk Road 2.0 Server and conducted a forensic analysis of it. Based on posts made to the SR2 Forum, complaining of service outages at the time the imaging was conducted, I know that once the Silk Road 2.0 server was taken offline for imaging, the Silk Road 2.0 websites went offline as well, thus confirming that the server was used to host the Silk Road 2.0 website."[1]
Then, as a result of extremely poor OpSec (Benthall accessed the server directly, used his real email for registering the server), they got his IP's and, well, you know where it goes from there.
1. https://pdf.yt/d/RpyX9_xmapTkhmkb (Complaint)
Anyone who knows more about tor than me care to explain how DNS works on onion sites? I assumed that it would be distributed in some sort of way that prevented this sort of thing from happening? Or does transferring ownership require the owner's credentials to be compromized?
The .onion address is iirc a hash of the public key.
I think this is the money quote: "During the Government’s investigation, which was conducted jointly by the FBI and HSI, an HSI agent acting in an undercover capacity (the “HSI-UC”) successfully infiltrated the support staff involved in the administration of the Silk Road 2.0 website, and was given access to private, restricted areas of the site reserved for BENTHALL and his administrative staff. By doing so, the HSI…
Its been hinted that they'll be busting other Tor marketplaces in the next day or so. I wonder if they were similarly infiltrated and what effect that will have on the community.
The largest two markets, Agora and Evolution, are surprisingly both going strong right now.
dnstats.net keeps track of markets uptime. You can use the website to watch for other markets that may fall.
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.
I have no problem with assurance that the law will be faithfully executed. This isn't that. This is inflicting fear to suppress people you disagree with. If only we had a buzzword for that.
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…