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Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

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Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#31

Post by zzzcpan »

perlmutterlabs wrote: post #27
GistNoesis wrote: post #22

How do you defend against the eye in the sky, video surveillance or location tracking ? There seems to be conflicting objectives. When hiding an object you don't want too many people around to see where you hide it. Yet if you record only two person going to exactly the same non standard spot it's pretty much a red flag, then you follow the person in the recording to identify them. Most buildings are probably not val…

Yeah, it's a great story, but machine vision + machine learning + surveillance could pull the rug out from the dropgangs market in a second. But really, other than this fatal flaw, it's a great narrative of the internet spilling into and interfacing with analog markets

It's not a fatal flaw, unless they choose a location with police surveillance, but why would they?

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#32

Post by shapiro92 »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #30
GistNoesis wrote: post #22

How do you defend against the eye in the sky, video surveillance or location tracking ? There seems to be conflicting objectives. When hiding an object you don't want too many people around to see where you hide it. Yet if you record only two person going to exactly the same non standard spot it's pretty much a red flag, then you follow the person in the recording to identify them. Most buildings are probably not val…

I predict complex urban drop points in subways or steam tunnels to compensate.

in most cities those places are even more heavily monitored through CCTV than a park, so I am not sure if it adds value. On one hand you have the god eye in the sky and in the other CCTV in a metro.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#33

Post by bittermang »

zzzcpan wrote: post #29
bittermang wrote: post #25

The elephant in the room that this article highlights, but never addresses. A mobile phone has become a de facto a requirement for illegal commerce, as described, and to me presents a pretty huge single point of failure. And yes, I know, EVERYBODY has a phone. But I don't. Why would I want to carry a police officer in my pocket? Especially if I'm a criminal.

Dead drops don't require a phone, only something to take a photo of the hiding place.

The chat networks do.

As well as several of the methods outlined for protecting/locating the dead drops. WiFi hotspots, bluetooth beacons, etc.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#34

Post by stuaxo »

bittermang wrote: post #25

The elephant in the room that this article highlights, but never addresses. A mobile phone has become a de facto a requirement for illegal commerce, as described, and to me presents a pretty huge single point of failure. And yes, I know, EVERYBODY has a phone. But I don't. Why would I want to carry a police officer in my pocket? Especially if I'm a criminal.

Tonnes of people buy things like this right now, on their personal phones using text messages to people that they actually go and meet (or their drivers), using no encryption whatsover.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#35

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

bigiain wrote: post #20
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12

Dead drops sounds like an awful way to distribute anything at scale. The loss from other people finding stuff seems enormous also.

So long as there's sufficient profit margin to allow for an acceptable "shrinkage", it just becomes a cost of doing business. The benefits in terms of privacy/security for the typical darknet vendor probably make it well worth low double digit percentage losses, given the assumed margins from source to end user...

I don't know how secure it is when a cop sees you drop a bag of heroin behind a bench instead of just shipping people stuff.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#36

Post by yyx »

bittermang wrote: post #33
zzzcpan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead drops don't require a phone, only something to take a photo of the hiding place.

The chat networks do. As well as several of the methods outlined for protecting/locating the dead drops. WiFi hotspots, bluetooth beacons, etc.

You'd love to know that Telegram works on PC too.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#37

Post by monotone666 »

Dead drops can’t compete with USPS. They require a court order to open your package and even then can’t charge anyone with possession. All they do is send you a “love letter” and people have reported receiving future packages just fine.

Millions of people use dark net marketplaces. The war on drugs has fueled their growth and more serious crimes like identity theft have benefited from it.

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#38

Post by perlmutterlabs »

zzzcpan wrote: post #31
perlmutterlabs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a great story, but machine vision + machine learning + surveillance could pull the rug out from the dropgangs market in a second. But really, other than this fatal flaw, it's a great narrative of the internet spilling into and interfacing with analog markets

It's not a fatal flaw, unless they choose a location with police surveillance, but why would they?

Taking a guess: ML is just too good. Don't forget, it's also a signal to leave surveillance areas, eg "last seen driving into the desert". Any kind of outlier behavior is PART of the detection model ... that's where probabilistic models gain leverage, in fact ...

Re: Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets

#39

Post by omeid2 »

monotone666 wrote: post #37

Dead drops can’t compete with USPS. They require a court order to open your package and even then can’t charge anyone with possession. All they do is send you a “love letter” and people have reported receiving future packages just fine. Millions of people use dark net marketplaces. The war on drugs has fueled their growth and more serious crimes like identity theft have benefited from it.

The war on drug has to be one of the top contributors and financiers of crime and criminal gangs.

Imagine a world where criminal gangs don't have access to the money they make through drugs and a government that doesn't have to spend huge amount of money on drug laws enforcement because drug trafficking would be much less lucrative in the existence of legal access and you get fewer and very cash-strapped drug gangs, and government making money from taxing drugs.

Surely such massive savings and earnings can be spent to help problem users and reduce violence, no?

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