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FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

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Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#41

Post by Nursie »

orbifold wrote: post #20
kordless wrote: post #2

As little as 50 years ago, selling these drugs wasn't illegal in the US. Look how far we've come.

I think people in power realized that the counter culture of the 60s and 70s posed a real threat to a capitalistic society, so they eliminated factors that could give people the idea their life purpose was not to be a drone in a large corporation.

Did it though?

AFAICT when people came down from whatever it was and actually tried to live their 'new' ways, they pretty much degenerated and fell apart after short times for all sorts of reasons.

Being a corporate drone is not an aspiration. Feeding your family and having a nice place for them to live certainly is though.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#42

Post by aaron42net »

xnull wrote: post #31

Some here may know me as a critic of overreaching and aggressive cyber enforcement (and related surveillance). First, I'm quite happy that this activity does not appear to be the result of wide scale infrastructure sabotage. And I am quite happy that the FBI is doing its job to combat crime that is facilitated using (abusing) the technologies that are bastions for free speech, privacy and whistleblowing. Of course th…

That depends on how you define "wide scale infrastructure sabotage". I believe that this is resulting from: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-security-advisory-relay...

January 30 to July 4, 2014 someone set up 115 tor nodes on fdcservers.net (total cost maybe ~$200k?), which was 6.4% of entry guard capacity. Clients talk to 3 guard nodes for an average of 45 days each, which means they probably picked a guard ~12 times during this period. Each guard-picking attempt had a ~6.4% chance of landing one of these bad guards, or a 55% chance across all attempts.

"We know the attack looked for users who fetched hidden service descriptors... The attack probably also tried to learn who published hidden service descriptors, which would allow the attackers to learn the location of that hidden service."

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#43

Post by forgotpasswd3x »

travisp wrote: post #9
kordless wrote: post #2

As little as 50 years ago, selling these drugs wasn't illegal in the US. Look how far we've come.

It's worth noting that other things sold include "firearms; stolen credit card data and personal identification information; counterfeit currency; fake passports and other identification documents". A number of the sites didn't even sell drugs (only these other things).

I'm not sure about silk road 2, but firearms were never sold on silk road.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#44

Post by threeseed »

oofabz wrote: post #13

Was anyone charged with a crime? It disturbs me that the FBI has free rein to seize people's property without even giving them their day in court. The Fourth Amendment says "nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I don't see any process of law here. The FBI is law enforcement, not judicial.

Blake has been formally charged with conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in forged documents and money laundering conspiracy.

The FBI clearly would have sought a warrant from the judiciary as they would in any other case. I really don't understand where you're coming from here. There is nothing unusual at all about how all of this has gone down.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#45

Post by Nursie »

threeseed wrote: post #37
MysticFear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The responsible use of drugs for your own use doesn't affect anyone except yourself. The chemical uses you brought up affects more than just yourself.

Except the issue is that many drugs affect your ability to be responsible. If people could take heroin or ice and (a) stop whenever they wanted and (b) still function as society expects then nobody would have an issue with them being legal. But drugs like those effectively rewire the brain and are incredibly destructive. A significant amount of domestic violence, child abuse, family breakdown incidents are directly a…

There is an argument that removing the criminal sanctions against addicts might significantly mitigate these problems.

Regardless, the current legislative frameworks around the world (with few exceptions) are based on fear and a twisted sense of morality rather than actual harm.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#46

Post by malka »

sliverstorm wrote: post #28
puredemo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for marijuana. But the ethical imperative to allow people full control over what substances go into their own bodies seems to be as ignored as ever. Simple example: I'm not legally allowed to control the levels of testosterone in my own body. That seems absurd. #MyBodyMyChoice

Because we balance it against other ethical imperatives, such as impact to the people around the user, and safety/health. Many drugs have indirect impacts. Jacking up on testosterone, for example, makes you aggressive and violent. Many people want the government to look out for them. For example, the regulatory rigor around new medicine. Many proponents of complete legalization of all substances argue that responsibl…

About 23% of the people that use heroin becomes addicts[0].

Most users are responsible, but since they are responsible, they won't impact you, or anyone, and you'll never hear of them

[0] http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/heroin

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#47

Post by threeseed »

sliverstorm wrote: post #39
xnull wrote: post #31

Some here may know me as a critic of overreaching and aggressive cyber enforcement (and related surveillance). First, I'm quite happy that this activity does not appear to be the result of wide scale infrastructure sabotage. And I am quite happy that the FBI is doing its job to combat crime that is facilitated using (abusing) the technologies that are bastions for free speech, privacy and whistleblowing. Of course th…

On the bright side it leaves us in the same position as man has always been- rather charted territory. I've been skeptical of Tor et-al from day one. I didn't have provable reasons why, but the court has always served as the gatekeeper to investigation, and the Tors of the world seemed like the sort of hubris we techies are so prone to- "Age-old social justice problems man has struggled with for thousands of years ca…

>It is my opinion that we (techies) overestimate ourselves.

What everyone is forgetting is this:

The FBI, NSA, CIA etc all have techies. And since they would be extremely well paid it is logical to assume that they are very good at what they do. So anything that we can do they can do only (a) arguably better and (b) with the constraint of having to comply with the law.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#48

Post by geofft »

oofabz wrote: post #13

Was anyone charged with a crime? It disturbs me that the FBI has free rein to seize people's property without even giving them their day in court. The Fourth Amendment says "nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I don't see any process of law here. The FBI is law enforcement, not judicial.

That interpretation of "due process" seems to neither make sense nor be just.

Are police officers or FBI agents who are being shot at prohibited from shooting back at their attacker, because that would deprive life without due process of law?

Can suspects not be arrested until a court case has exhausted all its appeals, because that would deprive liberty without due process of law?

The FBI (presumably) had a warrant here, after gathering evidence, and the cooperation of various other agencies including a few district attorneys. The US (hopefully) is a land in which the process of acquiring a warrant before actually seizing anything or arresting anyone is so commonplace that it isn't even mentioned. There was a process of law, it involved the courts, you didn't see it because it didn't need to be mentioned, and it didn't involve the completion of a criminal case.

(There are separate safeguards, against police officers killing people without reason, arrests happening without a warrant, or liberty or property being deprived for unreasonably long while a court case is artificially stalled. Some of those safeguards are not as effective as a free people would hope. But I don't think that's what you were referencing, and I don't think you can make a case that any of those happened here.)

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#49

Post by mechatronics »

kordless wrote: post #2

As little as 50 years ago, selling these drugs wasn't illegal in the US. Look how far we've come.

Just once, I'd like one of you to admit that Silk Road (any many of the other sites) sold large amounts of identity theft equipment.

These are not noble drug dealers harming nobody.

They are sociopathic assholes selling whatever makes money, even if the ONLY reason for the item is to harm innocent individuals against their will.

Re: FBI takes down over 400 .onion sites

#50

Post by sliverstorm »

malka wrote: post #46
sliverstorm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we balance it against other ethical imperatives, such as impact to the people around the user, and safety/health. Many drugs have indirect impacts. Jacking up on testosterone, for example, makes you aggressive and violent. Many people want the government to look out for them. For example, the regulatory rigor around new medicine. Many proponents of complete legalization of all substances argue that responsibl…

About 23% of the people that use heroin becomes addicts[0]. Most users are responsible, but since they are responsible, they won't impact you, or anyone, and you'll never hear of them [0] http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/heroin

I would argue that avoiding physical dependence (the 23% number) is not the bar for "responsible use".
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