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Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

theatlantic.com

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Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#81

Post by sliverstorm »

slg wrote: post #62
ferdo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> governments are ultimately the overseers that permit networking infrastructure comprising the internet to be built...society depends on accountability There are two conflicting thoughts here. If we're not entitled to the same anonymity that those spying on us have, then we're servants, not members of a just society. We can have a government as overseer of communications or we can have a just society. We can't have…

> We can have Liberty or Security but if we pick Security over Liberty, we'll lose both. I hate this false dichotomy. It simply isn't true as we give up a wide range of liberties in order to live in a safer world. That is what laws inherently are, rules that limit an individuals ability for the greater good of society. Whether is it preventing people from driving down a highway at 100 mph, whether they can grow and c…

The main problem is people twist the quote, change its meaning almost entirely, and still posit it to be an authentic quote.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Those qualifiers change the meaning dramatically- Essential Liberty, Temporary Safety

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#82

Post by gwern »

pyre wrote: post #10
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #4

As the article itself said, successor sites are inevitable (and there are at least two that are thriving right now in SR's fallout). Those who prefer online black markets over physical transactions will simply migrate to the new marketplaces and consequently turn them into the "new Silk Road". The only true effect, perhaps, will be people taking security even more seriously. I read a statistic at some point that appr…

> 80% of SR users didn't use PGP I find this to be dubious. How does PGP relate to SR usage? When people communicated with SR vendors, did they use email (where PGP might matter) or did they use the SR software? Did their forum software allow people to sign their posts? How was this information sourced? Was there just an informal poll on their forums?

> I find this to be dubious.

I don't. People are lazy and don't want to use PGP because it's confusing and hard. PGP-related questions were some of the most common help problems, on /r/SilkRoad, people would regularly mention not encrypting their address (ranked up there with early finalization for being incredibly frustrating for those of us who knew what we were doing), and the Atlantis CEO stated that like 90% of Atlantis users relied on the Atlantis-provided PGP encryption rather than encrypting it themselves.

> When people communicated with SR vendors, did they use email (where PGP might matter) or did they use the SR software?

SR had an internal message system, much like Reddit's PMs. You would copy the public key off the vendor's profile page on SR (or possibly from a thread on the forums), you'd ASCII-armored encrypt your address to the public key, and paste it into an address form field during the order process. You'd do the same thing for a regular PM.

> Did their forum software allow people to sign their posts?

Sure: ASCII armor, remember. Any forum which allows you to type in text, allows PGP signing of messages. Few people bothered, except for important statements like from DPR about new rules or .onion addresses or stuff like that.

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#83

Post by quadrangle »

smokeyj wrote: post #65
jellicle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been governments and state sponsored entities, every single time. If that were true, which it isn't, why did humanity create governments?

> why did humanity create governments? The same reason "humanity" created mafias and gangs -- which is to use violence as a means of economic control.

It's as or more reasonable to say that governments evolved out of the need to mediate conflicts between people living in groups.

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#84

Post by jlgreco »

aeturnum wrote: post #45
GhotiFish wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. I'm not convinced it did, myself. If prohibition didn't happen 1920s for the americans, would Al Capone never of being born? Really these prohibition laws give lowlifes something to fight over, and the fightings dangerous, but who says they wouldn't be fighting anyway? Does it make life more dangerous. Maybe not. Does it make it more dangerous for me? Maybe. edit: Ouch. Looking forward to that rebuttal.

> but who says they wouldn't be fighting anyway? This is a totally fair question. So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that Al Capone's level of violence had nothing to do with his criminal syndicate. He just liked shooting people. However, shooting people is expensive, especially given that they employed reasonably advanced weapons (sub-machine guns). So, he's not going to get as many bullets when liquor is lega…

Furthermore, while Al Capone could have found other crimes to orchestrate to make himself rich, he wouldn't have been able to perform those crimes as well as liquor smuggling, limiting his supply of cash (lets face it, he was probably doing those things in our history timeline as well as smuggling).

Alternatively, if we suppose some crime that he really did neglect in favor of smuggling, why did he neglect it in favor of smuggling? Because it was not as profitable or carried greater risk (in our history timeline, he was able to manage his risk effectively. He wasn't killed in the act and was only eventually caught for tax evasion. Had he been, say, robbing banks instead, he undoubtedly would not have lasted as long.)

Any way you slice it, prohibition made dealing with Capone worse than it otherwise would have been.

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#85

Post by aaronem »

Nursie wrote: post #78
cottonseed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around the world, see: leap.cc (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). However, this voice is still soundly in the minority. I remember when the pot decriminalization ballot question came up in Massachusetts. Law enforcement came out loudly against.

I find it hard to see what business it is of theirs. They're there to enforce the laws passed down by legislators, not make the laws.

They're citizens of a democracy with every bit as much right to organize in support of their legislative proposals as any others, is what business it is of theirs. I may tend to disagree with their arguments, but until they try a coup, advancing those arguments is well within their rights.

(Thought experiment: Would you make the same argument against LEAP, which is another organization of LEOs who take the opposite position on decriminalization?)

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#86

Post by dingaling »

corobo wrote: post #9
HPLovecraft wrote: post #3

Do News Story Headlines Always Have To Ask A Huge Rhetorical Question?

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Today in our supplement: Is Betteridge's Law always true?

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#87

Post by ferdo »

slg wrote: post #79
ferdo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is what laws inherently are, rules that limit an individuals ability for the greater good of society. Not to be unkind, but this is a simplistic view of law and realpolitiks. As an example, can you honestly say that arresting hundreds of thousands of peaceful weed smokers annually is a "greater good"?

I should have thrown the word perceived in there. I don't necessarily think it is for the greater good, but I am not sure if that is the overall perception today and certainly wasn't when those laws were created.

In the 1930's, people traded the liberty of growing hemp for the security of keeping stoned black jazz musicians from raping their daughters (that was one of the reasons put forth by Harry Anslinger[1] in the era). We see how that trade has worked out, much as giving up the liberty of privacy for the security of government oversight of communications has put us where we are now.

Point being that the liberty/security trade isn't a false dichotomy.

[1] "Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#88

Post by gobengo »

pak wrote: post #35

Here's a question for the techno-libertarians stepping up to say the government has no right to shut down sites like Silk Road. Where do you derive this supposed natural right for anonymity on the internet? Life, liberty, freedom from discrimination, due process--these things I understand, and there are well supported philosophical frameworks (rule utilitarian, Kantian, libertarian etc.) for deriving them from first…

There is a difference between arguing in favor of a natural right vs a civil right, and both are valid things to argue for in a society.

natural - I have an inherent, inalienable right to this civil - Regardless of if its natrual, I only want to live in a nation that has this other right protected. So I'll fight for it.

Your argument assumes that techno-libertarians are only arguing a 'natural right' toward anonymity.

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#89

Post by DanBC »

mentos wrote: post #39

If we supplant all street markets for drugs with online ones, will we be trading drug/gang/gun related death with a higher incidence of drug related deaths from overdose/drug abuse? I'd imagine there would be net less deaths in a world where Silk Roads were allowed to exist. Thats not to say that drugs should be made legal, but we shouldn't wage a 'war' on them. I know drugs aren't safe but the last time I checked, w…

> I know drugs aren't safe

...and keeping them illegal adds to the danger.

Heroin is an unsafe drug, but impure heroin, injected with a needle that has been used and "cleaned" multiple times increases the dangers.

Making sure that heroin is hard to get makes people turn to other drugs. (Because addicts are addicted, and drug addicts take drugs.) One alternative to heroin is the Russian drug krokodil - desomorphine - often made using a variety of weird things.

CAUTION: GRAPHIC IMAGES

(http://www.krokodildrug.com/what-is-krokodil-drug-how-to-sto...)

EDIT: MORE HORRIFIC IMAGES

(http://www.democracyindistress.com/2011/09/warning-graphic-p...) (apologies for partisan source)

Re: Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place?

#90

Post by zequel »

Nursie wrote: post #78
cottonseed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around the world, see: leap.cc (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). However, this voice is still soundly in the minority. I remember when the pot decriminalization ballot question came up in Massachusetts. Law enforcement came out loudly against.

I find it hard to see what business it is of theirs. They're there to enforce the laws passed down by legislators, not make the laws.

Their argument was that weed charges gave them leverage on going up the ladder from the street-level dealers to higher-ups. Not sure if it was true but their opinion didn't play a factor in the ballot question vote.
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