Slashdot Mirror
Online Narcotics Store 'Silk Road' Is Showing Cracks
pigrabbitbear writes "It always sounded like a hoax, didn't it? Silk Road: an Internet website where you can buy any drug in the world? Yeah, right. But it's real. It was almost two years ago that we first heard about the site, which hosts everything from Adderall to Ketamine, LSD to MDMA and tons and tons of weed. After it started to pick up a ton of press and exposure, we all thought that certainly the Silk Road would get shut down. It's super illegal to sell drugs or even to help people sell drugs. But it didn't. Silk Road survives to this day. However, with the arrival this week of the first conviction of a Silk Road-related crime, you have to wonder if Silk Road's days might be numbered after all. The trouble is brewing in Australia, where a guy named Paul Leslie Howard is facing as many as five years in prison for selling drugs on Silk Road. We're not talking millions of dollars worth of drugs, but we are talking about thousands of dollars worth. And just as Silk Road natives had feared, Howard was one of those Silk Road n00bs who read a newspaper article about the site and decided to try it out for himself."
Showing crack just now? But that's like a staple drug.
SilkRoad is a sort of eBay for drugs. One guy was caught selling drugs, big deal : there are still thousand of others selling drugs on the site. It's like saying "Craigslist is DOOMED : a date rapist was caught using it!"
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
..and they paid for it.
Definitely no cracks here.
Sure, Ron Paul wants you to be able to buy drugs on the street or in walmart - as long as you pay taxes on them. Don't let the slashdot paullowers tell you differently, their interest is in getting you to pay more taxes so they can pay less.
That, and of course to remove you power in the name of "liberties" while giving more power to the wealthy. That is how they bring you fascism for the people.
Trusting that the person you are buying from or selling to is not a cop or is actually going to provide what they claim seems insane. If you are a buying you have to give a place to send the drugs and a seller has to get those drugs to that place. Either option seems fraught with chances to get caught.
This violates every idea about never getting caught; everyone you don't know is a cop, all phones are tapped, etc.
If you get caught selling drugs on Silk Road it's entirely your own fault. You can use the site anonymously with Tor. You can receive funds anonymously with Bitcoin. You can send drugs anonymously by dropping it in an unattended mailbox.
Now for the people buying drugs it's a whole different story. You have to show up in person and pick up the drugs. You don't know who you're dealing with, so there could easily be a cop waiting for you when you go to get it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
From what I can tell, this doesn't affect Silk Road at all.
It just seems to me that obtaining goods/services physically is just naturally more open to observation/interception. I would think this was obvious.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
bet he does that too
You misspelled 'idiot'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Cops are watching as soft drugs are sold in coffee shops. They just want you to be safe, that's all. That's why guns are outlawed, firearms are a safety hazard.
I don't see how the prosecution of one person spells the end for a website, or an entire online trade.
It's a little bit like saying busting one dealer will bring down the entire drug trade in a country. The Silk Road, or other sites like it (which I imagine the savvier users will have switched to as soon as the Silk Road got media heat), will continue for as long as there's a demand.
Just legalise it all already.
"All the drugs you want?" I don't like or do drugs. Makes me feel extremely uncomfortable not feeling normal. I just don't get why people want to do drugs.
I checked out Silk Road and it was great to see so much stuff to choose from. But I can get Oxycontin more cheaply from the kid down the street.
Based on past reports, this guy was caught *buying* on Silk Road to resell in person. This is sensationalism.
However, it's always good to see SR get more press, because this is a really perfect example of many of bitcoin's advantages over the traditional banking system. And I'd say 1 buyer busted in thousands is pretty damn good. Remember, sellers have virtually no risk-exposure to law enforcement through SR.
One conviction in two years? That doesn't sound so bad.
So the root cause of this problem is newspapers then? I agree, the sooner we're rid of them the sooner we can all get on with our business.
He was importing for overseas. DUMB !! So he was not a seller, he was a buyer. It was just a matter of time before he got caught.
In TFA, he was importing drugs via Silk Road from Europe and then selling it in Australia. It doesn't say how he got busted, but I'm assuming that drug sniffing dogs at the post office probably got him busted. This guy was an idiot and deserved to get caught.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I own a pacifier factory, how else will I stay in business?
There are plenty of things on Silk Road, which are completely legal. Silk Road exists for its anonymous feature, not necessarily illegal.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand this sig, and those that beat up people who do.
Goddammit, lift the +5 cap on modding just this once, Dice! The parent deserves +50 Zillion!
--FWIW, this post courtesy of Tor since I modded already :-)
Finally finished with school, and NOW I find out where to get Adderall.
Wow - in the US they would have executed him with lethal injection.
Summary: This guy goes on silk road and buys drugs in Europe and gets it mailed to himself in Australia. Consider how easy it is for him now to get caught picking up the drugs. Silk Road is still an awesome anonymous place for people selling whatever legal or illegal products. It's the pick up that is tricky. Speaking of which, there are plenty of legal things on silk road, or at least legal in the originating country.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
It's just hard to believe that, in an economic sense, even with all the invasive gov't and corporate snooping and tracking...even with all that, SilkRoad exists.
It's a truth of economics...the black market **will certainly** exist in any human system. Heh...in Soviet Russian the side supplies YOU
Seriously look at Soviet Russia. They had strict authoritarian controls inside, and embargoes outside, yet 'yankee blue jeans' and Marlboros were ubiquitous to the point of being parodied (Berserker!)
The black market is a certainty. Process it and behave accordingly.
Thank you Dave Raggett
3. This is the first time evidently someone has gotten arrested for it. It probably won't be the last. I'm not familiar with how silk road works. I'm guessing there are barriers to try to prevent law enforcement or other criminals from using it to find out when and where drug transactions are going to be happening. I'm also guessing those barriers are not foolproof.
Chances are Silk Road is crawling with cops. But they are not focused on catching buyers or occasional sellers, but are more focused on catching the bigger distributors. Probably they don't even cite Silk as their principal source when prosecuting. Hard to prove much of anything on the internet to a jury, easier to trot in some Joe Undercover cop and have him explain a (probably at least half truthful) account of how he came to know about those deals, without mentioning that first info came via silk.
One off buys are not worth chasing.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The OP states that he was selling drugs on Silk Road, this not true. He was buying drugs from silk road and selling them locally to make a profit.
Silk Road anonymity favours the seller because they can post the goods anonymously at any post box, the buyer takes a risk when he collects the delivery.
I watched an interview with him on TV, he was stupid, he was regularly buying large amounts of drugs to resell and taking no precautions. Even then it took the cops a long time to eventually catch him.
Basically he was taking the buyers risk for the people he was selling to and he got busted. If he had stuck to personal use only he would only get busted for using not trafficking and he probably wouldn't have been caught at all.
The Aussie connection was the only reason this submission was accepted.
Without that you would not be reading about it here on Slashdot.
But Slashdot is now basically a cheerleading machine for all things Australia.
The catch is in the delivery. I know someone who received, unexpectedly, a brick of hash in the mail. He almost had the package unwrapped when the feds kicked in his door. His disabled brother was visiting that afternoon and both were arrested. Getting stuff from Point A to point be gives law enforcement a pretty good shot at an offender.
Governments hate anonymity and payments they can't track, and they are just itching for excuses like "drugs" and "child pornography" to push through regulations to outlaw efforts like bitcoin and tor.
One off buys are not worth chasing.
Whew!
I'd buy a new heinie. Mine's got a crack in it!
There is no logic to this article. This is akin to saying that the automobile industry is in danger because some drug dealer got caught making a run across the border. I believe the writer of this articles should consider laying off the narcotics and stop being so paranoid. This guy got caught, probably due to exposing himself for a chance at some decent amount of cash. I should also mention this is Australia, a country they are notoriously hard on drug dealers.
Have you been watching the news lately? I don't think they care whether they are routing suppliers or buyers.
I am John Hurt.
His bust has to do with interdiction of the package -- which is how they've been finding drug dealers for decades now.
If he left evidence at his home, or on his home computer due to lack of encryption, of use of the Silk Road, then that's why they found it. Sounds like basic human intelligence methods to me -- with no real connection to the Silk Road. Everyone knew these risks were present and I don't think it's going to change much.
I think if anyone could have figured their way out of this honeytrap it would have been John McAfee. He essentially did the same thing on a much more massive scale and was able to escape from the people trying to lock him up. So where is that service on SR? I'd pay a hefty sum of BTC if someone could "McAfee" me out of the situation and give me pointers along the way. This guy just needed a crack team of prostitute-spies to run interference and covertly install key loggers while he made his escape like a BOSS. He would have been out of that country faster than you can say "catfished trojaned blackmail email".
Even if they were, it would be ridiculously hard to. The recipients can just deny ordering that package if they put a fake name on it, and there's nothing to prove they did. Hell, they can't even bust the smarter escorts out there because they accept "donations", which in practice should be a lot easier than busting somebody for a random package.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Chances are Silk Road is crawling with cops. But they are not focused on catching buyers or occasional sellers, but are more focused on catching the bigger distributors. Probably they don't even cite Silk as their principal source when prosecuting. Hard to prove much of anything on the internet to a jury, easier to trot in some Joe Undercover cop and have him explain a (probably at least half truthful) account of how he came to know about those deals, without mentioning that first info came via silk.
Hmm, I don't know about this. Surely the US Dept. of Justice has taken an interest, but how do they go about busting people? I have heard of zero high-profile, SR-related busts. The big sellers are the professional ones - they deliver what they promise (ensures repeat sales, good reviews, and more sales), they use stealthy packaging, they avoid leaving fingerprints, they ship carefully (multiple locations, away from home, etc.), and they tumble their bitcoins to make them really, really tough to trace. I suppose the law men could be exploiting an unknown vulnerability in SR (and they surely look for them), but for now that site looks pretty successful. If some SR big fish got busted, even offline, word should get back to the site, no?
I'm more interested in the privacy, security, and freedom implications than the drugz, but this is all very interesting stuff, since most all other forms of communication and money transfer are much more susceptible to snooping by Big Brother.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It would be great if these guys exposed them and shed some good light on hackers.
accessing someones open account on facebook is not hacking
Um, last time I looked, cop promotions were based on performance. And I've read in the far past that DEA-types were bitching that they had to stop surveilling a few 'big time dealers' in order to make a couple fast flashy street dealer busts to put the agency in the papers and justify its budget. Arrests are a metric of police 'performance', the more arrests, the bigger the promotions. And it's way easier to bust a 4 block dope dealer than it is the guy who's setting up boatloads of dope to come in, even though busting the importer and breaking the network results in fewer drugs on the street until the new network gets into place.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
BitCoin Prices are jumping past few days. Looks like this case is bringing more attention to Silk Road and people are wanting to try it out? Ha
Looks like Silk Road days aren't numbered - they just got a boost
Craiglist is used for mostly legal things, the silk road exists only to serve an "illegal" purpose, which is selling drugs. I'm not all that familiar with how they stay anonymous, but if there's a way to unravel that system, it would come through cases like this most likely. I think this guy got busted for selling drugs outside the silk road, as per the article, and was overall a stupid drug dealer. A quote about human stupidity and why we can't have nice things (for a user the Silk Road is heaven.. till they OD) is in order I suppose.
What's stupid is this article.. and I do understand how oft-mentioned this is, but do the editors perform /any/ tasks? Or is it a sort of 'publish or perish'?
No shit Sherlock. We pay taxes on tobacco and food. What makes you think you wouldn't pay it on Weed and Heroin?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I am very surprised at how much ignorance is evident about the Silk Road marketplace. Slashdot is supposed "News for Nerds," but there is a lot of technophobia splashed all over the comments section of this story.
1) Silk Road is only accessible via Tor. I would expect the average Slashdot viewer to be more aware of Tor, and the security and anonymity it offers.
2) Silk Road exclusively uses BitCoin for its transactions. To any average crypto-nerd, or even a beginning crypto-nerd like myself, BitCoin is a marvelous application of cryptology in a social environments. Is there really this much ignorance of BitCoin even in a highly-tech-aware venue such as Slashdot?
3) Silk Road customers and sellers and strongly encouraged to encrypt all communications with PGP, and PGP use is routine on that marketplace. Of all things, this should immediately pique the curiousity of any security-minded technophile. Isn't widespread adoption of PGP one of the long-term ideals in the security world?
Security, anonymity, encryption, peer-to-peer ... how come so few people have ever seriously looked at this remarkably post-technological creation? Regardless of your interest in drugs, from a freedom/liberty/technology standpoint, Silk Road is pretty amazing.
Your behaviour is rather predictable. Observe:
"I'd call it since you stalk me.. lol! apk" (from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42744373)
A fifty year old man behaving like a thirteen year old is quite a sad thing to observe. You demonstrate little more than your immaturity with this post, as whatever it is you accuse me of eventually proves irresistible to you. Before long, you simply cannot avoid showing yourself up as the hypocrite you are.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Hahahahahaha, you call that payback? Thats some pretty limp whining, APK. You bet I can take it! Especially if all your attacks are as clumsy and ill-aimed as you've managed thus far.
As patiently explained earlier, I've merely responded to a single one of your whines and have used a couple of your other posts as examples. Apparently you're a touch delicate as answering your snivelling questions is enough to traumatise you into accusing me of stalking you. Poor baby, I pity you: life must be a bit tough for you.
Nothing you say here detracts from your own towering hypocrisy. You the stalker, you the wailing sook, you the predictable man-child, you the hypocrite accusing me of both stalking and AC sockpuppeting when I've demonstrably done neither and you continue to engage in both behaviours.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
read em and weep while you eat your words http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3406867&cid=42701491 your post history shows the rest
He did get quite the reaction from you troll so it is effective.
A friend of mine was convicted weeks ago and he was a user of Silk Road. It had nothing to do with the website but because he got lazy, stopped encrypting his SMS, didn't bother to use TOR some of the time and stopped using Truecrypt on his hard drive. Not to mention he let other users know who he was in real life and when they fell out it was blasted over Facebook that he was a drug dealer.
He'll be doing 2 years of a 4 year sentence in prison with plenty of time to think about how stupidly lazy he was.
He did get quite the reaction from you troll so it is effective.
What a retard. You accuse me of using troll AC accounts (which I haven't - I don't need to hide in disgrace as you do, APK) then procede to do the JUST THAT against me.
You sad old cunt.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
He did get quite the reaction from you troll so it is effective.
How do I know it's APK posting this drivel?
Easy. He still thinks I'm stalking him. Despite having it explained to him multiple times, he still doesn't understand that I'm actually just answering his own question. Therefore, you think I'm stalking him. It's basic logic, really.
Pity you fail logic, APK.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Tell us how yer words tasted since ya hadda eat 'em http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42756893 Sardaukar86?
Tell us how yer words tasted since ya hadda eat 'em http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42756893 Sardaukar86?
Tell us how yer words tasted since ya hadda eat 'em http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42756893 Sardaukar86?
Prove I had to eat them, cocksucker.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Ya prove it yerself by "eatin' yer words" 250:1 here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42756893 Disprove apk on hosts files over adblock, ghostery, & dns http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3445509&cid=42831729 then. How'd yer words taste when ya hadda eat 'em Sardaukar86 on that very same sentiment from you only to have yourself outnumbered nearly 250 to 1? ROTFLMAO!