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.
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!
A brilliant strategy: A stoned out populace that 1) pays taxes and 2) doesn't give a shit about anything.
What's not to like?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You misspelled 'idiot'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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.
And what's wrong with that? We quit spending money on this pointless "War on Drugs", and start making money off the Rastafarians. And we might finally have space in our jail system for "Real" criminals. The only people that should be against this is the Cartels and the ATF.
Wow, that's an impressive display of logic!
The "quit throwing people in jail for pot (and other drugs)" position is somehow "removing your power in the name of liberties while giving more power to the wealthy."
How about this position: complete legalization of all drugs. Not just "medical MJ", not just "decriminalization", but full scale, "buy organic pot brownies at Whole Foods" legalization. No special sin taxes, just ordinary sales tax like any other item up for sale.
That's the libertarian position. Any talk of "tax it just like alcohol" is a sop thrown in for those sitting on the fence who might need a little something in exchange for letting go of their anti-drug prejudices.
There's lots of potential problems with the implementation of this policy, but "removing your power in the name of liberties while giving more power to the wealthy" sure as heck ain't one of them.
The only people that should be against this is the Cartels and the ATF.
and Border Patrol, the Tobacco Industry, the Alcoholic Beverage Industry. Definetly, will help the junk food companies. Doritos and Taco Bell will make a killing.
Well, for some people, their "normal" is pretty terrible and anything that can help them escape it is worth it.
You can get anything from Silk Road. People focus on the drug aspect, but you can buy counterfeit coupons, fake IDs, real IDs, software, pr0n, weapons (until recently), school assignments, hit contracts, and the list goes on.
And no one gives a shit that you don't like to get high, it's the principle of being able to do whatever you want with your money and your body. So quit worrying about why the rest of us like to get fucked up and stop asking questions that are nothing more than your thinly veiled criticism of someone else's life choices.
That's great, as long as you don't begrudge others who do enjoy them. Imprisoning people who have fun in a way you disapprove of is no way to run a supposedly free country.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A brilliant strategy: A stoned out populace that 1) pays taxes and 2) doesn't give a shit about anything.
What's not to like?
We already have that, it's called TV. The fact the viewer remains miserable doesn't matter, they docile and are too scared to fight back. The dulling of the masses while the oligarchy destroy the middle-class is all that matters.
2. should be "about anything that matters".
I don't think you have an inkling of how common marijuana use is in Middle America. An enormous amount of people with steady, respectable employment and dedication to their careers are toking secretly. Legalizing marijuana would not suddenly make the nation's workforce drop out.
While that might continue to be a problem with hard drugs like heroin (but even here therapeutic approaches are better than an unproductive "war"), legalization of marijuana would result in prices dropping down to that of tobacco. How much of a problem is it now for people to steal from others just to buy a pack of ciggies?
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.
Legalizing marijuana would not suddenly make the nation's workforce drop out.
Also, legalizing pot wouldn't immediately make it ok for employees to be stoned at work. Alcohol is legal and yet most employers don't allow employees to be drunk at work. Businesses can still make sobriety a condition of employment.
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 only people that should be against this is the Cartels and the ATF.
Alcohol is fully legal - and yet there are quite a few moonshiners out there.
Making drugs legal won't stop the issues, it will merely change them, like it did when they legalized alcohol.
The only people that should be against this is the Cartels and the ATF. And businesses that would like to have employees that show up and work.
Businesses already deal with employees that show up drunk, or don't show up at all.
I can get an ounce of marijuana for $40 and it ain't bad. Alone that would last me over a month. There is no way in hell I would ever have to steal to support my habit.
If I am so goddamn broke that I cannot afford $40 a month for Pot then I am doing something so horribly wrong that theft would not solve my problems.
Getting taxing drug sales is just a way of getting more people to consider the argument. Here are the better arguments.
The fact of the matter is that people who want to do drugs, do drugs. They will find a way to get access to them. Because it can only be sold by shady individuals, it is easy for these dealers to push harder drugs or spike their drugs with more dangerous elements. In other words, you are making the health risks even worse than they were already by banning drugs. If drugs were legal, they could be make by reputable companies that have something to loose if they make bad products.
Black markets form around banned products that are in demand. Since drug dealers cannot go to the police with their problems, they take matters into their own hands. This causes a lot of violence between the various dealers. By removing the ban, you can potentially decrease the violence (and collateral damage) associated with drugs.
Because their is a high risk associated with dealing/making drugs, drugs can be priced at a premium. This is why gangs and cartels use drugs to fund their enterprises. By making drugs legal, you lower the cost of drugs such that gangs and cartels can no longer justify taking the risk. You essentially defund the gangs and cartels. Without funds, they become significantly smaller threat to society.
All in all, if individuals are going to do drugs anyway, wouldn't you rather it be out in the open instead of a dark hole? In the open, the government has some level of control over it, it can be made as safe as possible, and bring in some level of income. In a dark hole, it will fund violent crime, be extremely costly and futile to stop, and be increasingly unsafe.
Societies best way to stop drug use it not to ban it but to educate in order to change cultural norms. Look at smoking. At no point did we ban it but a significantly lower percentage of people use it today than they use to. Of course, banning is easier and it makes people feel good. People don't usually like to take the hard (but effective) route. They want a easy solution right now.
Well, OK, we are going to tax it specially, and it will, like liquor, only be available in special stores.
And just like liquor taxes, the fiction of using the tax on drugs for any drug rehab/educational purposes will be proposed, ballyhooed, and ignored in real life. The money will be siphoned off to pay more government employees.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"removing your power in the name of liberties while giving more power to the wealthy" is a problem of the Libertarian philosophy in general. They propose to abolish or equalize political power while pretending economic power is not a form of power at all...thus making the wealthy into oligarchs with absolute power over their domain.
I agree that these escapist type are the last people that should be using drugs. However, I don't think they make the largest portion of the drug-seeking population. Drugs are like life-enhancers (I'm using that term "enhance" with a neutral connotation). They can enhance your ability to party, they can enhance your ability to study, enhance your ability to have sex. Watch out curious folk, sometimes the intended consequence is reversed and you will be left with the notorious "bad trip," or perhaps even death.
IMHO this escapist anecdote is promoted simply to turn away the curious. If you haven't noticed, we (society) don't actually a good job helping these people - no one can show these people that they matter to society or themselves.
No trees were killed to send this message, but a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
You are making a lot of mistakes. One, you are assuming that drug users don't already have steady jobs. At least in regards to marijuana smokers, all of them I know have jobs except for a few students.
Two, while it is true that legal drugs are not necessarily cheap, a competitive market that isn't taxed or regulated to death is going to be considerably cheaper, especially if such actions result in the loss of control by cartels.
Three, you seem to think that the legal availability of drugs will result in increased drug abuse. The opposite is probably the case. Being legalized means that addicts can more openly seek treatment. I've also seen some good arguments that legalization of cocaine would pretty much destroy the meth market.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
And Cops. The burden of proof to arrest and convict someone of a shooting is rather high. Especially with a culture that does not "snitch". This leaves the police unable to arrest & convict people they know committed crimes but cannot get anyone to testify to. Drug charges provide all the evidence needed. So police will arrest someone for a drug charge because they can't get them on the real crime they committed.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Definitely no cracks here.
Of course not, it was all seized in the raid.
(bee-tee-dubs, you don't need to pluralize crack).
Oh, cut the crap and demagoguery.
Most libertarians would be happy to turn back the clock on government regulations and government taxes to more traditionally American levels, for the simple reason that the current situation is not sustainable. Progressives are so much into sustainability, why don't you start with finances?
As a small business owner, I haven't always been able to afford insurance for myself. In Mexico I can go to the pharmacy and just buy the medicine I need, no expensive doctor trip required. Sure a retard could OD on something or mix the wrong things, but they could just as easily step in front of a buss too.
There's a problem with over prescribing antibiotics, I concede that. However, ask anyone who's worked in many doctor offices. The Drug Sales Rep shows up, drops off samples, sings the praises of the new wonder drug, and the Doc invariably increases prescriptions of the damn drug, so it's not like this shit is an exact science folks, otherwise marketing like that would have no effect on prescriptions. All I'm saying is that I should be able to get my meds refilled without visiting a doctor if I don't care to (or have the money to).
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.
That I'm fine with. Kill social and moral regulation entirely...If I want to marry another dude or shoot up drugs that's not your concern....end our imperial wars...and restore same financial regulations and taxes. Hell if you end the wars you may not need to do much with taxes....though I'd still favor a system that promotes greater wealth equality. High rate flat tax with the first 30k or so exempt, something like that...or just a wall st. transaction tax...
That's what most socialists want....or at least where we'd like to start or actions we would strongly support.
In America it seems that most people who identify as Libertarians are anarcho-capitalists...So as an anarcho-syndicalist I agree completely on the political side of their ideology, but cannot tolerate the cultural/economic aspect.
It is legal to grow your own plants and transfer up to a ounce of pot to another person in Colorado (passed last election). The government has until July (if I remember correctly) to come up with the framework for the full retail sale of Marijuana. Washington state is also working in a framework to sell legal pot.
The Tobacco Industry would be delighted to sell you dope, naturally it doesn't want you growing your own dope.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I use Silk Road regularly in Australia, and the site gives you all the mechanisms you need to stay protected on the electronic side of things. You're still stupid if you think that importing MDMA and Cocaine from overseas and having it go THROUGH CUSTOMS is a good idea. The site even says "Hey guys, don't ship this shit to your name or a post box that can be linked to you because surprise surprise, COPS CAN OPEN YOUR MAIL!"
There are many great sellers that do the importing for you in Aus. The cost is higher, but that's the cost of not having the risk of going through customs. Silk Road is not "dying" just because of one idiot being exactly that. I will continue to buy off Silk Road safely, because I'm not retarded and know how to follow simple instructions.
Anon Coward for obvious reasons....
All the "pot heads" I know are engineers (and various other professionals). They all turn up to work on time. They all do a good job. They are all interested in working for a living. And I bet half the people you know who are "reliable", "responsible" and all other sorts of things ending in -ible also have smoked or do smoke pot.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The world is not divided neatly into "the straight edge public" and "junkies who will do anything for drugs".
Perhaps not, but I would argue the decrease in violent crime, being able to zero out cost of "The War on Drugs", being able to make drug use as safe as possible, and the ability to regulate the industry is worth the possibility that there are a few more drug users or the current drug users do more drugs.
We best off making drug use as open and safe as possible now and spendinf more time and resources on educating and encouraging people to stay away from drugs from the start. It is a cultural issue not a criminal one.
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 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.