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Silk Road Shut Down, Founder Arrested, $3.6 Million Worth of Bitcoin Seized
New submitter u38cg writes Ross William Ulbricht, known as 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' was arrested in San Francisco yesterday and has been charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing. Silk Road has been shut down and some $3.6m in Bitcoin (26,000 Btc) seized. The question is — how?"
onyxruby submitted a link to the criminal complaint (PDF; coral cache might work better). The court filing indicates that they seized the actual servers and recovered their contents, making numerous references to the private messaging system. Also according to the court filing, the Silk Road was used to sell ~$1.2 billion in illicit goods since being founded in 2011.
I think it can be argued that Silk Road practiced the use of Tor as well as anyone could have. They still got pinched. Although it may come out that an insider turned informant, it seems that the Tor system is compromised by the snoops.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
So this begs the question - Are we winning the war on drugs yet?
...I am absolutely fine with this.
...wins again!
You're telling me I can't run an online marketplace for illegal items on the internet? Next thing you know I won't even be able to post naked pics of my ex in revenge for dumping me.
I just finished reading Gwern's guide to the Silk Road the other evening. If you weren't familiar with the goods for sale, or how it worked, this is a great article: http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road
The only surprise here is why this arrest and seizure took so long. I hope all these evildoers and drug pushers realize now that they can't hide behind anonymity and the authorities can prosecute and punish these dastardly bastards.
Congrats to the FBI, DEA, and government for taking this hooligan down.
"U.S. law enforcement authorities raided an Internet site"
How'd they get in the front door?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
But they only spy on foreign terrists. And blacks.
It'll drop like a stone.
Only kidding, I imagine a lot of the smarter users moved on the very second the site was mentioned in the media./p
This guy had to convert some of the bitcoin into real $ at some point, he had to eat and live somewhere right? Money laundering investigations might have been the vector through which he was compromised instead of a computer based trace.
Or more specifically, monitoring known(or complicit) tor entry nodes, looking for quantity of activity corresponding to activity by roberts, back tracking to the origin IP address, getting a warrant for a full-on-monitoring of that address, verifying their target, then going for a bust.
Encryption and anonymyzing technology only works in as much as no one with any resources actively wants to figure out who you are. You might be able to hide your message, but you'll never hide your existence.
That's an odd way for the editors to keep bitcoin in the headlines.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yup. NSA -> FBI -> Parallel Construction Filter -> Arrest.
Tor was not designed to protect against an adversary that has a global view of all traffic.
According to the complaint, they tracked him by intercepting fake id's he sent to his actual home address. Whether they breached TOR and just set him up, or just hit the stupid mistake of a lifetime by him using his actual address I doubt we will ever know. In any case, they traced things back to him in the end it seems.
How: Anyone can get on Tor, get on Silk Road, and watch what's going on. Anonymity doesn't do shit when half the nodes are run by three letter acronyms and you end up selling BTC on MtGox for USD.
The only questions I have have are about the seizure and the hacking.
How do you seize BTC? Surely they had an encrypted wallet and copious backups, right? The feds can take your wallet and do exactly nothing with it, while you could then reproduce your wallet from one of your backups and have instant access to your BTC.
Why was he hit with a hacking charge? Because he did things with a computer?
Can we arrest Ben Bernanke?
If he ran a site that allowed the sale of illicit goods, then sure. Your argument would be stronger if the story were about the arrest of they guy that created bitcoins, and not a guy who ran a website where you can use bitcoins to buy drugs and other illegal goods.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So how long will it be before the Silk Road is back up and running under the management of the Dread Pirate Roberts? I presume he had a cabin boy prior to being arrested... or was that how he got nabbed?
Roberts got busted when the RCMP confiscated fake identity documents in the mail and reported to the FBI.
It's an open secret that Silk Road was THE primary driver of demand for bitcoin in the beginning. Adoption by the Silk Road transformed bitcoin from a technical curiosity to a real currency backed by a valuable physical commodity (drugs).
Bitcoin has a life of its own now. Even Wall Street is involved. But without Silk Road, 99% of slashdot would have never heard of bitcoin. And the end of Silk Road is certain to impact bitcoin in a big way, even today.
Or more specifically, monitoring known(or complicit) tor entry nodes, looking for quantity of activity corresponding to activity by roberts, back tracking to the origin IP address, getting a warrant for a full-on-monitoring of that address, verifying their target, then going for a bust.
Encryption and anonymyzing technology only works in as much as no one with any resources actively wants to figure out who you are. You might be able to hide your message, but you'll never hide your existence.
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
Everyone knows the real Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired +15 years in Patagonia ... But, of course, no one would care about arresting the Dread Pirate Ulbricht.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah it's only the metadata. Keep telling yourself that so that you believe it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Every system devised by men can be broken by other men with the right funding. If your system maintains any records like posting of items for sale, that's easy for someone to grab at some point. Once they determine the physical locations and gain access it's all over. Even if the system only sends messages which are not stored, those can be intercepted eventually given enough work or again the physical access to the servers.
I'd like to see how he implemented his back-end. Did he rely upon tor's anonymity and get lazy in the private messaging system? Were the logs/messages unencrypted and left in RAM? The new methods of catching computer crooks basically entail that the FBI sends in an IT team and nothing is touched or powered off (meaning mounted encrypted drives are live and they can run through them at will, etc).
Also, I remember reading an article by Schneier about the possibility for a well-funded attacker to effectively add tons of nodes, exit and internal, and then DDOS the non-controlled nodes to shape traffic in a manner where a good majority of the packets flow throw their own nodes, enabling them to track and compromise users and end service locations. We know the US .gov can fund an operation that large...
Just goes back to the old saying: when it comes to gang warfare, Uncle Sam has the biggest gang of them all...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
https://medium.com/p/d48995e8eb5a
I didn't write it.
Link to indictment contained within too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Will the government try to redeem these bitcoins? Wouldn't that be like saying that they accept that bitcoin is valid? (Of course they could be hypocrites and say that bitcoin is completely invalid and redeem them anyways.)
It would be neat if all the seized bitcoins could be identified and recorded as being worthless now.
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
You know that he's going to have a trial, right? And that the FBI won't want him to get off because there was no warrant for the evidence the prosecution presents in that trial, right? There might very well be unconstitutional monitoring in this process, but to bring it to court and get a conviction, a warrant is necessary paperwork.
Is anyone really surprised? When something like this is constantly referenced in the news media, it's only a matter of time before they get shut down. Demonoid, Astraweb, Suprnova, Napster. As soon as something is referenced in the news media, start the count down.
We can't have things like this... at the same time... I do support the legalization of drugs and I do feel we need more economic freedom.
That said... you can't have people buying hit men on the dark web.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Our federal government shut down yesterday. How the hell do they have the resources to fight the "war on drugs" when they can't even keep the national parks open?!?!
Crimey
No. http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf has more info. DPR got extremely sloppy with keeping his identities separate. The Tor part worked fine.
Where there is demand, there will be supply.
Even if Roberts goes down with the sinking of the Silk Road site, I give it a week before there's some replacement site up and running.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Indeed you're correct. My purpose, however, was merely to make a smart-ass remark about the irrelevance of bitcoins to this case. The bitcoins are just a tool, just as federal reserve notes are, but they'll nevertheless be part of the cyber-scare case. Even so, let me know if you come up with an excuse to arrest Bernanke.
Right. Bitcoin, MtGox et al did nothing wrong. And (based on my only having scanned TFS) the Feds did nothing with the Bitcoin infrastructure either. When you arrest a drug dealer, you seize all the money found in the raid.
This could have an interesting implication for Bitcoin. We all know how deeply in love the authorities are with seizing the proceeds of criminal activity and utilizing said proceeds for themselves. So if they exchange Btc for USD, they are legitimizing Bitcoin as a currency. If, on the other hand, they live by their claims that Btc is merely an intermediary for money laundering, then I'd expect them to delete the seized wallet. In much the same way that they destroy illegal contraband. Lets see if the gov't can pass up US$3.6m. Particularly now that their primary funding source has dried up.
Have gnu, will travel.
It didn't stop them from abusing the crap out of the law when they got Kim Dotcom. That said, Kim might walk because there was so much prosecutorial misconduct.
I read the internet for the articles.
Problem with tor is that the longer you use it from the same endpoint, the easier it is to find you through correlation of traffic. It is possible to find you as soon as you start sending traffic into tor but its more difficult. If a government entity (or anyone with alot of resources) throws a tonne of nodes into the mix, they can quite easily hunt the users/servers down.
All you need to take away from this is TOR is not safe when used alone.
I believe its best to route like: you -> TOR -> VPN -> internetz. (VPN before TOR is just as good as not using a VPN at all)
Oh yeah?
Steve Ballmer: It is very strange. I have been in the CEO business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.
Ross William Ulbricht: Have you ever considered black marketing? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
that was across borders, sir. US law doesnt really apply outside the US, and im sure our govt gives no fucks, zero, about other nation's laws.
You're feeding a troll. He just wants to be negative and bitter. He doesn't know how to feel any other way.
it is more likely than not that a very clear paper trail will be shown that it all happened by good old fashioned police investigation as you described.
It doesn't mean it was not obtained with an illicit program to begin with, only that they were able to cross the "t"s an dot the "i"s later.
I'd like to see how he implemented his back-end. Did he rely upon tor's anonymity and get lazy in the private messaging system?
Tor won't help you much against an enemy that has many global taps into the Internet as the NSA has. They'll soon know exactly where messages originate and remove any "anonymity".
There's every reason to believe they can break the encryption, too.
http://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-can-probably-break-tors-encryption-keys-1273299782
No sig today...
where do I buy my meth now..
The US Government cares, but only so far as they need to make sure they get reciprocal privileges in that country. Obviously, US power makes it easier to get things done without having to horse trade for it, but ultimately, it only works if there is not too much abuse.
The Internet is NOT anonymous. Structurally, it's designed not to be anonymous. No matter what kind of crap you pile on top of the basic protocols, it will never be anonymous. Anybody who is too stupid to realize that, quite honestly, kind of deserves what they get, at least in my mind.
I don't respond to AC's.
They just need to come up with an alternative story about how they got the information legally. For example the official story is that they happened to notice fake ids in the mail - just by accident. No one can say if that was really by accident - the knowledge that they needed to look at that particular package might have been from an illegal source. This is standard practice in US law enforcement, even though it's supposed not to happen by the principle of fruit of the poisonous tree. Of course, the defense won't have the ability to make that legal argument if the true source of evidence is illegally concealed.
It sure doesn't read like TOR was compromised. It was the Gmail account DPR left when first advertising SR on a shrooms site. The FBI (if they aren't just covering for the NSA) do seem to have caught DPR through old fashioned sleuth work. Yes, they managed to copy a server but they still couldn't get the names out of it, only link the messages and transaction dates to other events they tracked down to DPR after tentatively identifying him using Gmail, Google+ and LinkedIn. Ouch.
I find myself ambivalent to Silk Road actions when I think of the losses to over 30 million American home owners of their homes to outside factors that they had no control over. That those involved in attacking the U.S.Economy got less regulation, and squandered, then profited from it. I believe the "Robo Singers" should be in prison, with restituion for damages caused. And yet, they walk more free than everyone else.
Or having backdoors in some of the systems, the tor nodes or even unknown backdoors in the servers themselves...
Also chances are when setting this system up, they discussed it online via email or other third party services where the nsa could eventually find the information.
The feds have never taken the position that BitCoins are invalid or valueless. A vehicle for money laundering? Yes. Something that is likely to attract regulatory and legal attention if you deal in a lot of them? Yep. But valueless? Nope; they've never said that.
Going after somebody under money-laundering or securities laws (which has been done already) would be kind of difficult if you argued they weren't moving money.
Assuming the civil forfeiture proceedings go as planned, the BitCoins will likely be sold at auction just like any other seized property that isn't actual fungible currency (at least, BitCoins aren't fungible on any platform the feds deal with...) They might sell a USB stick containing the wallet so they have something in-hand to pass on to the buyer.
Any evidence they want to present in court has to be backed by a warrant. Of course they almost certainly did other surveillance first to figure out where to target the search warrants.
They just need to come up with an alternative story about how they got the information legally. For example the official story is that they happened to notice fake ids in the mail - just by accident. No one can say if that was really by accident - the knowledge that they needed to look at that particular package might have been from an illegal source. This is standard practice in US law enforcement, even though it's supposed not to happen by the principle of fruit of the poisonous tree. Of course, the defense won't have the ability to make that legal argument if the true source of evidence is illegally concealed.
And this back-fabrication of probable cause has been happening for the past 75 years to, "protect confidential informants".
How?? Are you stupid? Articles all over the Internet buy drugs at silk road and you dont expect the FBI or whoever to use the same damn software to buy said drugs and track down where it cam from?? Complete stupidity to think they wouldn't hunt them down.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Was only a matter of time.
Every incoming (or, I guess, in the case of Canada, outgoing) mail parcel goes through an x-ray (I'm not saying they actually pay a lot of attention to each one; it's kind of luck-of-the-draw.) If the inspector sees a package containing a bunch of plastic cards and something that looks like a passport, they are naturally going to wonder what that's doing being sent via international mail. It's not as if you can accidentally leave your passport at home when leaving the country.
Because customs facilities are on international borders, they don't need anything but the barest suspicion to take a peek in your package, certainly not a warrant.
But yeah, hosting SR in SanFran was not very bright. Of course, given that what he was doing would get him arrested in pretty much every country in the land, there's not really any good location for the servers. Even in Russia, you would have needed some pretty good underworld connections to keep those servers out of govt. hands.
An interesting side point that comes out of all this is that services like Silk Road wouldn't exist if there wasn't a market for them.
I'm about as far from Libertarian as you can get, but one thing I do think they have right is the idea that the "war on drugs" should be stopped. It can't be won, that has been proven. Every single defense that's put up to stop drug trafficking is worked around shortly after it comes on the scene. Drug cartels basically run large parts of Mexico and Central America. US citizens get tossed in prison for drug use and sales, which basically turns them into a wasted resource (good luck getting a normal job with a prison record) and this ends up costing more in the long run.
Prohibition basically gave birth to organized crime, simply because enough of the population wanted to keep drinking alcohol and was willing to break the law. As a result, we saw what we see now with other drugs -- the price of alcohol shot up, other ancillary crime increased, violent gangs brutally wiped each other out neighborhood by neighborhood in big cities. With drugs it's the same thing -- I have no desire to use drugs, but there are plenty of others who do. And they'll do whatever it takes to do so, and pay whatever street price is prevalent. Econ 101 -- inelastic demand (more like infinite demand) in the face of constrained supply means prices keep going up no matter what you do.
I believe drug use is a completely victimless crime -- it's the other stuff that happens alongside it (stealing to pay for expensive drugs, drunk/high driving, etc.). If everything were readily available, sold in safe doses and taxed appropriately (like tobacco and alcohol,) prices would be low and people wouldn't have to steal to pay for their habits.
The other thing to consider is that we're rapidly heading towards a sci-fi dystopian future where human labor is no longer as important as it is now. When the unemployment rate shoots up to 85%, wouldn't you rather fill their free time with something other than random crime sprees? Yes, it sounds very "Brave New World"-ish, but it's rapidly coming true. Unless society just drops the use of labor and money as measures of productivity, which will never happen, this is the inevitable future!
Fake ID's mailed from Canada to the address where the FBI found the servers. Totally plausible, right? That would be the address a clever black-marketeer would use when ordering forgeries internationally, which obviously is the only way to obtain them.
Federal Reserve Notes haven't been issued since 1971, the year Bernanke turned 18.
So no.
I'm more surprised that their business model didn't ground them before this seisure did. Let me explain how I hear it works:
1. you go on and order drugs from some random anonymous person and pay BTC and arrange a meeting
2. you show up to the meeting either it's a cop or nobody shows up and they stole your BTC
You also have the option of shipping the drugs, in which case you hand your address to the police or get your BTC stolen.
So does this mean there'll be less crackheads on Slashdot posting about their HOSTS FILE?
Wow, if people read the criminal indictment there's one, possibly even two murder-for-hires in the wings linked to (allegedly posted by / conversation with) this guy.
-Matt
Ah crap. I was thinking of Federal Reserve Bank Notes.
...) with very similar names.
There's a confusing amount of different kinds of Dollar notes (National Bank Notes, Federal Reserve Notes,
Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.
Welllll, maybe...
Do you remember the recent stories about the DEA and "parallel construction," where the DEA was getting phone records from the NSA and then using them to identify suspects from which they could reverse engineer a false "lead" to let the police just happen to find other incriminating evidence to build a case on?
I'm not saying that's clearly what happened here, but as others have pointed out, it's a distinct possibility given that drugs are involved.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm not going to cry about criminals going to jail. it's people like this that help the govt justify the NSA, etc. they need all these tools because people who use encryption / tor / bitcoin / etc are criminals! thanks silk road for ruining it for the rest of us.
it's like the shoe bomber guy who gave the gov't authority to tell me to take off my shoes, and the underwear bomber guy who convinced the govt to fondle my nuts every time I went through security (although secretly they always wanted to do that). Now because of the boston bombers NSA will be collating my online profile to look for "suspicious activities" that may make me a potential terrorist.
I think in 1984 the Goldman terrorist guy actually didn't exist, and was just a gov't front to justify their behaviors and scare people. maybe that's what's going on here?
If you are a journalist in a 'not so democratic' country you are probably working for the state press telling people exactly what the nice mister Dick-tator wants the people to believe. Journalists who use TOR to get the real message out are CRIMINALS! And once found, put in a cage and shot. Only criminals use TOR!
If you are a student in economics you would probably only read books because something interesting and practical like bitcoins are only for CRIMINALS! And they should be shot. Actually, money in any form is used by criminals and should be avoided! Right?
If you are a human you would only drink mercury because water, or hydrogendioxide as you will probably call it, is used for making drugs! Kill the waterdrinkers!
You must have a rather complicated life I guess...
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
rubbed it with a medical nitroglycerin patch to ensure it got the attention of sniffers. (The foregoing claim, being pure speculation, is guaranteed to be free of government disinformation.)
i dont' understand your point?
Obviously. And of course he had to have fake IDs to show godaddy to rent a server. Nobody can get servers without showing ID these days, I hear it's just like renting a car.
My inner paranoia says the feds broke tor and knew who he was but couldn't prove it with real evidence so they sent some guy to canada and mailed a package of fake IDs with an "open this box please" sticker on it for the canadian mailman (and/or us customs, if the canadians were asleep) to find.
No, not necessarily. Conjecture is conjecture.
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
You know that he's going to have a trial, right? And that the FBI won't want him to get off because there was no warrant for the evidence the prosecution presents in that trial, right? There might very well be unconstitutional monitoring in this process, but to bring it to court and get a conviction, a warrant is necessary paperwork.
That's right. Each defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial conviction.
I believe the "Robo Singers" should be in prison, with restituion for damages caused.
I agree - they suck! like those xmas albums with the barking dogs at different pitches.I want my $9.99 back!
I scanned through the Articles... some were tl:dr, but was he acutally SELLING or just providing a store front? I was under the impression that sellers would post their warez and the Bitcoin were held in escrow via the site?
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
Indeed, robo singers like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber are annoying. But there have been many egregious products of the recording industry over the decades and it seems harsh to throw them in jail.
Nullius in verba
Article: 11:36am: US Government seizes $3.6 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 11:45am: US Government seizes $1.75 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 12:03pm: US Government seizes $8.3 million worth of bitcoins
Update, 12:54pm: US Government seizes $766 thousand worth of bitcoins
Update, 3:27pm: US Government seizes Eight Dollars worth of bitcoins
Update, 5:55pm: US Government seizes $15 million worth of bitcoins
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Look up "Parallel Construction". Regardless of how much they originally had on him through NSA channels or whatever, I assure they have a clean paper trail with enough to take him to trial for stuff he did after they already had warranted phone taps and e-mail, etc.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The US govt seized my bitcoins which silk road kept for me. I am not a US citizen. I have not committed a crime involving us soil or citizens. Will I be able to reclaim my bitcoins? I was actually keeping them there as a safe haven.
You will probably not be able to get your coins back. They have been seized via civil forfeiture. To get your coins back, you will need to establish proof that you are the owner of the coins and that you qualify for an "innocent owner" defense under 18 USC 983(d). Specifically, you will need to show that you "(i) did not know of the conduct giving rise to forfeiture; or (ii) upon learning of the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture, did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property."
So, can you show that you did not know that drugs and other illicit materials were being traded on Silk Road? If not, can you show that you tried to get your coins out as soon as you learned this was the case? If not, then goodbye money. You shouldn't have knowingly comingled funds with criminals.
Beyond the unlikelihood of successful recovery, I would point out that attempting to claim your coins may put you at risk of criminal charges for your own actions. I note that you specifically mention that you "have not committed a crime involving us soil or citizens" (emphasis added). If you have used your coins to participate in a crime elsewhere or have participated in activity that is legal elsewhere but criminal in the US (e.g. trade in controlled substances), you may run afoul of money laundering charges (18 USC 1956-1957) and RICO (18 USC 1961-1968).
I highly recommend you consult a real attorney first. (I am not one!) Be honest with them; you have attorney-client privilege in the US and in many other countries, and they cannot give good legal advice without all the facts. Don't be reckless, though. Since you're a foreign national, any calls to the US will most likely be monitored according to recent news, and the DEA is accused of using information they can't legally obtain to fake up a "clean" evidence trail that can't be constitutionally impeached. If possible, you may wish to seek an attorney local to your country who works with US law internationally.
Final note: I am not a lawyer. This should not be construed as legal advice, and I may be quite wrong on several aspects of the above. If you are in serious trouble, consult a real attorney and not Slashdot.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
i could care less about these types of grammatical errors...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
That the govt recognizes bitcoin as a viable currency? Everyone knows that Silk Road was just a complex game, like a more involved version of that old text based drug dealer game.
Anonymous! (well, not really)
Instant! (10 minute transaction times, if you're lucky)
Service charge free! (if you like waiting forever to get your transaction processed)
Price Stable! (what)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Using his real name posting Silkroad code on StackOverflow.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html
You perspective is common, but I think flawed. We need to have law and order in a civil society, even when there are great injustices also taking place. As a thought experiment, imagine that you are living in South prior to the Civil War. Women can't vote and people are actually enslaved right in your very own town. Now you find out that a guy in town is passing off counterfeit money. Do you arrest and prosecute the guy, or do you let him go because what he is doing is a trivial crime because one of the most unspeakably horrible crimes that man has ever perpetuated upon man is occurring at the same time?
Anyway, my 2 cents...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I really hate parallel construction.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
so the guy deletes a photo of his dead enemy, but doesnt delete the conversation from the database?
so the guy uses the same username for every transaction? even tho it says in silk road to use a new username for every transaction?
so the guy sends fake ids to his own address, when the silk road rules say to use different addresses?
so the guy who came up with the site, and all of these rules, doesnt follow his own rules?
then theres this i found while searching
is that where the physics thing comes from? an australian article about some aussie pot dealers? or is this just a strange physics coincidence?
be safe from evil, disable javascript.
"Silk Road was used to sell ~$1.2 billion in illicit goods since being founded in 2011"
Illicit? They mean untaxed =)
It's a shame really silk was kinda nice even if I didn't do any business there fun to read through it... my fav beiong the "fixer" for "any job" up to $50,000.
Hmm what kind of job cost 50k? =)
So like I said... fun to be a tourist there but I wouldn't (didn't) ever do business there, so I was never sure how legit any of the items really were, apparently they were 3.6 million legit.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Now, onto how he got caught... An agent involved in the investigation ("Agent-1"), found the first few references to SR on the internet from somebody only identified as "altoid", attempting to promote the site in its beginning days, in January of 2011.
In October of the same year, a user also going by the name of "altoid" made a posting on Bitcoin Talk titled "a venture backed Bitcoin startup company", which directed interested users to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com".
That email address is what led to DPR's downfall.
---
After identifying "altoid", they started connecting the "DPR" identity to Ulbricht pretty quickly.
Ulbricht's Google+ page and YouTube profile both make multiple references to the a website dubbed the "Mises Institute". DPR's signature on the SR forums contained a link to the Mises Institute.
DPR cited the "Austrian Economic theory" along with the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, all of which are closesly associated with the Mises Institute.
Server logs show that someone logged onto the SR administration panel from San Fransisco around the same time that Ulbricht was staying in San Fransisco.
Multiple fake IDs were intercepted by U.S. Customs & Border Patrol while on their way to an address which Ulbricht was living at the time.
These IDs all carried photos of Ulbricht but had false names and details. This was around the same time that DPR stated in a message that he was acquiring some fake IDs to buy new servers.
When questioned by Homeland Security about the fake IDs, he refused to answer any questions but then stated that anyone could purchase such things using "Silk Road" and "Tor".
The address which Ulbricht was staying at was being rented in cash and he was living with housemates who knew him under a name which corresponded with one of the fake IDs.
He posted on StackOverflow using his real name, inquiring about how to use curl/PHP to grab things off Tor, before quickly changing the name to "frosty" (with a fake email: frosty@frosty.com)
Thought my money is on NSA and parallel construction.
One of the more significant recent revelations is that the govt uses "parallel construction" in building a cae. If possibly illegal surveillance is used to catch you, they -- after the fact -- construct a legal scenario for how they MIGHT have caught you that will pass muster w/ a judge.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Civil forfeiture laws are kind of funny... there IS some due process involved, but the case is lodged against the property, not the owner of the property. This leads to hilarious case names like United States v. a 1978 Ford Mustang.
As far as legality goes: The consititution does not require a criminal conviction before property is seized; it merely requires "due process." To incarcerate you, you must be convicted, but property directly involved in an alleged law violation (as opposed to property acquired through ill-gotten gains) is a civil matter, not a criminal one.
I think it's marginal, but still passes constitutional muster. After all, if you sue somebody for fraud, the court can award you damages without you being convicted of criminal fraud. This is little different. (You can even hire a lawyer to represent the property if you so choose.)
can it be a coincidence that this was announced just as the final season of breaking bad comes to an end?
would the feds actually take the site down rather than use it to catch dealers?
methinks they may have been logging all the transcations for a while..
This is what they claim. You might remember from the NSA documents that it appears standard procedure to cover the source of information by creating a plausible lie.
Of course they would never tell if they have enough metadata and surveillance to identify Tor users and hidden sites. It would be in their interest to keep us using a network they can penetrate.
With that kind of money at stake, I predict that a replacement for Silk Road will be operating out of Russia within the week.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Trial? Heck no. He'll plead to whatever the feds want, and he'll like it! And he'll probably have to provide information and testimony as well to get that deal.
Looks like he'll never make it to the Pablo Escobar level. He'll probably respawn in about twenty years, or so.
I can't imagine setting up something like Silk Road without a 'burn it all' setup like Mel Gibson had in Conspiracy Theory.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
If the feds have Silk Road's wallets, they now know every bitcoin address they ever used - as well as every bitcoin address used by Silk Road's clients.
Since most Bitcoin users are dumb and don't use shared wallets, it should be simple to follow the blockchain back to people who bought drugs. Everyone has to cash into or out of of Bitcoin somewhere, so it's a matter of looking for transactions from known exchanges, subpoenaing them, getting banking information and fingering the buyers.
Silk Road should really have functioned as a massive shared wallet with no records.
I wonder what Atlantis knew when they shut down?
If he's an ally in the fight against slavery, you're damned right you don't do anything about it. And in this case, what we're talking about is a modern equivalent to the underground railroad. DPR enabled the oppressed to live freer at great personal risk. That's worthy of respect.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Title says it: He even gave full interviews and participated in the forums, all under the owners nickname. Run the service, shut the fuck up, live a modest life for 3-4 years, move to a nice island afterwards. Just don't think you are the MAN!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/
So this begs the question - Are we winning the war on drugs yet?
Well, let's see. Looking at the past few decades, the supply of illegal drugs is up, prices are significantly lower, and quality/potency is up, in some cases way up. Source link:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-09-international-war-illegal-drugs-curb.html
On the other hand, many millions of people have been jailed or otherwise had their lives ruined.
I don't know, even granting that it depends on how you define "winning," it's still kinda hard to see any win here whatsoever.
Hey douche, quit begging the question. We aren't *that* stupid.
> So if they exchange Btc for USD, they are legitimizing Bitcoin as a currency.
Law enforcement routinely sells bicycles that have been abandoned or stolen. Does that make bicycles currency?
Selling bitcoins == selling bicycles. Selling something doesn't turn it into currency. Accepting it as payment would be using it for currency.
As soon as you can pay fines and government fees in bitcoin, that's when the government will be treating bitcoin as currency.
Really? I'm having trouble swallowing the concept of abandoning law and order in the face of evil. Society becomes impossible, IMHO.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I believe the "Robo Singers" should be in prison
I don't like Autotune either, but your solution is a bit harsh.
You're not alone. That made zero sense.
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...
How long til they find kiddie porn on his computer ..
What value does law and order have to the slave? Law and order is nothing more than a tool, and when that tool is wielded by evil, it serves evil. A society where injustice is enforced by the government and cheered on by patriots is no society that is worth having.
Think about it, if you were the slave in your scenario, would you really care that an abolitionist had counterfeited currency? Hell no! If you thought that counterfeiting would lead to your freedom, I bet you would run the presses yourself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If they exchange BTC for USD, all they're doing is stating it's an object that currently has value and can be sold. Nothing to do with its status as a currency. A bucket of grain is not currency, Facebook Credits are not currency, a half-used Applebee's gift card is not currency, but all three can easily be traded for money.
"Link to indictment contained within too."
'There were 801 listings under the category "Digital Goods," including offerings for pirated media content, hacked accounts at various online services such as Amazon and Netflix, and more malicious software. For example, one listing, totled "HUGE Hacking Pack **150++ HACKING TOOLS & PROGRAMS**," described the item being sold as a "hacking pack loaded with keyloggers, RATs, banking trojans, and other various malware."' link
Let me tell you exactly what happened:
Some vendor quit the business for whatever reason. He then posed as a hacker of himself, providing "proof" of the hack (passwords, adresses etc), demanding 500k. He then proceeded to lay out the "I owe money to these drug people, thats why I need the 500k" story. He somehow provides DPR with "real life data" of this hacker.
Then he poses as the group the hacker owes money to. He then accepts the offer of the hit, photoshops some picture and collects 150k from DPR.
Occams razor smoking dope. Why would the group accept 150k if they were owed 500k? Why did the data turn out to be fake and why was there no murder or missing person filed in the area? How would they even carry out a hit within such short notice in far away Canada?
Bonus points: The 500k and the vendor were undercover shills, that's never gonna show up in court proceedings for tactical reasons (aka entrapment in criminal law).
DPR got soceng'd hard.
She's Hot!
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
You know that he's going to have a trial, right? And that the FBI won't want him to get off because there was no warrant for the evidence the prosecution presents in that trial, right? There might very well be unconstitutional monitoring in this process, but to bring it to court and get a conviction, a warrant is necessary paperwork.
That's right. Each defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial conviction.
"You promised me those men would be decently treated."
"They were decently treated. They were decently fed, decently clothed, and then they were decently shot. Those men are common outlaws, nothing more."
The Outlaw Jose Wales
Tor is not compromised.
He used a gmail account to get help with hidden services after promoting the silk roiad website.
Stupid got him.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/02/silk_road_s_dread_pirate_ross_ulbricht_asked_stack_overflow_question_under.html
On or about March 29, 2013, ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT, a/k/a "Dread Pirate Roberts," a/k/a "DPR," a/k/a "Silk Road," the defendant, in connection with operating the Silk Road website, solicited a Silk Road user to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site.
It's interesting that they're not charging him for the murder-for-hire scheme; the criminal complaint describes it in lurid detail. http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf (The detail starts at point #31/page 21.) Ulbricht allegedly tried to pay ~$150k to have a supposed blackmailer assassinated. He claims to have had an earlier "clean hit" done for around $80k.
Contrast the murder-for-hire move with the following (allegedly) hypocritical drivel from his LinkedIn profile:
I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.
Destroy them?
Sell them on?
I'm kindoff interested to see how this plays - are they treated as an illegal item with a 'street value', or will the illegal currency be sold on the open market and get some bonus legitimacy ("as retailed by the US government")?
I mean if they don't sell them, whilst there are willing buyers out there wishing to purchase a legal 'good', they're burning your taxes (and boosting the value of whatever's left floating around).
Use them for "their own purposes" (like seizing a Ferrari and using it in a sting) - they're then exposing themselves to some tracking ($5 to the first, track the FBIs bitcoin site).
Personally I've got no idea - but somebody's just cracked open the "big barrel of questions"
Think about it, if you were the slave in your scenario, would you really care that an abolitionist had counterfeited currency?
My example wasn't from the slave's perspective, but then I don't see myself as a slave currently. If you do, then we can go down that path. Are we talking about an emotional response or a rational response? Emotionally, I probably wouldn't give a shit. Rationally, whether or not you care about the counterfeiter would depend heavily on how it would affect your current life. Even slaves had it good or bad relative to one another. For example, a slave that is currently lashed every night and raped by the master might love it if the counterfeiter ruins the master's day a little. A slave that is in a house position or an overseer might want to protect their position and might view the counterfeiter as a threat. The analogy is a bit stretched at this point, but hopefully I can bring it back home.
So back in today's world, you might see yourself as analogous to a slave, but presumably your life could still get worse. Emotionally, you may not give a shit about law and order, but rationally you probably should. I don't know your situation, but I suspect that there are a whole lot of fellow "slaves" in much worse shape than you, who would love a shot at your stuff.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just because they got busted, doesn't mean that a Tor compromise was the cause of it all. If you read the court papers, you'll find out they were on to the guy well before they had access to the server(s) because he used his real name with activities that were related to silk road. They "routinely" found 9 fake IDs in one parcel shipped to him from Canada (there was a recent story where they had a fake-id manufacturer arrested and they took his place, might be related?) so they knew pretty much where he was and that he was related. It wouldn't have been too difficult for them to use that info to actually get wire taps on him and figure out where the actual hardware was without Tor being compromised. It may be correlated, it may even be the cause, but this is in no way proof it is.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It's pure BS.
Since the eighties, everybody knows that Roberts is not one man, but a series of individuals who periodically pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor. Everyone except the successor and the former Roberts is then released at a convenient port, and a new crew is hired. The former Roberts stays aboard as first mate, referring to his successor as "Captain Roberts", and thereby establishing the new Roberts' persona. After the crew is convinced, the former Roberts leaves the ship and retires on his earnings.
My example wasn't from the slave's perspective
Yes, those who preach law and order tend to be unable to empathize with the oppressed.
For example, a slave that is currently lashed every night and raped by the master might love it if the counterfeiter ruins the master's day a little.
Whether I'm a slave or not, I am completely in favor of the assassination of such a monster. Law and order is worthless if it allows atrocities to happen.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One time, I bought a used studio power amplifier from Canada. Apparently customs X-ray'd it and was curious as to what this large, somewhat spikey, metal thing was. So they opened it up, had a look, decided it was what the manifest claimed, carefully repacked it, and sealed it with green US customs tape to let me know they'd searched it.
It is legal, and normal. If you ship internationally you package can be subject to search. That is part of what customs is all about.
As a thought experiment, imagine that you are living in South prior to the Civil War. Women can't vote and people are actually enslaved right in your very own town. Now you find out that a guy in town is passing off counterfeit money. Do you arrest and prosecute the guy, or do you let him go because what he is doing is a trivial crime because one of the most unspeakably horrible crimes that man has ever perpetuated upon man is occurring at the same time?
Didn't the Confederates actually work on counterfeiting Northern currency as a way to try and destabilize the Northern economy?
Many of the leaders of the US Revolution were smugglers and war profiteers. That's one of the reasons that the Revolution actually worked!
I remember when I first heard of Silk Road some years ago.
My first thought was : "someone is going to get slapped very hard for this
and it is just a matter of time".
I think the core mistake in this situation is not so much in doing something illegal
as it is in doing it in a way that would tend to provoke those in power. Silk Road
was asking for trouble and indeed it appears that trouble has been found.
This is not about the drugs, it is about acting in a way which publicly undermines the
authority of those in power. It is not about what is "right" or what is "wrong" nearly
as much as it is about the trouble that can arise when you thumb your nose at the
entity which has the power. Pussy Riot found this out, and now the guy behind Silk
Road is finding this out.
What the rambling poster was saying was this:
"Criminals use Tor" is not the same as saying "All Tor users are criminals."
Admittedly, it was a little long, and there wasn't a car analogy in there, but really? You couldn't figure that out?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Yes, those who preach law and order tend to be unable to empathize with the oppressed.
I'm not sure why I deserve such a dig, since I clearly made an effort to go with the other side of the analogy.
Law and order is worthless if it allows atrocities to happen.
And yet I provided an example of why it is not, from the perspective of the oppressed. Why is my example invalid?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes, well, I'm certainly not going to defend the drug war!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If the comments here are right, it wasn't the technologies Silk Road is based on that caused the issue, it was that he used dumb things like gmail addresses and mailing fake documents to his physical address. So the underlying technology stands firm, and it is now well know the he made millions from it.
There are two ways you can remove a weed. One way is to carefully dig it up, roots and all, and put it in the incinerator. The second way is to wait into it had flowers, then hit it with a weed wacker; spreading it seeds far and wide. This looks like the latter.
If I didn't know better I say someone in the Department of Justice is trying to set themselves up for a job for life. But I do know better. They aren't that smart.
Whether I'm a slave or not, I am completely in favor of the assassination of such a monster. Law and order is worthless if it allows atrocities to happen.
Reading through this thread, I find your sense of ethics to be bizarre. It sounds to me like you're suggesting that if you don't agree with one law, everything else goes out the window. Given a large enough society, there will always be injustice. Justice is never perfect and it would be naive to assume that it can. A good society does its best to recognize injustices and and correct it where it exists...but there will always be different perspectives on what qualifies as injustice. Having a perspective that's different from the mainstream, or even being ahead of the historical curve on what qualifies as injustice that doesn't give one license to break every law. That would be stupid and that person would be an asshole - or at the very least, a criminal.
-Turkey
because some people don't get the difference between decriminalization and illegality
portugal is very much invested in the war on hard drugs, but with far better tactics than the usa: treat it as a healthcare problem, not a jail problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
hard drug addicts represent a cost on society and civilization will always be at war with hard drug abuse, forever, in an attempt to minimize this cost
it is merely a maintenance function of society, this war. you need to take the trash out ever thursday: this is your "war on trash." because "the war on trash" never ends, is that an argument to let trash accumulate in your apartment?
no, taking out the trash is merely a maintenance function of your apartment. just like minimizing drug addicts is a maintenance function of society
portugal is still at war with hard drugs, as is every functional society on earth. forever
portugal just has much better tactics in this maintenance function
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Right you are!
You had me sold on this theory, right up until you said "warrant".
Then I knew it was bullshit.
Like our government feels the need to recognize the legal process anymore.
You know that he's going to have a trial, right? And that the FBI won't want him to get off because there was no warrant for the evidence the prosecution presents in that trial, right? There might very well be unconstitutional monitoring in this process, but to bring it to court and get a conviction, a warrant is necessary paperwork.
His name was Kevin Mitnick.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You perspective is common, but I think flawed. We need to have law and order in a civil society, even when there are great injustices also taking place. As a thought experiment, imagine that you are living in South prior to the Civil War. Women can't vote and people are actually enslaved right in your very own town. Now you find out that a guy in town is passing off counterfeit money. Do you arrest and prosecute the guy, or do you let him go because what he is doing is a trivial crime because one of the most unspeakably horrible crimes that man has ever perpetuated upon man is occurring at the same time?
Anyway, my 2 cents...
Were white guys enslaved right in my own town? Because I'm white...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If it helps the analogy, then go for it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is what they claim. You might remember from the NSA documents that it appears standard procedure to cover the source of information by creating a plausible lie.
Of course they would never tell if they have enough metadata and surveillance to identify Tor users and hidden sites. It would be in their interest to keep us using a network they can penetrate.
Creating plausible lies was one of the first things I learned as a kid. I found that my mum could usually tell when I was lieing and that detecting my lies made her feel really good about herself. So I developed a technique of 'sacrificial lies'; a lie that she could easily see through and get all puffed up about having 'found out' and then follow this with another, more plausible lie that she would accept as 'the truth' because she 'saw through me'. I was about 9 years old at the time.
I'd be surprised if the NSA weren't using techniques like this with, eg, congress...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
therein lies the problem, i guess
Kim might also walk because of that little detail of him NOT BEING IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM UNDER THEIR JURISDICTION.
And if all he gets is to walk, but not compensated for the billions of dollars in losses he suffered by having his business stolen by jack booted thugs with no legal process whatsoever in effect, it'll be a gross miscarriage of justice.
And no, he's not my favorite person. But if this kind of shit can happen to him just because he's not everyone's favorite person, then we may as well entirely give up on that whole rule of law concept entirely and stop splitting hairs about it.
Hmm "legal to possess and trade". It's not a controlled drug, a machine gun, or a bomb. Therefore it's legal in the US. Was there some confusion about that? (Actually even bombs are often legal on private property, transporting them on the public roads involves DOT regulations.) Anything not prohibited is legal, and the list of prohibited items is pretty short.
If you had any doubt that the standard principle applies , for several months now Senator Tom Coburn has been soliciting input on workable, common sense ways to apply consumer protection and money laundering regulations in the context of virtual exchange systems like bitcoin. The questionbbeing discussed is "how should rules designed to protect bank deposits etc. be adapted to work well for bitcoin 'banks'?". Noone is questioning whether it's legal to have a number.
There is a question of how, lacking FDIC insurance, regulatory oversight, etc. you can be assured that your bitcoin service providers won't take your money and vanish. If you can put together some thoughtful comments on how to balance the freedom of users and service providers with existing laws on ie doing business with Iran, Senator Coburn's office would love to hear your ideas.
If your government can infringe your rights because of the actions of others, you never really had any rights. Your government was just temporarily overlooking their ability to screw you.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
This guy, Ross Ulbricht, made a number of critical mistakes irrespective of his use of TOR. For example, he posted on the shroomery.org forums using the user name "altoid" and then again a few days later on bitcointalk.org with the same user name. The court documents aren't clear on whether or not he was using TOR at the time he made those posts or when or how he created those accounts in the first place. Apparently, these were some of the earliest public posts promoting what would ultimately become the Silk Road. Eight months after that, the "altoid" identity was used again on the bitcointalk forum to advertise for an "IT pro in the Bitcoin community" to hire for a job with a "venture backed Bitcoin startup company". This was critical because the email address for the job posting was rossulbricht at gmail. So this guy used his real email address (which contained his real name) posting as "altoid", the same account that had earlier promoted the Silk Road concept on both shroomery and bitcointalks: epic fail. . From there it was proverbial cake for the authorities to monitor his Google accounts and trace the IP address of his logins to an Internet cafe in San Francisco. They also found that he had an account on the Mises Institute website (an Austrian Economics organization) under Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road website also linked to the Mises Institute website. Yet more evidence, albeit circumstantial, that Ulbricht was the one behind Silk Road. Game, Set and Match to the the 3 letter agencies and the USSS. Have a nice day.
They used OCR and a microsoft backdoor the match the SR Admin users algorithm.
I agree - they suck! like those xmas albums with the barking dogs at different pitches.I want my $9.99 back!
Hell, I'd be happy if the stores just agreed to give "Jingle Bells Rock" a rest this year.
1. Tor used weak 1024bit encryption until very recently. I2P (a general-purpose darknet that uses onion-like routing) has used 2048bit ElGamal for many years.
2. Tor's relay patterns and referencing methods are somewhat centralized. I2P is less centralized and provides more cover, because every user acts as a router... spreading traffic over a higher proportion of nodes and more thoroughly keeping your traffic mixed with other stuff.
3. I2P is also open to less abuse because when everyone shares banwidth, then much like Bittorrent, being nice keeps you from being blacklisted or ignored.
4. Tor's community never paid proper attention to distrubuted versions of basic services like file storage, email, web, etc. I2P developed or borrowed these capabilities as users sought a less naive approach than Tor.
I'm not saying that Tor was the reason the Silk Road operator was caught. But if it was, I'm sure there is something in the above that contributed to his discovery.
It depends on the law. Slavery is pretty bad. The only reason why it endured was that, because it was race-based, you, white man, knew your ass wasn't going to be on the line. Think more along the lines of that Braveheart thing where the local nobleman was supposed to have sex with your wife. That was very much a reason for saying "fuck everything, let's fuck those fuckers". So I don't think his ethics are off, he's merely saying that money counterfeiting and the murder of a slave trader are more moral than depriving prople of the most basic control over their lives and submitting them to capricious torture. Seems about right.
I have to say I think that "one of the most unspeakably horrible crimes that man has ever perpetuated upon man" is just so blatantly false, there are a LOT worse things than that which people inflict on one another.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The problem with you Americans is that you invent some proof-of-concept grade technology and then generalize from that rather crappy technology.
Let a real engineer from Germany work on anonymizers and then again draw some conlusions.
Like we did with missiles.
Hint: Constant bitrates between nodes make correlation attacks impossible.
A high-sec TOR hidden service would be using TrueCrypt and booby-trapped physical security and power lines. When the federales come into building, service goes down forever. Backup is buried in the woods at a secret location.
Obviously the SR guy was one of the stoned muppets who can code some PHP.
Being stoned != being a proper covert operator/soldier.
@66MI group and USMC: don't worry about me; I am just doing the job you are supposed to do. Now get off your fat asses and go after the NY and London finance criminals who will reboot our political system, if left undisturbed.
Slavery involves a lot of those. I'd be curious to know what horrors you think weren't a part of slavery.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm all for recreational drugs but the silk road guy has been charged with advertising and paying for a hit on his employee. In this scenario the silk road owner is the alledged "dick-tator" who is ordering the whistle-blower's assassination.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Slavery involves a lot of those. I'd be curious to know what horrors you think weren't a part of slavery.
Slavery doesn't require any horrors in its implementation.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Sealand has been a joke pretty much since it's founding. They are about as much of an independent nation as if I row a dinghy a couple of miles out from the beach and announce it is now the sovereign nation of SirWiredia. The British govt. ignores him because he's not worth their time to mess with; that would change were he to do something besides hang out there.
That said, a floating data center would indeed be outside the effective jurisdiction of pretty much any govt. But that doesn't mean you'll be able to find an ISP to connect to your anarchotopia. In addition, it's kind of hard to avoid the "jurisdiction" of a torpedo or anti-surface missle if you really piss the wrong people off.
Unless you are shipping huge crates, your parcels likely pass through a carry-on style x-ray, to which film is a lot less sensitive. Up to ISO 800 (or is it 1600?) is ok.
Are we going to venture into speculation of a humane form of slavery, or shall we stick to reality?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you are in EU then seriously, get some legal advice.
The UK has a shocking policy on extradition and the US a shocking policy on trumped up charges.
Money laundering, drug profiteering, association, all sorts of crap to get over the level at which they can request extridition and the UK will happily pack you off on a plane.
Some EU countries seem to be following suit, which is why Assange is still in an embassy and not off to Sweden on trust...
Potentially I'd say it was related to this story ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/ ) about the FBI having control over a number of Tor servers. Initially they were aiming for Freedom Hosting, but if that can do it for one site/service, I'm sure they can do the same for others...
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
The FBI had already gained control of Tor boxes against Freedom Hosting - see here ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/ ). It's not pushing the realms of reason to assume they've done so again for Silk Road.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
It seems to me that three counts of conspiracy can be thrown out of court or at worse will not represent a very firm sentencing.
I don't think this guy should get a hard sentence any way. He's just a merchant.
This is more like an experiment for the FBI to see if it's possible to seize this new form of asset, and to see how valuable it is once they've seized it.
Recall, that bitcoin was recently upgraded to the designation "actual money". VERY recently.
It's all basically in tandem. Hard to have pressed charges on him or his friends if they're just wildly playing russian roulette with a bunch of digital thingamabobber whatsits.
Entirely different if it fetched the grand master 3.2 million dollars of actually now-recognized "real currency".
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
What, so was silk road hosted on US servers? Seems like a bad idea if there ever was one,
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
But if great injustices are taking place, then the society is not really civil, now is it? You can't act like a ruffian and expect to be treated like a lady.
What if the counterfeiter is actually an agent sent from the North to undermine Southern economy, specifically to weaken it prior to the inevitable war? And even if he isn't, his actions still serve to help undermine the system that's perpetuating said crimes. If you arrest him, you are strenghtening it and therefore taking part in its crimes.
Also, why go that far back? We have more recent examples. For example, imagine you're a guard at Auschwitz. You notice a prisoner trying to escape. Should you do your legally mandated duty and sound the alarm, or should you tie your shoelaces for the next five minutes?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Saul Goodman is your guy.
A particularly misguided libertarian who thinks forbidding slavery means the government is unjustly restricting economic activity, or a religious nut who thinks because the Bible mentions slavery it is therefore an institute approved and perhaps even mandated by his god.
Any bets?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You mean the "loss" of the home they didn't really own anyway? Remember that the bank held the mortgage on nearly all of those properties. I would guess nearly all of those "owners" refi'd their properties over and over pulling tax free money out and spending it on stuff. The real losers are the one's that didn't refi and spend, or had paid their homes off. Now, their homes are worth half what they were and they have no toys to show for it. A neighbor sent their two kids to law school with refi money and then walked from the house and let the bank foreclose. Is that fair to the family that bought a house they could actually afford and made their payments and didn't recklessly refi and spend over and over? Their kids have to go to community college.
Spare me the misty eye'd lament over those "poor homeowners" who lost their homes. The responsible people in the country are the one's who are now having to pay for the party those "homeowners" had.
it was a fonzworth who counterfeited northern currency.
But if great injustices are taking place, then the society is not really civil, now is it? You can't act like a ruffian and expect to be treated like a lady.
Civil society doesn't spring form a vacuum. The US Republic built upon the British Parliamentary system, which built upon hereditary monarchy, and so on. The idea that anarchy will somehow make an injustice go away is not credible IMHO. The best way to correct an injustice is to work within the current civil system. If we were in a dictatorship, that might not be the correct path - but our starting condition is a republic.
What if the counterfeiter is actually an agent sent from the North to undermine Southern economy, specifically to weaken it prior to the inevitable war?
I think the answer is pretty straightforward - it depends on your goal. A slave would probably encourage the counterfeiting. But I'm struggling to see the analogy to Wall Street... do you consider them agents of a foreign power?
And even if he isn't, his actions still serve to help undermine the system that's perpetuating said crimes.
He's not only undermining the system - he's also undermining regular people's ability to use money and participate in commerce. Burning down the local cotton gin will certainly hurt the slave owners, but also the non-slave cotton farmers who depended on the gin for their income. It's like burning down your house to solve a mouse infestation.
For example, imagine you're a guard at Auschwitz.
I was going to use a Nazi example, but I didn't want to Godwin this thing :)
Should you do your legally mandated duty and sound the alarm, or should you tie your shoelaces for the next five minutes?
That is far too easy, and the escapee is not guilty of any "crime" other than being the wrong religion or having the wrong gender preference. Allowing the prisoner to escape does not harm anyone except the corrupt regime. Silk Road seems to have involved organized crime activity like extortion and (new information today) contract murder. I'm not going to defend the war on drugs, which I find absurd, but I will defend arrests for fraud, theft, extortion, tax evasion, attempted murder, etc.
In short, yes, of course I would prefer if bad actors could not hide behind the facade of corporate protection and limited liability. To get there, I support reform and not a period of anarchy. It's like the old meme:
1. Anarchy!
2. ???
3. A truly just society
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you can't located the new site(s) you should possibly consider surrendering your geek card.
And, as predicted by many here, there seem to be several (and growing) more SR style sites propagating through dark net, even as I type this.
Just as the king always lives in one form or another so it is with that which supplies a demand.
Dread Pirate Roberts is dead, Long live Dread Pirate Roberts.
All that was really accomplished was some advertizing to people that had no idea dark net, or the Silk Road existed.
Well it did, it does, and it's growing more outlets --thanks largely to the three letter agencies.
Fuck society, I've had my fill of it.
I wonder if he thought his arrest would be anything like Walter's failed arrest.
it's really sad that there are still people in this world that conflate legality with morality. maybe there were some people on SR doing things that actually hurt someone, you can have distaste for them all you want, surely. but don't be so ignorant as to assume that everyone that breaks the law should be dismissed and scorned as worthy of punishment. the law is all too often a malfeasance, or have you not heard of regulatory capture? or things like ya know, slavery? Jim Crow?
Are we going to venture into speculation of a humane form of slavery, or shall we stick to reality?
I think you should definitely stick to reality. This whole "unspeakably horrible crimes" piece is just political theater. There are way worse crimes, way worse treatments than enslavement itself; forget about the things that enslavers have then gone on to do and just think about slavery itself. If you start to imagine all the nasty things that slavers have done you are thinking too deep.
For example, good old Abraham Lincoln wasn't so against slavery itself; he used it for his political theater which then allowed him to do all kinds of things. For Lincoln, slavery was just a tool.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
A particularly misguided libertarian who thinks forbidding slavery means the government is unjustly restricting economic activity, or a religious nut who thinks because the Bible mentions slavery it is therefore an institute approved and perhaps even mandated by his god.
Any bets?
There have been a lot of slaves who benefited greatly from their condition. There have been a lot of slaves who suffered. Slavery itself isn't the problem. Guns don't kill people; physics kills people.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
This whole "unspeakably horrible crimes" piece is just political theater.
What political theater are we in? This is not Civil War Reconstruction. Rapes, murder, beatings, splitting of families, etc. were all part of slavery in the American South. This is not controversial stuff here. There was zero recourse - zero - for a slave caught in such a situation.
In reality, the atrocities and the slavery go hand in hand. I'm not sure what you have in mind with bloodless slavery, but it is a fiction in any event.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
All this stuff goes on in war as well. Is war worse than slavery? equal to slavery?
Its this statement that slavery is one of the WORSE crimes that irks me. There are far far worse crimes. Rape outside the context of slavery is itself already a worse crime than slavery without rape. Torture outside of the context of slavery is already worse than slavery without torture.
To say that slavery starts out as the worse crime puts the cart ahead of the horse.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
. Rape outside the context of slavery is itself already a worse crime than slavery without rape. Torture outside of the context of slavery is already worse than slavery without torture.
Goodness, are we arguing about semantics? Slavery automatically includes things like rape and torture. When one refers to the horrors of slavery, they mean as it is practiced - which in the American South included rape and torture. Even individually, those are some of the worst crimes one human can commit.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
. Rape outside the context of slavery is itself already a worse crime than slavery without rape. Torture outside of the context of slavery is already worse than slavery without torture.
Goodness, are we arguing about semantics? Slavery automatically includes things like rape and torture. When one refers to the horrors of slavery, they mean as it is practiced - which in the American South included rape and torture. Even individually, those are some of the worst crimes one human can commit.
No. It doesn't *automatically* include all that.
Its used as a cover and pretext for crimes, just as war is used. You can use the phrase 'horrors of war' in the same way as 'horrors of slavery' without war itself being a crime. If war were, in and of itself a crime, the USA could be in some big trouble...
Calling slavery one of the "one of the most horribly unspeakable crimes" devalues the real crimes that take place UNDER slavery.
Like saying "administering date rape drugs is one of the most horribly unspeakable crimes" when the real crime is the rape and is much worse than merely administering a sedative.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Who, and in what way?
...
Well, I guess the rest of us must just hope you'll never have any power over anyone or anything, least you'd get a chance to act on your beliefs.
Also, I'm leaning towards the "religious nut" now - such arguments were used prior to the Civil War, and never admitting being wrong is the core tenet of too many denominations to count.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Except that both of those cases include an outright rebellion as the driving force for change. So you're actually lending the idea credit here.
The example you gave - American South - was a rebublic, but one that disenfranchised a large percentage of its population from the political process, and in fact allowed those who perpetuated injustice against them to vote in their name. That is just as bad as a dictatorship, and has the same potential for peaceful change.
They're a parasite that perverts the rest of the society to maximize their profits, and part of that is jailing as many people as possible in private for-profit prisons. Why?
It's an act of (covert) warfare. Economic ruin is the intended outcome, just as it would be with sending bombers to do so. It's not burning down my house, it's burning down the house of a lunatic who's kidnapped people and is holding them hostage.
Godwinning is about claiming someone is a nazi, not about making thought experiments set in Nazi Germany. Since we have a real-life example of cartoonish supervillainy, why not use it?
Silk Road customers are not guilty of any "crime" other than wanting to get high, and the sellers are not guilty of anything except providing that for a price. Silk Road was the victim in the alleged extortion case, and I find this accusation of contract murder extremely suspicious - it comes from the same regime that arranged for Assange rape charges and would be an extremely stupid thing for DPR to do, since it would undermine SR's reputation even if succesful. And you can hardly blame someone for not paying taxes when it's not possible to do so.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Enjoy living inside the walls society has built without your consent. I and others shouldn't have to feel sorry for our personal choices. It's legal to posses child pr0n in Japan, provided it was owned when the ban on production, sale and transfer of it came into place. Do you agree with that too just because it's "law"?
I believe the "Robo Singers" should be in prison, with restituion for damages caused. And yet, they walk more free than everyone else.
When I think of all the damage and hearing loss caused by their robotic, off-key, tuneless singing, I can't help but agree...
No. It doesn't *automatically* include all that.
Look at the context. I was talking about slavery - as it existed - in the American South. It may very well be that you can have slavery implemented without horrible crimes (though I can't imagine how this is the case and you haven't provided an example), but that is not relevant here.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No. It doesn't *automatically* include all that.
Look at the context. I was talking about slavery - as it existed - in the American South. It may very well be that you can have slavery implemented without horrible crimes (though I can't imagine how this is the case and you haven't provided an example), but that is not relevant here.
Yeah and I'm sure war can be implemented without horrible crimes as well. These things are just backdrops, covers, excuses for horrible crimes, not horrible crimes in and of themselves.
Unless you'd argue that war *is* a horrible crime?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Except that both of those cases include an outright rebellion as the driving force for change. So you're actually lending the idea credit here.
Both of those rebellions were fights among the elite.
The example you gave - American South - was a rebublic, but one that disenfranchised a large percentage of its population from the political process, and in fact allowed those who perpetuated injustice against them to vote in their name. That is just as bad as a dictatorship, and has the same potential for peaceful change.
Slavery was doomed. The rest of the world had pretty much given it up, and the South was the last holdout. Even if they had won the Civil War, slavery would not have persisted forever.
They're a parasite that perverts the rest of the society to maximize their profits, and part of that is jailing as many people as possible in private for-profit prisons. Why?
So then, no, they aren't like a foreign power? I'm having trouble seeing the analogy between Wall Street and a saboteur. The comparison to a parasite makes more sense.
Economic ruin is the intended outcome, just as it would be with sending bombers to do so
Well, we agree that lack of law and order would lead to economic ruin. We may even have a common goal. But I'm not in agreement with you scorched earth methodology. If you look at the Great Depression, it did not ruin the filthy rich - or at least not enough of them to change the social order. Yet, the poor were absolutely hammered and the middle class vaporized. And at the end of it all, there was no revolution. The elite remained in control. I don't see a historical event where your plan worked out in the way you intend.
Silk Road customers are not guilty of any "crime" other than wanting to get high
Like I said, I cannot defend the drug war. Silk road customers were also criminals buying fake IDs (including the operator) - it was not limited to sin crimes, though I grant you that most of the sales were drugs. The drugs don't bother me, but the organized crime does.
and I find this accusation of contract murder extremely suspicious - it comes from the same regime that arranged for Assange rape charges and would be an extremely stupid thing for DPR to do, since it would undermine SR's reputation even if succesful.
I am not as dubious. First of all, the state of MD has nothing at all to do with Assange. Second, people involved in organized crime cannot rely on courts to resolve their disputes and so this kind of thing is the inevitable result. This is exactly why we have civil courts - so people don't resort to ghetto justice.
And you can hardly blame someone for not paying taxes when it's not possible to do so.
I'll concede that it is possible he was paying taxes on the laundered money.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Unless you'd argue that war *is* a horrible crime?
Only for the loser. For the winner it is glorious and inspiring. It's one of man's most vexing talents.
The difference is war has two sides. When one side loses, it's no longer war. If it continues at that point, it is oppression, not war.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I re-read that and realized it is not clear that I'm being cynical with the first paragraph. That was meant to be tongue in cheek.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Thank you! At the risk of sounding self-righteous here, I'd like to point out Ulbricht's biggest mistake: he blatantly broke serious laws, ones that most respectable people I know consider good, useful laws.
Since the Breaking Bad jokes have all been made, let's liken this to Walter White. Heisenberg just "manufactures" meth, right? So he's not pushing it. But he feeds the grass-roots a pure, highly addictive, dangerous product that breeds all kinds of concomitant vice and suffering. It's a point of general agreement among those of us with children that illicit drugs are bad. Dread Pirate Roberts, as he liked to call himself, was also helping feed the grassroots. Let's not forget that, please.
I hate what the NSA is doing as much as anyone can. It's illegal, unconstitutional, in fact. It's immoral, dangerous, and undermining of the public trust. But neither the NSA, weaknesses in TOR, nor the Canadian Postal Service were responsible for Ulbricht's current status. He was, because instead of applying his intelligence to a respectable business strategy, he chose to traffic illegal and dangerous substances to the public. I read some time ago that Facebook was approaching market saturation. Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world. Yet how many times has he been arrested? (Yes, I know, he's been hit with some legal actions, but not for running Facebook per se.) How many times have Amazon's servers and assets been seized? Or, since we're on about privacy and security, what criminal actions are being taken against the personnel of companies like Norton and McAffee, or Abine? How about regular businesses? Wal-Mart? AT&T? These are not perfect companies with absolutely clean hands. They occasionally make mistakes for which they pay. But none of them is so stupid as to continually, deliberately run afoul of society and government the way "professional" criminals do. All I can do is throw up my hands and quote the immortal words (word) of Thomas Watson: "THINK."
Whatever happened to just downloading torrents of breaking bad? geez. Get off the pipe!
Yup, indeed. I too think that it was easier to catch SilkRoad through bitcoin than through Tor.
Specially, keep in mind that Bitcoin isn't anonymous, unlike TOR. (Bitcoin is not TOR).
by design its pseudonymous:
- bitcoin is a distributed currency. no central bank to control everything. instead its the whole collective of all users which whatch the network.
- thus every single transaction has to be boardcasted to the network.
- bitcoin doesn't use real name or user names. but it does use public key. (it not directly giving a user identity, but it's tied to a user).
- even if users are encouraged to use as many different keys as possible, this doesn't guarantee to hide identity, it only makes identity more difficult to track (but not impossible).
- you can't live only with bitcoin if you want to eat food you need to either convert them to real-world currency, or have food delivered to you from an e-store that actually takes bitcoins.
- at that moment, that peculiar public key in that peculiar transaction can be attached to a real-world identity. This transaction isn't anonymous anymore.
- by tracking the bitcoins exchange (which have been broadcasted to the whole network), its possible to follow a money trail.
- Silk Road represents a huge volume of transactions. Thus potential suspects involved in it have lots of money trails leading to this mass of cash.
(- to get a better idea, potential policemen could even buy a few things of SilkRoad and start following the trail that they have launched)
So getting to Silk Road doesn't even necessarily require any hacking or breaking Tor.
It only requires using normal police work.
The only difference compared to regular monney:
- They can send a letter "Dear Mr. Bank of Cayman Isle, please freeze acount #ABC, property of SilkRoad, known criminal", because there's no central control able to freeze accounts.
- They have way much more transactions to track. With normal money you only have transaction between parties exchanging money to pay for stuff. With bitcoin you get tons of intermediate transaction where the money is only shifting from one public key to another (you can't know in advance but most of the time key of the same person, occasionally keys of 2 different persons actually buy stuff from each other).
- But no search warrant is needed to track transactions: all the transaction are in the block chains which are broadcasted to the whole network (as no central bank has authority, everyone share authority in controlling ans seeing transaction, including a policeman).
Tracking bitcoin transaction isn't like tracking credit cards transaction (happens mostly on buying), but more like tracking change of location of physical coins (once in a while a coin actually change owner when a buying transaction. Most of the time it's only shifted around pockets. But every once in a blue moon, not only does it change owner, but it arrives at a location that you know who is there. And absolutely every single coin move, even pointless moves, is announced in pseudonymous way to everyone so everyone can control that the move is legit).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It wasn't a dig, it was an accurate statement.
Do you have anything to add, or do you just randomly insult people?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.