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8 Users of Silk Road Arrested, 'Many More To Come'
An anonymous reader writes "Last week authorities shut down Silk Road, an online black market that made use of Tor to hide activity. They also arrested the site's primary operator, Ross Ulbricht, and seized his possessions. Now, an AP report indicates at least 8 more arrests have been made on people suspected to have sold drugs through the site. Four of the arrests happened in the U.K., two were in the U.S. and two were in Sweden. It looks like they're gearing up for more arrests, as well. Keith Bristow of Britain's National Crime Agency said, 'These latest arrests are just the start; there are many more to come.' Authorities are reportedly mining the site's customer review system, which contains months worth of transaction data, for further leads."
Crime doesn't pay, but the hours are great!
... that people used their real names and addresses on Silk Rd as sellers, and expected to never get busted in the process.
... wait, what?
Instead of weed, package contained SWAT team.
Would not buy again.
(with apologies to xkcd)
that this isn't a failure of the technology. Ulbricht made the mistake of allowing the feds to connect the dots. Silk Road apparently kept some kind of logs. Here's hoping you didn't buy from them.
Tor was developed by DARPA and is funded by the NSF and the US State Dept.
I think your fears are a little unfounded.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Let's focus on recreational drugs!
It's as if we don't want peoples attention on the real criminals.
Sociopath plutocrats and their dogs.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Anybody interesting and hilariously anti-drug in public life on the list yet, or do those get filtered out before they send in the jackboots?
Or, at least the wrong fears...
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Nice troll. Buying on a black market is never good. However, the fact that our society/governmet forces one to exist, when its existance has demonstrably caused harm, created violence, gangs, addicts, and an underclass of simple users as felons, all to feed the public a boogeyman to help rake in funds for those in power and with entrenched interests is what is horrible. The fact that you probably buy it hook, line, and sinler scares me too.
Silence is a state of mime.
Weaver said in an email, while the traceable nature of bitcoin transfers means the FBI "can now easily follow the money."
WTF I thought part of the point of Bitcoin was it's bloody difficult to trace!!
I find all money difficult to trace .... my wife takes it and I see not race of it again.
3... 2... 1. GO! Write posts explaining how people buying things like herion and cocaine on the black market is okay.
hmmm! ...hmm! ... People should be the owners of their own lives and taking responsibility away from people and treating them as stupid children turns them into stupid children!
Right? ... Right? ...What did I win?
No. Bitcoin is by design traceable to ensure a transactions integrity -- one can create an arbitrary address, but money will have to be transferred in and transferred out in order to be useful. Both transactions will have records located forever in the blockchain indicating source, destination, and date. All are required to insure integrity of the transaction. Bitcoin was designed to be free from arbitrary manipulation of its value, not true anonymity.
The problem with blind faith in cryptography is that cryptographic protocols are bloody difficult to get right. In the case of Bitcoin, the anonymity weakness seems to have more to do with the marketplace than the coins themselves.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Yes, prison spreads HIV, Hep B&C, Tuberculosis, etc. And it causes non-violent offenders to be subjected to sexual violence. Thanks for pointing that out.
Different departments
http://cryptome.org/2013/10/packet-stain/packet-staining.htm
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Crime rule #1: If you're going to do crime, don't do crime with anyone you haven't known since high school. Doing crime with random strangers over the Internet is just fcking stupid.
Operant conditioning chamber
Main article: Operant conditioning chamber
While a researcher at Harvard, B. F. Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, popularly referred to as the Skinner box, to measure responses of organisms (most often, rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment. The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat could get food delivered to the tray pressing the lever. Skinner observed that when a rat was put in the box, it would wander around, sniffing and exploring, and would usually press the bar by accident, at which point a food pellet would drop into the tray. After that happened, the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry.
Skinner discovered that consequences for the organism played a large role in how the organism responded in certain situations. For instance, when the rat would pull the lever it would receive food. Subsequently, the rat made frequent pulls on the lever. Negative reinforcement was also exemplified by Skinner placing rats into an electrified chamber that delivered unpleasant shocks. Levers to cut the power were placed inside these boxes. By running a current through the “operant conditioning chamber,” Skinner noticed that the rats, after accidentally pressing the lever in a frantic bid to escape, quickly learned the effects of implementing the lever and consequently used this knowledge to stop the currents both during and prior to electrical shock. These two learned responses are known as Escape Learning and Avoidance Learning. The operant chamber for pigeons involves a plastic disc in which the pigeon pecks in order to open a drawer filled with grains. The Skinner box led to the principle of reinforcement, which is the probability of something occurring based on the consequences of a behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
I do not think that your hypothesis that hard drugs are bad is not necessarily correct. I invite you to learn an alternate model of addiction which may change your world a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
What do you think?
By making drugs legal, it solves a couple of things. First, it would stop the synthetic drugs that have been popping up everywhere. These are much more dangerous than the drugs that they try to imitate. Synthetic marijuana has killed people, but real marijuana doesn't. That's a byproduct of the War on Drugs. Second, it could be controlled and taxed, which would bring down the prices and negate the risk for organized crime. For example, when I was in high school, it was easier for me to buy pot than it was to buy alcohol. It wasn't worth it for the local drug dealer to sell me beer, but it was for pot.
Since the human body destroys itself in every case, a substance like heroin that makes life enjoyable is actually the best thing in the world. That you think dealers "need to be shut down" demonstrates that evil has seeped into your heart.
No. Heroine only kills because it is unregulated. Nearly every OD is because some one got an unexpectedly pure batch and used what they thought was their regular dose. Perhaps you were thinking of meth?
I am a little worried by your other comments. What's next? Fatty foods and large sodas? Dangerous sports? How many ways do people destroy themselves are you prepared to stop? I'm slippin' down a slope here!
To me, it all comes down to what used to be considered a basic American freedom, to do with my body as I see fit. If I want to rent out my butthole to buy chemicals that kill me, that's my right and none of your damned business.
Not Skinner boxes, he meant BF Skinner boxes cured him, AKA prison cells, emphasis on the BF.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Let's be clear about this. Silk Road operators had a guy killed. They are no different in that regard than the thugs running any other drug gang. When you buy on the black market, you are paying with blood money that destroys other peoples' lives and livelihoods. You know this is the consequence of your action. You can go ahead and blame the government if you want, but YOU are providing the money that gets people killed.
Yes, maybe the product should be legal. If so and you care, talk to your representatives. Start a political campaign. But DO NOT pay the murderous racket that brings you illegal drugs.
I would like to be able to purchase my drugs anonymously, but since I'm paying Silk Road a percentage, I'd like some kind of guarantee.
Some kind of accountability, in other words.
How to balance the two? They don't balance. Even if the only accountability is a seller's good name, there must be some kind of linked identification which, over time, provides enough information to find the individual and arrest them.
Futurist Traditionalism
Portugal has had an interesting experience with Decriminalization: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html
Making drug users into felons is not a net positive for society, but man the prison industry sure benefits!
And the statists who know better than the rest of us are running the show.
His point isn't that we have to choose between prosecuting drug users and bankers. His point is that drug enforcement is a distraction for the people, so that they don't demand we prosecute bankers. It's misdirection.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Hi Shavano,
In this post you wrote:
> Let's be clear about this. Silk Road operators had a guy killed.
And in another post you wrote:
> These guys are also murderers.
While I think your main point is correct, that Ross Ulbricht is (allegedly) a thug, I also think we should be clear that (probably) nobody actually died. Ulbricht is accused of paying bitcoins to have two people killed, but neither "hit" was carried out. See
http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf
bottom of page 23, for a summary of one "hit", and
https://ia601904.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf
starting on page 6, for a step-by-step account of the other.
"smuggling and tax evasion" have nothing to do with the nature of cigarettes themselves and everything to do with governments taxing the daylights out of them (a cigarette's retail price is about 25-30% of most nation's after tax prices).
No one would take krokodil if they could get other opiates cheaply. Opiates are cheap excluding the legal risks (which dramatically raise prices).
Bonus: it's quite a common tactic to make a thing that many (poor) people do illegal so you can arrest most (poor) people at any time
The thing about that is, it's not poor people who do most of the drugs. Rich people actually use more drugs than poor people. They have the money and free time after all. This makes the overabundance of poor black drug users in jail all the more obviously unjust. We know for certain that they're not enforcing this law fairly.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Heroin, not heroine ...
Anyway, no, heroin does not "kill more and more until they reach a critical level and die". The AC you replied to has it more correct. MOST (not all) heroin ODs are from new batches or some other mistake. Or mixing heroin with alcohol and / or other drugs.
Which brings me to my real point. If you think that heroin is dangerous (and it is), what's your thinking on alcohol? Or tobacco? The societal costs of either drug dwarf the societal costs of ALL illegal drugs, sans law enforcement costs put together. If you plan to be logically consistent (never a strong point with humans), then we should outlaw alcohol (again) and tobacco (goodluckwiththat).
Yes, there are medical costs associated with drug use, those problems should be left to the medical community, not the legal one. We're not perfect, but our track record is considerably better. You are never going to have a society free of drug use and other behaviors that are demonstrably bad for the individual. Where the US screws up big time is believing that the legal process is the way to redress those issues. We've demonstrably shown that the "War on Drugs" doesn't work.
Time to do the American thing and re invent ourselves and switch gears. The rather interesting thing is that Colorado and Washington have waded into that vast abyss and are trying to figure out how to make an illegal drug legal. This will inevitably be (somewhat) successful and can point to the way to legalize other drugs, although not likely any time soon. Our underlying Calvinist / Puritan mythology will hang on for a while longer, I'm afraid.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Actually, he claimed that the stupid drug enforcement is just meant as a distraction in hopes that people don't notice that 'authorities' have no intent to prosecute the biggest criminals in the country's history.
Even if not, it's still not a false dilemma since both choices require significant resources from a limited pool. If we dropped the DEA crap, we really would have more resources to focus on the more damaging crimes being committed with impunity.
You are talking complete nonsense. Do some research, heroin is not harmful to the user even if used continuously for decades, there is no inevitable physical decline like you see in users of, say, alcohol, or tobacco. As for tolerance, it's real but not inevitable, you'd be surprised how much of the desire to increase one's dose is driven by the distorted thinking that comes from the unending and exhausting struggle to maintain a habit in the underworld environment of drug prohibition. In point of fact, studies show that given an ample legal and hassle-free supply, both humans and animals usually settle on an eventual steady daily dose and no more. The supposedly inevitable and universal need to increase the dose just isn't seen in laboratory and clinical settings, which suggests that like many other of the "problems" associated with heroin, it's an artifact of prohibition. Certainly most overdoses are exactly that, preventable deaths that simply wouldn't happen if the user had access to a pure product with a labeled dosage. Street bags can and often do contain harmful cutting agents, and the amount of actual heroin in such bags is often a dangerous guessing game. Then there's the fact that alcohol figures prominently in something like 90% of heroin deaths. In fact alcohol is manifestly a more dangerous drug by any measure of harm you want to use, and yet it's perfectly legal. What is accomplished by keeping heroin illegal? The decades of drug war madness has served only to increase both supply and demand, while purity is up, and prices have actually fallen. We've accomplished nothing but to cause more death and more ruined lives, with uncounted families destroyed and significant segments of the population chewed up by a merciless legal system, all while failing to have any positive effect at all on actual usage. So put the blame for most overdoses and virtually all drug-related crime squarely where it belongs, on the fact of prohibition. The drug itself is relatively harmless in comparison.