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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!