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US Government Lurked On Silk Road For Over a Year
angry tapir writes "In order to build a case against the notorious Silk Road underground marketplace, a team of U.S. law enforcement agencies spent well over a year casing the site: buying drugs, exchanging Bitcoins, visiting forums and even posing as a vendor, although they did stop short of selling any illicit goods. From March 2012 until September 2013, Federal agents closely tracked the site, making over 50 drug purchases, according to Jared DerYeghiayan, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security who was part of a special investigation unit looking into the site.
Now, kindly pay your taxes, drink a case of beast and watch the football game. Thank you!
Silence is a state of mime.
Turns out, the government was just buying and selling to itself the whole time and no one else is actually on Silk Road!
would that all come to light in the case against Ross Ulbricht? Per the Arstechnica article, the defense being mounted is slightly eye-raising. I wondering, if the Government did have that much time and data on Silk Road, and dox, yet don't use it in the case against him, then perhaps Ulbricht isn't the DRP (Dead Pirate Roberts), and he just might be who he says he is: a convenient scape-goat.
Who says Bitcoins aren't legit payment services? They work just fine for the US gov't to buy drugs, to seize and then eventually sell back to the public. http://www.coindesk.com/us-mar...
Has someone been tweaking the Slashdot CSS? Because you've gone and fucked things up.
The Newer/Older buttons on the front page shrank, so the background style doesn't cover all of the text. Also, the search bar in the header (site-wide) shrunk in height and is too small to display the text typed into it. In the screenshot I have "search term here" entered into the input. Screenshot 1
There's a huge empty white block on the left side of each article page now. Screenshot 2
The post/reply comment page now has a semi-visible "Archived Discussion" button, on every article, even brand new ones. Screenshot 3
All in Firefox 34, Windows 7.
DID they? DID they really? And NONE of their employees happened to do it on the side "unofficially?" I'd love to see THAT part proven in a court of law.
For everyone who is about to object: what do you think a drug bust looks like? They posed as drugs consumers/dealers and busted the parties buying/selling. This seems like what my taxpayer dollars should go towards: stomping out illegal activity where it is prevalent.
How do you prove a negative? Why would you assume they did?
If it was done "on the side" then it was done by a person outside of their official capacity working on the project. Employers aren't held responsible for what their employee does off the clock. Besides that, how would it be proven in a court of law? You'd have to charge a specific person or all of them. Here, let me write your stupid warrantless arrest affidavit.
Your affiant read and article on Slashdot which stated certain members of the US government bought illicit items on the Silk Road website but that they stopped short of selling items. Your affiant has no proof that this is not true other than your affiant personally believes that this is not true and that your affiant wants this personally-held fact PROVEN in a court of law. Therefore, your affiant would like all persons associated with this project arrested immediately and placed on trial for some charge your affiant doesn't know, yet.
The victim is described as the common sense of every conspiracy theorist in America.
Sworn to and affirmed before me on 01/14/15
Santa Claus
why did people ever trust tor?
tor was built by the us navy for dissidents and spies. this is no deep secret
and the slightest strategic thought makes one understand it should be possible for an entity like the us govt to control or track enough exit nodes to mostly have a handle on most tor traffic
how would anyone with a basic understanding of networking not see?
now people are building their own tor-like services. ok, i see the innate untraceability therein (until govts make a concerted sustained effort to profile, then shape traffic, so it will be safe only for awhile)
but was it just a bunch of ignorant enthusiasm that saw tor as "dark" and somehow protected from govt visibility?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So how many millions of dollars did this "team of U.S. law enforcement agencies" spend in a whole year of fattening themselves up at the taxpayer's expense?
And what did they accomplish? They knocked Silk Road off the net for a few months, and in so doing helped it improve its security for next time. Now it's up and running again, making scads of money for the operators, and thumbing its nose at the U.S.
Oh, well, at least long-suffering taxpayers can happily contemplate about all the boats, cottages and retirement homes they've bought for Norbert the Nark and his Homeland Security buddies.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
"An 1/8th of an ounce ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates
Anyone who is surprised by this is an idiot.
Really? So were they gathering evidence, or getting ready for a big agency party?
Last I've heard, they can arrest and charge with a single transaction without any problem, so why so bloody many for this?
Maybe it was good shit and they wanted to stock up, especially since they knew other agents would steal 90% of it from the evidence storage.
For example, in the US, I could imagine there were buyers from DEA, FBI, some DHS agencies, some DoD agencies, maybe even NYPD (heck, NYPD even has a branch in London, Israel, and Hamburg ) -- and that's just one country. Multiply by a couple hundred countries, and that really might have been a significant fraction of the market.
I've been following the trial with some interest.
The Free Keene group went down (from NH to NYC) to protest the trial and hand out Jury Nullification pamphlets, for which they were threatened by the judge.
The government is using threats to prevent jury nullification information from getting to potential jurors. Doesn't seem fair to me, but then the constitution is probably written in some strange dialect of English where the meaning is something different to a lawyer.
It occurs to me that this is one way we can have an effect on government in addition to the vote. By informing people about jury nullification, we can encourage juries to ignore unfair laws.
The federal government were very pleased with the quality of their purchases and 9/10 would recommend them to a friend. A+
for all the sophistication, you'd think the silk road would have asked if you are a cop during registration. you know they have to say "yes" if they are.
Big deal. 30 years ago my kids in middle school could get anything you can imagine right there at school. That hasn't changed at all, in spite of suspending girls for having Midol in their backpacks. More people are using drugs (including alcohol and tobacco - it's the money, stupid!) than ever before. Considering the scandals that are uncovered from time to time about the government using drug running itself to further its own interests it's pretty obvious that this is just one of the more blatant attempts to make their bloated "war on drugs" empire look like it's doing something.
See subject: Right, Barbara? Right -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
And what did they accomplish? They knocked Silk Road off the net for a few months, and in so doing helped it improve its security for next time.
There is no tech and no system that can protect a geek from his own inflated ego. The problem isn't getting a geek to talk, the problem is getting him to shut up.
Just the warning here what can happen http://i.imgur.com/1HTsarr.jpg
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
... the government buys pot and busts illegal online activities from their basement.
That's the kind of activity I can stand up for. Where do I sign up for the government-sponsored pot?
They also bought cypress hill records,bean bags, blacklights and hendrix posters...because reasons
"law enforcement agencies spent well over a year casing the site: buying drugs"
In other words, they were committing the same crimes. Oh wait, that's right, laws don't apply to our own government. They only apply to us. Silly me.
Feds really should look into some bitcoin miner manufacturers. Seems a couple of the shadier ones had involvement with Silk Road. One notable example is AMT aka Joshua Zipkin, who robbed his customers of apparently 5 million+ and on top of that may have made as much as 20 million from that money. It was also uncovered he had made some purchases on Silk Road using bitcoin by his own admission in some leaked chats to his customers he admitted drug use while in china. Currently he is residing in Bulgaria which has an extradition treaty with the US.