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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
So in all your big spiel, you either think that the government is still covering up their "exploit" of tor, or you are just spreading FUD.
Tor was taken down do to a social slip and not anything technical.
The TOr project openly acknowledges they are vulnerable to timing attacks by an entity that an view all of the network or at least a large segment of it. The US government is definitely such a entity. That isnt even remotely controversial. Thats probably why the Tor project itself warns you not to depend on Tor if you truly need strong anonymity.
Why would they need an "exploit" when they easily have the resources to take advantage of a fundamental weakness in the Tor design? Methinks your "anti-tinfoil-hattery" is far in excess of your actual technical knowledge of what you're talking about. It definitely wouldn't be the first time a Slashdotter "argues" from emotion and is easily refuted.
Legal tender has a very specific and limited meaning relating to payment of debts - if you owe a debt, then an offer of legal tender to settle it cannot be refused. Not being legal tender is not a barrier to something being used in commerce, even by the government. If both parties agree, they can use whatever payment system they want (as long as the IRS is kept happy by declaring a US$ equivalent where required).
Parts of the US government hold that Bitcoin is property, namely the IRS. However, the government certainly counts it as money with regard to money laundering - just ask Charlie Shrem.
Laundering can be done with any tangible asset, from cash to diamonds to Bitcoin. That's hardly news and doesn't suggest the Government considers Bitcoin to be a currency. Bitcoin can be considered a currency when it's legal tender for all debts, public and private. Until then it's merely an asset. The fact that some people are willing to trade it for goods and services does not make it a currency. You could exchange everything from beer to securities for goods and services. Maybe I'll start charging people shares of GOOG for my labors....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.