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The Technologies That Betrayed Silk Road's Anonymity
itwbennett writes Silk Road was based on an expectation of anonymity: Servers operated within an anonymous Tor network. Transactions between buyers and sellers were conducted in bitcoin. Everything was supposedly untraceable. Yet prosecutors presented a wealth of digital evidence to convince the jury that Ross Ulbricht was Dread Pirate Roberts, the handle used by the chief operator of the site. From Bitcoin to server logins and, yes, Facebook, here's a look at 5 technologies that tripped Ulbricht up.
Also, this whole story probably is BS.
They used some classified NSA method (I can think of at least two major approaches) and now they spread some BS in order to cover their REAL methods.
"Parallel Construction" at work.
You don't need parallel construction when they seized his lap top.
All of this is based on the seizure of his lap top.
The bit coins, the chat logs, the encryption keys, the SSH logins.
If they didn't seize the lap top in tact, they would have had a much more difficult time with this. It would have been he said/she said buried in tech gobbledygook.
But they did get his lap top, in tact, in plain text. I imagine getting the lap top was primary goal of his arrest. They'd probably have let him run and catch him later, if they could get his lap top.
And once they got that lap top, the world opened up for them. He was laid bare.
His most trusted ally ratted him out. It's that simple.
Someone named rossulbricht@gmail.com revealed himself as one of the first people who knew about Silk Road. Item #4 in TFA. (Could be lying/misinformation, but it is a plausible explanation.)