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The Technologies That Betrayed Silk Road's Anonymity

Posted by samzenpus on from the little-mistakes dept.

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.

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stupidity is a technology now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, Facebook is a technology.

  2. More than a little retarded by HBI · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I were running a criminal enterprise via my computer, wtf would you go out in a public place and do so? At least sit in your car or something.

    Why would I have a facebook account?

    Why would I be advertising on facebook for people to join my enterprise?

    Why would I keep logs of any sort?

    There is so much stupid here, it hurts. Some "Dread Pirate" he turned out to be.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:More than a little retarded by rogoshen1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      also the cops only have to 'get lucky' once. the criminal (or suspect) needs to be lucky 100% of the time. The odds are definitely in the police's favor.

    2. Re:More than a little retarded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Posting anonymously, just because. :-)

      While I am not, and have not been involved in any criminal matters, I happen to be somewhat paranoid about my privacy. If you have.. interesting private fetishes that won't get you into any legal trouble but WILL generate mockery from your co-workers, you learn that in that private world you have to simply be very careful.

      Let me tell you, if you want to keep your professional and private lives separate, being 'careful' for decades is very, very difficult. You always have to resist the impulse to chat about what you do at work, lest you create a connection between the two. You have to resist posting about each side in their various communications forums.

      Maintaining privacy for extended periods of time is just difficult. For a week? Sure! Constant vigilance! Wheee! After a year, you start to slack off. Maybe you start to think "fuck it." Maybe not getting caught with anything will make you lower your guard. Maybe there will be a point of time when you start to take shortcuts. You may also greatly regret the public Usenet postings you made under your real name in your early college years when you were young and dumb and thought "privacy? Who will ever care about this?" You might even think "eh, I'm tired of being in the closet. Who really cares if I'm a furry anyway? I don't even do any of that weird stuff people would associate with them."

      Then you come back to your senses and get back into the closet, and keep your two lives separate! But boy, it's difficult to not accidentally leave evidence around Google, etc.

  3. Good lord, that photoshop job. by Sowelu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not much really needs to be said.