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The Dark Web Still Thrives After Silk Road
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman writes at The Atlantic that the government may have won its case against Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht, but the high-profile trial gave a lot of publicity to the dark web. Both the number of sites and the volume of people using them have increased since Silk Road was shuttered. "Just as on the rest of the internet, users on the dark net are very quick to move on to new things and move away from those products and websites that seem stale and old," says Adam Benson. The cat-and-mouse game between users of the dark web and law enforcement appears to be shifting as well. Newer dark sites (two major ones are Agora and Evolution) are likely to protect their servers by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement," says Nicholas Weaver. "The markets will keep moving overseas, but law enforcement will keep going after the dealers," Weaver says, referring to the people who actually ship and deliver the drugs sold online.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
When did Dark Web become Evil Web?
It used to be the the Dark Web was simply those sites that were not being indexed by major search engines. Nothing more, nothing less, just those sites that were not being shown to the average search engine users.
It did not indicate that the sites were doing something "dodgy" but they were bad at SEO or just had no links going to them. They were undiscoverable.
I can tell everyone with certainty that dark web markerplaces are all bogus and they shouldn't even bother lookimg. You'll just get lots of malware, infested with botnets and get your identity stolen. Here be dragons, abandon all hope ye who enter. Bitcoins are a pyramid scheme and also might carry the measles virus. Basically really nothing to talk about if you know what I mean.
Why not blame ISPs and other network operators?
They are enabling all the criminal activity on the Internet, with or without some sort of VPN to hide behind.
Next thing you know, people are prosecuted for what they say because it caused someone else to go nuts .... ohh wait a minute ....
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Exit nodes support freedom and work for the greater good.
If we decide it is for the greater good to control everything, we would end up with a totalitarian government.
Ulbricht set up a sister site called The Armory at some point which did sell a range of weapons including very dangerous ones like RPG launchers. Silk Road also sold forged IDs and malware (e.g. that could be used to empty bank accounts). His definition of "victimless crime" was a very poorly thought out and inconsistent one.
seems to be the delivery channel . I mean seriously, who would like to recieve a package of contraband delivered !! to an address !!! ... True blue anonymity is still far away ... ( resistance is futile kinda situation for now )
Anonymity in all its forms can be used for nefarious purposes. Isn't that right, Mr. Anonymous Coward?
Dan is part of the Digital Citizens group, a United States non-profit organization focused on Internet safety issues. In 2014 in response to leaked Sony emails, former attorney general Peggy Lautenschlager said the DCA had inappropriately influenced politician Jim Hood. The organization hired lobbyist Mike Moore, who also served Hood as a consultant on a pro-bono basis. The article alleged he used his relationship to serve the agenda of private industry, such as Microsoft and the movie industry. Basically, theyre a collaborative shill for the industry designed to influence government policy.
as for the darknet, its almost as though a small segment predicated up on the subversion of 50 years of failed americian drug policy is a trivial part of what is becoming a vast, collaborative response to an illegal government surveillance program that citizens do not want, and politicians are uninterested in stopping. Its as though the more corrupt governments become, the more inequality is manifest and expressed in the criminalization of speech and knowledge, then the larger this entity grows until it becomes necessary to caricaturize it. That the darknet is universally revered by our media institutions for piracy, spam, theft, and drugs instead of as a safe haven for speech and collaboration is telling to say the least.
Good people go to bed earlier.
ISPs have an acceptable use policy ... it's not a free for all do what you like network. A free for all no consequences network does not promote social responsibility.
It sure can!
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech. Free speech allows people to say bad things, and anonymity allows them do do bad things online, but in both cases, curtailing those rights is not an option, and does more harm than good besides. For some, running a TOR node or contributing to such projects is their way of asserting the right to anonymity, which is indeed for the greater good.
In addition, making providers of a platform (be it TOR, and ISP, or a discussion board) responsible for the content being moved over that platform is rather impractical. If such responsibility is legally enforced, it'll be the end of the open Internet. And of privacy and encryption, by the way (though I see a new market for steganography)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech.
Some say that there's no such thing, but that free speech is necessary if you want a free society, and that anonymity is necessary for free speech, thus it should be protected.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Having spent time around members of the criminal class and general "gutter" of society, I'm really not surprised at this. Thoreau said "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." You can close down all the venues you want, arrest people and pointlessly make examples of them, but as long as the demand is there, things like the black market, or dark web, or whatever, are going to continue to thrive. Change people's attitudes, and you change their behavior. Unfortunately, America has doubled down on draconian punishment, while losing sight of what we're trying to accomplish as a society.
Bad analogy. Anonymous Cowards on Slashdot have two attributes that make them unlike hidden services:
1) Slashdot can reveal their IP address at will
2) What they do can be either modded down by the community (if they're just posting garbage) or simply deleted if they're posting stuff that is outright illegal or deeply unethical (SSN dumps or whatever)
So Slashdot provides a limited form of anonymity with controls on it to prevent excessive abuse, and this is a good thing - although there's a lot of crap posting by AC's that gets modded down, I've been reading /. for 15 years now and many of the best comments have been anonymous. It's a clear net win.
Hidden services on the other hand are NOT a clear net win for the Tor community. There are zero controls on them, even though Tor is not alien technology or a force of nature ... it's a network run by a small group of people who can and do enforce rules on it, rules like "exit nodes may not engage in SSL stripping". Although Tor and the EFF like to claim there are tons of great social uses for hidden services, clear examples with real world impact are sorely lacking.
So I don't think you're arguing what you think you're arguing. Not all forms of anonymity are equal.
I recently put my blog on the .onion. You can get to it via the "normal web" via it's .com address, via google searches and whatnot, or you can use a .onion address to get the same stuff. I have to say, it was pathetically simple to set up, and I encourage everyone with a server of their own to do the same. Feel free to upgrade to a Tor relay if you have bandwidth too.
You may well ask what's the point? Well, my motivation was to see how easy it was, and to increase the amount of content available on the .onion network. I'm pretty sure the only people who've ever visited it are me and one friend of mine, but the fact there's another IP on the internet talking to Tor nodes, and the fact that on very rare occasions those Tor nodes talk back to it makes me feel good.
If ever I have too much spare time, maybe I'll make a search engine for .onion addresses...? ;-)
Back on topic: the Silk Road had a restrictions policy (albeit an inconsistent one), but other people have no such qualms. The authorities have succeeded in one sense in that they've fragmented the market, they've also put some additional risk onto the purchaser because it's now less clear how legit the site or vendor are. However, they've enabled someone looking for something minor like a bit of weed to also find all manner of other things. I'm sure someone looking for an RPG would have found one with or without the SR, but someone looking for weed might start thinking "I could also buy an RPG", where they might not have done before. In that sense, shutting down SR was a failure.
Ultimately, if there's a demand, there'll be supply. Shutting down websites of any kind doesn't alter demand very much, and so there'll always be supply. If the authorities wanted to do anything about this, they'd spend more time working on the demand side of the problem. Sadly, that doesn't have instant results, doesn't get headlines and for every success it has there's a notable failure too.
Bullshit. I ran an exit node for quite a while and look at me, posting here, with no convictions for anything other than driving with a license I didn't realize had expired (which, IMO is a petty thing to haul a person into court over, the entire justice system really is a jobs program).
So nice try but, the only reason I stopped running an exit node was the hassle involved from anti-spammers. Even though my exit node didn't allow exit on port 25 or any other mail related ports except pop and imap.... even though.... sometimes the operators of other mail servers get a bug in their ass about accepting mail from a tor exit node.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Nor will it be around long. James bond gets away with being a well known spy because his writers handle the plot. In real life that just doesn't work,.
The TOR bundle Isn't so much a tool for anonymity, which it can grant as long as you are careful (much like a virtual mask or avatar) as it ia digital cloak of privacy. This aspect is important to distinguish for people struggling to understand the hows and whys governing the role of TOR and dark web meshes. The ideal state one would want once inside would be both disguised and cloaked i. E. anonymous and private.
This is going to be law enforcement's hydra: cut off one head and it's going to grow two more.
They're going to have to get more clever with how they fight this than the previously have. And that doesn't mean just shutting stuff like Tor and strong encryption down, because they'll also return stronger than they were.
I think we can probably find a middle ground between anarchy and totalitarianism.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
If you create an anonymity network, those of us who have worked in forensics know the depravity and criminality that it will attract
If you create a law enforcement framework which hoards power jealously and does its best to prevent openness, those of us who are thoughtful citizens know the depravity and criminality that it will attract.
If you want to run an anonymity network - dont be so naive as to say it's for the greater good.
If you want to run an organized crime network, don't be so disingenuous as to say it's for the greater good.
I note that you're hiding behind anonymity, and that you're a depraved criminal, so I guess that there's something to what you say...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I looked into how this can possibly work. Apparently they go to the post office and send their drug shipment with priority mail. WHAT THE HELL?! So spend like $50,000 on one drug sniffing dog at each major USPS hub. Problem solved. Then when those idiots resort to in-person trades, arrest them in sting operations. How has the FBI not figured this out yet?!
Newer dark sites are likely to protect their servers by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement."
Why does the geek always assume that "keeping our servers in countries hostile to US law enforcement" translates as "we won't mine your data for our own purposes or quietly sell you out to agencies foreign and domestic when the price is right?"
Next thing you know, people are prosecuted for what they say because it caused someone else to go nuts
Charles Manson?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech.
Some say that there's no such thing, but that free speech is necessary if you want a free society, and that anonymity is necessary for free speech, thus it should be protected.
All we know is, he's called the Stig.
I've heard it said that when you get right down to it, there really are no "Fundamental rights" -- because every single "right" you have is only due to others' willingness to respect that boundary, or your ability to keep it that way through threat of violence.
(You can speak of your "basic human rights" all you want, but if I have no respect for them and I have the power to trample on them that's greater than your power to resist -- how much good is that doing you?)
At the end of the day, it all seems to just be about philosophy and artificial constructs. (Even if you insist your right is "God given", I'm not really convinced your God is going to strike me down and keep me from preventing you from exercising that right.)
So no, the real question is probably whether allowing people to remain anonymous (or as much so as is possible) is a net benefit or a net loss for society as a whole. I think *most* of us do have a concept of ethics and/or morality that causes us to take interest in trying to protect some of these concepts -- simply because it stands to do us more good than harm if we do so. And yes, I happen to believe it is a net benefit. I see no real good that comes from trying to legislate away actions so basic and really, so unenforceable to TRY legislating away.
> by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement,"
US law enforcement sometimes takes the shape of black helicopters, just ask UBL about his trial on 3000 counts of murder.
In a country hostile to USA, the servers are even more likely to be visited by Uncle Sam and copied, either in person or via cybernetic avatars like Stuxnet.
If you think you can outsmart FBI, CIA and NSA, I have a bridge to sell, special offer just for you!
US agencies were never about catching bad guys. It is about parking own butt until retirement.
it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
As long as you can't download a movie, I doubt anyone in law enforcement is concerned all that much.
Not with politicians in charge.
you cannot sort into good and evil, if everyone is anonymous.