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How a Young IRS Agent Identified the Man Behind Silk Road (nytimes.com)
circletimessquare writes: Dread Pirate Roberts, who ran Silk Road, was identified as Ross Ulbricht by one agent googling, off work hours, in just two weekends in 2013. Many agents had been working on the case for a year or more, and since agent Gary Alford was new to the case, not FBI, and not technologically sophisticated, no one took him seriously for months. He escalated the discovery and became such a pest about it, one agent told him to drop it.
From the New York Times article: "In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I'm like, 'Well, that stuff still works.'" Mr. Alford's preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name "altoid." "Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?" altoid asked. "It's kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com." The early date of the posting suggested that altoid might have inside knowledge about Silk Road. During the first weekend of June 2013, Mr. Alford went through everything altoid had written, the online equivalent of sifting through trash cans near the scene of a crime. Mr. Alford eventually turned up a message that altoid had apparently deleted — but that had been preserved in the response of another user. In that post, altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com.
If only he had read that article in 2600 "so you want to be a darknrt drug lord".
This has been reported before.
People rarely realize how much stuff they put on the internet about themselves, willingly or not. Since the internet never forgets, it's usually quite easy to dig up a lot of information about almost everybody. All it takes is a lot of time and knowing how to look.
Do the exercize: try to unearth bits of information about yourself: it's scary how much you can find out (or rediscover) about yourself in a mere couple hours...
What surprises me here is that government agencies who should know better dismiss plain old search engine stalking as a valid method for finding out what someone is up to, or has done.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
He would if he was hiding behind seven proxies.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
"In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I'm like, 'Well, that stuff still works.'" Mr. Alford's preferred tool was Google.
"Old-school": I do not think that word means what you think it means...either that, or I'm ancient school *sigh*
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Am I the only one who noticed the similarities in the name altoid and Alford? Maybe he typoed while googling?
This story indicates the surveillance state, and much of its collection efforts, are even less necessary as long as the detectives are willing to put in the work.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
How else would he find users?
Exactly. Its probably true that the guy posted it on the forum, bc everybody does mistakes, but I hardly believe its the way the gvt found out about ross ulbricht. This explanation is most probably a parralel construction used to hide the way the govermnent really identified his identity. Once you have the email you can simply google after the address plus "Silk road", and probably the forum turned up back then. Then they thought of this nice little story.
What, are we supposed to see this guy as some sort of hero or something? Forget it..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
anything without the mark of the leased on it is considered smuggling? what will they think up next? this & other queries remain unanswered... ask ed snowden your questions here on /...continues.. truth+mercy=justice
There is another area of major tax fraud where the agent involved has been told to drop it... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
It's possible that the FBI already knew who Ulbricht was. Or just didn't care, preferring to pursue the criminal groups using Silk Road rather than bringing the system down. But the IRS philosophy is to chase nickels in front of a steam roller. To them, the crime is the money. Not the drugs, weapons and other contraband being exchanged.
This is why many many law enforcement officials don't like sharing information with the IRS. Tip a terrorist off that he's being watched because he forgot to report some income and he goes underground.
Have gnu, will travel.
Used by "lawful" mafiosi to bring down a legitimate businessman, because he sold something they believe only their friends may sell. Its a success story, allright. The criminals won.
Never underestimate stupid.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
It took me 2 hours to source a supply of Testosterone in Australia just using Google. Correlating and using limits will find you just about anything. Not everything is on Google, of course. In fact, in recent years I'm finding Google has less and less interesting information and content as web sites shut it out. The other search engines aren't any better. But it does lead you to doors like forums.
"...altoid asked for some programming help and gave his email address: rossulbricht@gmail.com."
Whoopsie.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Pretty much everything the FBI and the NYT says is a lie. Does anyone believe that Ross Ulbricht would just go chatroom to chatroom posting "Have all you guys heard of my super secret illegal website?!"
Yes, I think it's entirely possible. Some people are just plain stupid even when they're smart*, and some people have a hard time thinking forward in time.
Or, more likely, he may just not have given much thought to covering his tracks, especially early on.
So yeah, although the FBI and NYT do indeed lie, I think it's quite plausible that he made some mistakes that led to his unmasking.
-
*Ben Carson, for example. He's supposedly a skilled brain surgeon, and yet he's a complete fucking imbecile about literally every other subject in the known universe. For example, here are just a few of the things he's said:
"The pyramids were used to store grain." Err, no.
"Israel's Knesset should just move to a 2-party system." Err, no.
"The Earth is 6,000 years old." Err, no.
"Satan created the Big Bang." Err, no.
"Gayness must be a choice, because prisoners who are raped come out gay." Err, no.
"Obamacare is worse than slavery." Err, no.
"Planned Parenthood is a plot to kill black babies." Err, no.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Most likely true. Criminals only need to make one mistake. The likelyhood they will never make that mistake is pretty low. Eventually law enforcement angencies will see that mistake if they are looking for it - time is on their side, not the side of the criminal.
How the tax collection agency goes after this guy and not the FBI. Shows the real priorities of Uncle Sam.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This smells to much like FUD to me. Do you think they would admit that all the money they spent on the high tech stuff was for naught? or is it more reasonable that they would be trying to cover up how they really down a tor website? I'm pretty sure they wanna do it again. I don't trust the FBI, they're known to lie and manipulate, why can this be trusted to be true?
The silly stuff of pride and self preservation means you can't do someone's job for them.
You show that they (and possible the massive task force behind them are "useless").
It is a stupid system. The whistle blowers should get a nice reward for saving further wasted money. And yes it is possible those in charge get a black mark for not following whatever lead it was. Overall from the top, the system should adjust and continue to reward these outside sources of information as good competition against an inside system going soft.
I am not surprised- I mean, if you have a secret anonymous website how are people supposed to know about it? You still have to talk it up initially. He just never created sock puppets to do so. At least then.
Bullshit.
Got the stones to Google "Gorelick's wall"?
Well I agree on most of what you said, but
"Obamacare is worse than slavery." -- It is slavery. You are forced to buy something (therefore you *must work* for the means to do so). At least with income taxes, you can get away without having an income.
"Planned Parenthood is a plot to kill black babies." -- Err yes. The original intent was to set up PP offices in the "dregs of society" so they wouldn't reproduce. I'm glad they've gotten better...
That guy probably played an old version of Civilization.
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"Planned Parenthood is a plot to kill black babies." Err, no.
Someone else has mentioned this, but just to re-iterate, this one turns out to be true. Look up the "Negro Project" - it was a project run by the founder of Planned Parenthood to sterilize black people.
...was to set up PP offices in the "dregs of society" so they wouldn't reproduce. I'm glad they've gotten better...
Maybe they haven't gotten good enough. There are too many low lifes out there still.
Gary L. Alford is black. That probably contributed to them not believing him.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
hint LEO is not Low Earth Orbit or a specimen of Panthera leo but a
Law
Enforcement
Officer
and given that there seems to be a lot of Spineless Brainless Gits getting badges you might in some areas depend more on your neighborhood "citizens forum" for actual public safety.
and given the number of folks that have been a Guest of the State[ |s] of %list of state[ |s]%
in said neighborhoods they are a bit jumpy to begin with.
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When the fuck did Slashdot get taken over by conspiratards?
The govt is malignant, but stupid. To ascribe such cunning to it is hilarious.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I just wanted to point this out, because while I believe that most gays are born that way and are not making a choice, it can definitely be a learned behavior.
1) Anything can be a learned behavior, but that still doesn't prove Ben Carson's point. I know people that hated raw oysters, just hated them...but after enough exposure and trying them, they developed a taste for them. Most people are the same way with beer and liquor- very few people take a their first swig of whiskey and yell, "I love this shit!".
So yes, behavior can be learned, but that's not really what he was saying. And I still don't think the pyramids were used to store grain, unless every archaeologist and Egyptologist in the world is wrong. And I don't think Obamacare is worse than slavery. (Full disclosure: Obamacare literally saved my life. Literally. So I'm a bit hard-pressed to come up with bad shit to say about it.)
2) I hope your situation and your well-being improves, and that you're able to have a better life, however you choose to live it. I mean that sincerely.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Yep also smart people can believe in free markets, be a patriot or nationalist, support Ron Paul, vote for either of the major parties... Many smart people believe crap.,
This story is false. The FBI used Tor de-anonymization via a tool that they paid Carnegie Mellon researchers. They also used parallel construction against Ross Ullbricht. His conviction should be overturned. His trial was a mistrial.
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It may not prove what he exactly said, but it does prove a similar point. The whole justification that "I was born this way, so that makes it okay" is flawed. You are provably born a boy or a girl or black or white. You are not provably born gay.
I don't give a shit if it's learned or not. If it's between two or more consenting adults, that's all I care about.
That's all anybody should care about unless they're a busybody who likes to poke their nose into someone else's business.
The fact is that most of us don't get to pick what we like, including our attraction for sex. If you disagree, tell me- when did you decide to be straight? You didn't. You were born with a heterosexual attraction, and are incapable of understanding that some other people weren't.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
By posing as customers the FBI could put lots of people in Jail. But Alford insisting that they arrest Ulbrict they just got one head. Not good for the KPIs. Not good at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I agree. I think that this is much more a social construct than anything else. If it is genetic... Well, from an evolutionary standpoint it doesn't seem likely. Through generations, some of which were in fact supportive of homosexualality, the genes should have been completely been eliminated, with them not being able to reproduce. So even if you ignore the religious arguments... Darwin says that homosexuality isn't genetic. Bisexuality maybe, but definitely not homosexuality.
I really wish I was in a position to help you, sir. That sounds really rough.
was not followed here, and that shit will kill you every time.
If you like to talk about your political views and favorite economists online, make fucking sure that your aliases don't do the exact same thing. In fact, if you're using an alias to do stuff that governments will frown on (like running an online black market) then make sure your alias doesn't say a damn word about stuff like political views and personal heroes.
If you run an online black market and law enforcement shows up at your door to talk about some fake IDs seized at the border, don't fucking bring up that site in your conversation. Act bewildered, and say as little as possible.
LinkedIn is a fantastic source of information and help, but it leaves a hell of a trail. If you really need to leave an email in a message, make a throwaway account at one of the literally hundreds of available sites. Also, make sure you're using tor for it at all times.
Be weary of when and where you login from. This can be a real bitch to get around, but if you're only ever logged in the online black market that you administer when you're at home, and the feds are watching you, you're pretty much fucked.
It's not that law enforcement people are smart...look at the various federal agencies in the US, for every IRS agent Alford, there's a busload (a literal short bus) of lazy semi retarded idiots who build careers solely on people they set up and "make into" criminals...it's that it is very easy to fuck up and leave a trail that leads right to your door, and despite the incompetence of most investigators who are looking in your general direction, it's that one guy with three digit IQ who will connect the dots.
It's not too hard to find the post that the IRS agent found:
https://bitcointalk.org/index....
If interested, please send your answers to the following questions to rossulbricht at gmail dot com
In fact, it the post was simply there. It didn't have to be preserved in another poster's response.
I leave that as an exercise to the reader to find the posts where altoid (Ulbricht) promoted the Slik Road.
But never mind the facts; I'm sure the FBI just faked the post...
Preventing conception does not equal killing.
How about this—you can opt out of health insurance, but then you never get care without prepaying. Ever. Because the cost of uninsured emergency room visits runs into the billions of dollars—of which the cost of paying for that is tacked onto the cost of care/premiums of those who do pay. A vote for being uninsured is a vote for asking everyone else to subsidize you while you don't pay your share.
Bump. Not sure about the Planned Parenthood thing.
In fact, Obamacare is currently forcing me to buy insurance because the penalty of going without, even though I currently have no access to medical services, is greater.
I have next week off, and I will make a very serious effort to get medical care. There's "religious objection!" and in addition to that, I may also be being held guilty for denying women's health services due to Obamacare in the first place! If I fail, well, I have until the end of March 2016 and then I can only hope the ensuing drama will at least get a headline or two.
What a fucking stupid law. I used to have no trouble getting medical care or getting my meds. Now, it's "religious objection!" Now it's "you pro-rape misogynerd invader rapist who wants to control women's bodies!" Now, they've shut down my access to the international pharmacy I had been using for the past 14 years. My doctor retired and I get sandbagged at the scheduling desk. I'd love to play nice, but I'm fucking paying fucking money for fucking nothing! My employer is paying even more fucking money for even more fucking nothing!
If you have no income, then the insurance is free under Medicaid. Even if it isn't (the state by state rules for Medicaid are weird, and I won't swear there aren't some states where the literally zero income folks are somehow not eligible), anyone with income below the tax filing threshold isn't subject to the mandate, nor is anyone who would have to pay more than 8% of household income per person. It's exactly like income tax in that way; if you don't earn, you don't owe.
Pretty much everything the FBI and the NYT says is a lie. Does anyone believe that Ross Ulbricht would just go chatroom to chatroom posting "Have all you guys heard of my super secret illegal website?!"
Well, apparently he "admired the free-market economist Ludwig von Mises and the libertarian politician Ron Paul", so, yes, I'd believe he could do just about any fucking stupid thing you could imagine.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Lol. That would imply that being heterosexual is also a choice - which it of course isn't. There isn't a choice to be a hetero/homo-sexual (which of course is on a spectrum so nobody is 100% either way), there is a choice how to live.
Have you been taking an extended break from this site? You've been here long enough that you should know better than almost anyone how much it's gone down the toilet in recent years.
No, it doesn't. There are genetic advantages to being heterosexual (your genes stay around) over being homosexual (no genes). This would imply that the vast majority of people are genetically heterosexual, but there is a very small population that is genetically inclined same-sex. But the large percentage implies that it is mostly a social issue. Most actual gay populations of the past were either bisexual or genetic. I am not an evolutionary biologist, but just saying....
PP was a project of of eugenicists back in the day. They didn't want to outright kill blacks, but they wanted blacks to have less children than whites and thus, over time, for their relative (and maybe absolute) numbers to decrease in comparison to that of whites, thus "whitening" American society. A "soft genocide", so to speak.
The Wikipedia article on PP's founder provides more details about her views. Which, it is important to note, aren't the current view of PP.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
You better watch out for the IRS! It seems they are able to catch people who have found ways to evade the FBI and other law enforcement authorities. Remember that if you are getting a refund on your taxes, don't file a tax form to claim this refund or the government will find out where you live.
Assume that some homosexual behavior is learned. I know a lesbian who was molested by her brother when she was young, and I don't have a control specimen to see if the control group would have wound up lesbian. She may have learned to be lesbian because of her experiences, for all I can tell. Do you think lesbianism was therefore a choice freely made? (I know other lesbians with, as far as I can tell, no such backstories.)
You're also not addressing the possibility that some homosexual behavior may be innate. I never made a decision to be heterosexual. I just started noticing girls, and would have dated some if I'd had the social skills. From what I've read, some people just start noticing people of the same sex in the same way.
There are two people on this planet who's sex life is my business: my wife and me. I don't care what any other consenting adults do in private.
You make claims that many LGB people are creepy, and also that it is usually a sign of deep mental disturbances. If you are correct, why bring sexual orientation into this? People with deep mental disturbances can be creepy, regardless of anything else.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Curious. The only bit I see is a reference to not wanting radicals to falsely accuse them of that.
International pharmacy ?? WTF are you on about ?
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I think i remember that altoid guy!
"Satan created the Big Bang." Err, no.
Prove it. Everything else may be accurate but your depiction of this as imbecility is inaccurate.
This site can't decide whether I'm currently logged in or not, so I guess I'm posting as AC for now.
One example is InHousePharmacy. I would highly recommend them. I think they're the only one really left. There's a lot of lobbying to make it impossible for them to process payments, and well, for whatever reason, their merchant service irrevocably blacklisted my bank account until the end of time for a very flimsy reason. Like, get this, they approved payment for my last order I received but then the money never came out of my account. Then my account number got blacklisted. Not once did that merchant service ever attempt to contact me. I still don't know if InHouse got paid. Supposedly, for some inexplicable reason, the merchant service contacted my credit union and somebody at my CU, again for some inexplicable reason, said that my account was closed. My CU has no idea WTF they're on about. I use that account to get paid and pay my bills every month!
My meds aren't exactly controlled substances, but I doubt I can just waltz into a pharmacy and expect to purchase them without a prescription. I started using InHouse at first because I was a poor college student and the only way to get approval for transgender meds back then was to fight though a gatekeeper psychologist at the state university. I wasted upwards of a grand visiting that bitch before it became apparent she didn't give a flying fuck about helping me sort out how I was feeling.
I've learned there are more options today, but likely it will all be out of fucking pocket for me. Why do I even have insurance? It's useless to me!
-- vel-ex-tech
(Ooh, I'm posting AC so I can do that ironic CAPTCHA thing. CAPTCHA: thusly.)
Drunk driving makes driving more dangerous for me, and is responsible for a significant part of the accident rate. Driving while tired or distracted is also bad, but harder to prove. Truck drivers normally have limits on how many hours they can work in some amount of time (and don't obey them, but that's another issue).
I do not think I have a right to interfere in behavior just because I don't like it. It has to have a probable harmful effect on children or non-consenting adults before I consider it moral to prevent it. It's not a universally shared view, but it's mine. This means that I don't want to interfere with prostitution or drug use, as long as everyone's an adult. This doesn't mean that I don't want help for prostitutes leaving the vocation or addicts trying to kick the drugs, of course.
We're going to have prostitution (and I do not consider prostitutes as a class to have low morals). We're going to have drug abuse. Trying to enforce laws against them does not work. Given that, it seems obvious to me that legalizing and regulating is the way to go. Currently, prostitutes work below the law, meaning they have very few legal protections that they can actually use. I don't want any class like that in society.
Lots of prostitutes don't really want to be prostitutes, but are pressured to stay, either by threats or by needing the money. This applies both to the illegal and the legal ones: until fairly recently, the social standard was that the husband would earn money, and the wife would keep house and provide sex. Until sometime in my lifetime, a husband raping his wife was perfectly legal. A marriage ceremony would in some cases simply be a long-term prostitution contract.
So, if we legalize and regulate prostitution, we automatically give prostitutes a better life, and in addition make it easier for them to change careers. If we address problems of poverty, we get a lot fewer women feeling forced into it. If you don't want a loved one becoming a prostitute, do something to help her through whatever problems she's got.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes