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.

Comments

It's as old as search engines

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Re:It's as old as search engines

[Kjella]

Well, you just try to find out what my real name is, and do send me an email to inform me about it.

Kind Regards.
J

Your name is Will Smith. I guess those props were a bit too realistic...

Re:It's as old as search engines

[MightyYar]

You can disappear with some effort. I know someone who has been quite successful hiding in plain site from child support payments. Not something to brag about (not a friend). He gets found eventually - everyone makes mistakes, but he owns several properties, cars, boats, etc. You can hide things in land/property trusts and behind other entities. For instance, it is totally legal - in fact the practice predates "law" - to deed your house (or other property) in the name of a trust. This trust can have any name you wish, and the trust documents with the beneficiary on them are held by you, so they are not searchable.

Old school?

[CCarrot]

"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*

Re:Old school?

[PopeRatzo]

"Old-school": I do not think that word means what you think it means...either that, or I'm ancient school *sigh*

I prefer to think of myself as an ancient alien.

Clearly

[rmdingler]

It is probably accurate to assume the seasoned agents were using illegal wiretapping colllection pots and posing as customers on Silk Road.

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.

Re:Probably a lie

[Computershack]

Never underestimate stupid.

Re:Young IRS Agent

[fustakrakich]

The "right thing"? Please! What is the "right thing" when you're doing the devil's work?

Re:Probably a lie

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Re:Oops

[gweihir]

Which does not sound credible to me. On almost all sites where you ask this type of questions, you ask anonymously or with an account, but giving a plain-text email will both not get you responses to it and will get you a lot of spam to it instead.

My take: Parallel construction (i.e. law enforcement criminally lying under oath) and some way to keep Ulbricht quiet about it. Possibly done to hide criminal and possibly unconstitutional snooping practices.

Re:Oops

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

My take: Parallel construction (i.e. law enforcement criminally lying under oath) and some way to keep Ulbricht quiet about it. Possibly done to hide criminal and possibly unconstitutional snooping practices.

Yes, it's certainly possible that's what happened, but sometimes the answer is just that people are careless, stupid, lazy, or sloppy. It's hard to be perfect, but it only takes one tiny mistake to fuck it all up....and I can tell you from personal experience that fucking up is easy to do. lol

But who knows- it could easily be a combination of the two or just plain illegal activity by the cops. We'll probably never know for sure.

Re:Oops

[AK Marc]

I remember USENET from the '90s. I started on it from college. Every post tagged with my real, traceable, and valid email. There was no anonymity. Some persisted with that, even in less public forums. He was asking for programming help, not necessarily for anything nefarious. At that point, he may not have even realized he was going to do something nefarious with it.

My take: Parallel construction

There's little the FBI couldn't do without a warrant, so parallel construction wouldn't be necessary. The best theory I saw someone else post here is that the FBI knew it was a one-man operation, and sending that message wouldn't make a difference, so instead they were running it, capturing all, and using the intel to go after the little guy trading on Silk Road. Why take down a lone shark, when you can take out the entire ocean?

Re:Probably a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Because he's black

[bigsexyjoe]

Gary L. Alford is black. That probably contributed to them not believing him.

Re:Probably a lie

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Two words: Parallel Construction

[Marful]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...