Dream Market, the Top Dark Web Marketplace, Will Shut Down Next Month (zdnet.com)

Dream Market, today's top dark web marketplace, today announced plans to shut down on April 30. From a report: The announcement came on the same day Europol, FBI, and DEA officials announced tens of arrests and a massive crackdown on dark web drug trafficking. The timing of the four announcements immediately sent most of Dream Market's users and dark web threat intel analysts into a frenzy of theories that law enforcement might have already seized the site and are now running a honeypot operation. Their fears are based on a similar event from June 2017 when Dutch police took over Hansa Market and ran the site for a month while collecting evidence on the portal's users. Law enforcement later used passwords collected from Hansa Market users to gain access to accounts on other dark web marketplaces.

Comments

Re:I keep wondering why we don't legalize drugs

[LittleNegative]

I'm guessing there are at least a couple reasons to not legalize drugs: 1) Legalization would probably put a dent in big pharma profits 2) Legalization would give cops one less reason to pull over and arrest people.

Re:I keep wondering why we don't legalize drugs

[sjames]

You mean as opposed to now where they're strung out on illegal drugs and so have little to lose by adding one more criminal charge?

Try running the prisons properly and legalizing drugs. Then the prospects are: Avoid crime and use drugs or commit a crime and 'enjoy' a few years in a drug free prison.

With the significantly reduced prison population and taxes on the drugs, we will easily be able to afford to upgrade the prisons and still save money.

Re:I keep wondering why we don't legalize drugs

[cayenne8]

Can't work in America. I can't speak to other countries.

It's not that it wouldn't be of benefit to the general population, but that's not a criteria anyone in any level of power will even consider as modestly important. What's important is continuing the war on drugs because it feeds the for profit prison system. And that for profit prison system needs a steady stream of non-violent inmates to keep running costs low and prove the necessity of every increased capacity.

Well, according to the ACLU: "...for-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal prisoners in 2015 (the most recent numbers currently available)".

While that seems to start being a little high on the Federal side, it doesn't seem to be really THAT high of a number that everyone seems to keep touting as a reason to keep funneling people into the prison system.

While I agree it could put pressure on the system to try to fund itself, it doesn't appear to be as much of a central problem to legalizing drugs as some would have you think.

Re:the real solution

[ShanghaiBill]

If they did this, an obvious counter-measure would be for the drug gangs to pay an insider to smear a bit of cocaine paste on random packages.

Misting all the packages with capsaicin would also work.

Re:I keep wondering why we don't legalize drugs

[FictionPimp]

Yep, that's why I only buy my whiskey from moonshiners. I'm not paying those taxes and who cares if the product might be total poison. Only suckers pay taxes on whiskey.