8 Users of Silk Road Arrested, 'Many More To Come' 318
An anonymous reader writes "Last week authorities shut down Silk Road, an online black market that made use of Tor to hide activity. They also arrested the site's primary operator, Ross Ulbricht, and seized his possessions. Now, an AP report indicates at least 8 more arrests have been made on people suspected to have sold drugs through the site. Four of the arrests happened in the U.K., two were in the U.S. and two were in Sweden. It looks like they're gearing up for more arrests, as well. Keith Bristow of Britain's National Crime Agency said, 'These latest arrests are just the start; there are many more to come.' Authorities are reportedly mining the site's customer review system, which contains months worth of transaction data, for further leads."
Important to note ..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Same as it ever was. (Score:5, Informative)
Tor was developed by DARPA and is funded by the NSF and the US State Dept.
I think your fears are a little unfounded.
Re:I find it more interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe for the pair in Bellevue, they stupidly used their own return address on their packages, which was a PO Box. The smarter sellers use real addresses of random businesses which should be totally safe. Obviously many sellers weren't so smart or simply became complacent.
Re:I find it more interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
This is true, but considering from the standpoint of police resources, they are going to go after the sellers and big buyers first. There are literally thousands of people who ordered an ounce or two of pot or a few molly pills every once in a while; they don't have the time to dedicate to that, even if it's technically a crime.
There is no fame and glory in busting a kid who ordered pot online, whereas there will be headlines if they bring down the big sellers. Busting the sellers is how they can go around and talk about taking out these dangerous criminal elements and get more funding.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Informative)
More accurately: Crime is a high-risk career. If you're good at it, the pay is very good. Even just common burglary you can make thousands in one day's work. If you're not good at it though, you make nothing at all and end up in prison.
Re:Easy to trace??? (Score:3, Informative)
No. Bitcoin is by design traceable to ensure a transactions integrity -- one can create an arbitrary address, but money will have to be transferred in and transferred out in order to be useful. Both transactions will have records located forever in the blockchain indicating source, destination, and date. All are required to insure integrity of the transaction. Bitcoin was designed to be free from arbitrary manipulation of its value, not true anonymity.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Informative)
Crime's like any other job: the high-paying, less risky jobs all require tons of skill and training, or family connections. If you haven't got a crime education or a crime pedigree, your only choices are super high-risk jobs like mugging or super low-paying jobs like corner drug sales.
http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-3/ [freakonomics.com]
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:5, Informative)
I do not think that your hypothesis that hard drugs are bad is not necessarily correct. I invite you to learn an alternate model of addiction which may change your world a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park [wikipedia.org]
What do you think?
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:3, Informative)
No. Heroine only kills because it is unregulated. Nearly every OD is because some one got an unexpectedly pure batch and used what they thought was their regular dose. Perhaps you were thinking of meth?
I am a little worried by your other comments. What's next? Fatty foods and large sodas? Dangerous sports? How many ways do people destroy themselves are you prepared to stop? I'm slippin' down a slope here!
To me, it all comes down to what used to be considered a basic American freedom, to do with my body as I see fit. If I want to rent out my butthole to buy chemicals that kill me, that's my right and none of your damned business.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody interesting and hilariously anti-drug in public life on the list yet, or do those get filtered out before they send in the jackboots?
I think it goes a little like this:
DEA Agent: So, I hear you are opposed to warrantless surveillance.
Junior Senator: Umm, yes?
DEA Agent: And my undertstanding is that recently you've been reconsidering your position.
Junior Senator: No, I haven't.
DEA Agent: See this post we have here from Silk Road where you say that BC Chronic made The Simpsons funny again?
Junior Senator: What I meant to say was, I believe warrantless surveillance is a vital and necessary tool in our war on violent extremism.
DEA Agent: I thought so.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Informative)
Swedish prison let most of the prisoners out for weekend
Err, no, never heard of that. A prisoner can apply for "permission" after serving something like a third of his/her time in prison, and then they can leave prison for up to three days at a time (decided by prison administration, or, as in a recently publicized case, by a central agency on appeal), but I don't think any prisoner gets permission every weekend...
Re:Crime (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Alleged Murder-for-Hire (Score:5, Informative)
Hi Shavano,
In this post you wrote:
> Let's be clear about this. Silk Road operators had a guy killed.
And in another post you wrote:
> These guys are also murderers.
While I think your main point is correct, that Ross Ulbricht is (allegedly) a thug, I also think we should be clear that (probably) nobody actually died. Ulbricht is accused of paying bitcoins to have two people killed, but neither "hit" was carried out. See
http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf [berkeley.edu]
bottom of page 23, for a summary of one "hit", and
https://ia601904.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf [archive.org]
starting on page 6, for a step-by-step account of the other.
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:2, Informative)
"smuggling and tax evasion" have nothing to do with the nature of cigarettes themselves and everything to do with governments taxing the daylights out of them (a cigarette's retail price is about 25-30% of most nation's after tax prices).
No one would take krokodil if they could get other opiates cheaply. Opiates are cheap excluding the legal risks (which dramatically raise prices).
Re:Important to note ..... (Score:5, Informative)
Buyers are not much at risk. It is the sellers they are after.
Bullshit, they're after everyone. My friend's brother spent five years in Federal prison, as well as half his high school graduating class. His crime? A guy he'd gone to high school with called him needing $1000 so he could get a lawyer -- he'd been busted for selling cocaine. He said he'd pay him back double in a week.
Mike's brother and twenty or more other people were convicted for "conspiracy to distribute cocaine." All of them spent five years in prison, except that guy who was actually selling drugs who spent only two for helping the feds prosecute innocent men, and few if any of them had anything whatever to do with drugs.
They don't care that you're innocent, [innocenceproject.org] they want you in prison. You don't even have to be a buyer to go to prison for dope, just loan the wrong person money.