The Silk Road Is Back 261
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Silk Road is rising from the dead. After the FBI seized the deep web's favourite illegal drug market and arrested its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht last month (for, among other things, ordering a hit through his own website), the online-marketplace-cum-libertarian-movement has found a new home and opened for business at 16:20 GMT this afternoon. In the wake of the original Silk Road's closure, everything became a little turbulent for its users. First, they had to get used to not getting high-quality, peer-reviewed drugs delivered direct to their sofas. (Though presumably they didn't stop getting high, instead forced back to the 'mystery mix' street dealers and surly ex-Balkan war criminals who have spent years filling cities with drugs at night.) Some users were pissed off that they'd lost all the Bitcoin wealth they'd amassed, or that paid-for orders would go undelivered, while small-time dealers freaked out about how they suddenly lacked the funds to pay off debts owed to drug sellers higher up the food chain."
Re:The only thing that would make sense... (Score:5, Informative)
The technology was not what got the Silk Road raided. The technology is fine, it's user error that's the problem. Ulbricht failed to fully compartmentalize his Dread Pirate Roberts identity, and that's what got him busted.
Re:Weighing the possibilities (Score:5, Informative)
There is the glaring privacy hole.
At some point, the physical package will be shipped from Point A to Point B.
It's obvious that carriers like UPS and FedEx already track every detail of a package from pickup to delivery. You can get those details from their web site with the tracking number.
Shipping using USPS seemed "safer". It came out a few months ago that it isn't. [nytimes.com]
A private courier is more expensive, and adds the ability to track the package closer, especially if the feds are the sending party.
Even in the case of the Dread Pirate Roberts hiring a hitman, there is a real-world endpoint. They know who has the contract on their head, they'd only have to investigate why to find out who ordered it.
So even if TOR was perfectly anonymous (It's good, but...), and if bitcoins were anonymous (again, good, but...), it's still easy to catch one or both ends of the transaction.
recover gold from electronic waste (Score:3, Informative)
key resource in many street level recovery industries - cheap, dangerous and dirty, unfortunately.
Re:Yea, Right! (Score:4, Informative)