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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't pay, but being in some prisons is better than working minimum wage, and definitely better than being homeless.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of Swedish prison my dad knows a guy who calms it saved his life. How? No alcohol on weekdays. But on the week ends (Swedish prison let most of the prisoners out for weekend) the guy would go drinking with one of the guards. After following this habit for a 2 years. He still no longer drink during week days.
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:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, Britain can't legally extradict to countries where the accused faces the Death Penalty and members of the US Senate had already publically claimed Assange should face the death penalty. Whether that was a legal p
Re: (Score:3)
prisons is better than working minimum wage
I think you're trying to be cynical about the War on Labor in the US. The few ex-cons I've met over the years never want to go back.
As a digression, I think irresponsible, corrupt politicians should be turned back into ordinary citizens, subject to hard time, and then forced to work minimum wage for a year when they get out. See how fast things change.
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: (Score:2)
Its all good until you get caught...
The problem is when do you stop, as long as it goes well, no reason to stop, you may expand the operations...
Then one day, you are caught and all was for naught.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds a lot like being a CEO or financial investor. If you're good at it, you can steal millions every day.
Re:Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. If it's white collar theft (public or private), then the law is on your side. In fact, the system encourages it.
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: (Score:2)
very low risk career if you have government in your pocket, and you get armies and police as your personal goons
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I find it more interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
maybe those were real addresses... but not of the real guys on silk road
Re: (Score:2)
One more reason not to run Tor exit nodes or open Wifi points...
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, sure, because the first thing the cops check for when they're told 5523 south 43rd street is selling drugs is whether they've got wireless or not.
If you're lucky, they bothered to double check the address so they don't kick in your door at 5532 with a no-knock warrant, unannounced, guns blazing.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, because the first thing the cops check for when they're told 5523 south 43rd street is selling drugs is whether they've got wireless or not.
If you're lucky, they bothered to double check the address so they don't kick in your door at 5532 with a no-knock warrant, unannounced, guns blazing.
5532 south 43rd, isn't that Harry Buttle's place?
Re: (Score:2)
5532 south 43rd, isn't that Harry Buttle's place?
ohhhh big points for getting a Brazil [imdb.com] reference in there!
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know about all of them, but for the arrests I heard about they didn't. They had to use information from both inside and outside silk road to match people to their identities online.
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:5, Interesting)
You need to use a real address if you want to buy stuff, and in the UK at least, you don't need to have that much before it is "possession with intent to supply". People could have been buying wholesale on Silk Road and selling it on the street, and even if they weren't, if the quantities were more than about a day's supply they would get charged with that anyway.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you can not get big fish, hyping up small ones can be just as good and a lot less work/risk.
Re: (Score:3)
There is *really* no point in going after the low-hanging fruit because (1) they probably don't have a lot of money or property to seize (2) there is no real way to spin the arrest of a bunch of potheads as anything interesting to the public.
...unless your purpose is to intimidate the average users by prosecuting a few as 'examples' to the rest. Remember the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits against random downloaders? Do you really think they did that because the targets had money, or that the results weren't 'interesting' to the public? True, that's not an act by law enforcement, but the fact that over 3/4 million people continue to be arrested for simple pot possession in the US each year is ample evidence that law enforcement is quite happy to randomly
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt they had any personal information on the site. I suspect they failed to launder their bitcoins sufficienty.
Re: (Score:3)
There's no reasonable way to launder bitcoins as all transactions are public - it only takes sufficient record keeping and computing power to unwind any mixing of btc.
That is incorrect. The transactions may all be public, but the connection between putting money into such a service and taking money out is not, at least not if it's implemented reasonably using a limited set of deposit and withdrawal denominations, with enough users to thwart traffic analysis. With an implementation based on blinded signatures the service itself doesn't even need to know who made the deposit when a withdrawal request is presented.
Of course, the fact that you sent funds to such a service, o
Silk Road rating A-- (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of weed, package contained SWAT team.
Would not buy again.
(with apologies to xkcd)
Important to note ..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Important to note ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an important reminder that it only takes one mistake to get caught, and it doesn't even need to be your own mistake.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Buyers are not much at risk. It is the sellers they are after.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
the sellers have much needed bitcoin to confiscate. the federal government needs funding, ya know.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine big buyers will be targets as well. Sure someone who just bought a few grams here or there is fine, but there might have been people moving real weight and replacing traditional suppliers this way.
Those folks are screwed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Buyers are the low hanging fruit. They're the ones who actually needed to provide a physical address somewhere along the way.
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.
Re: (Score:3)
If you're really paranoid you could suggest that TOR is broken and they watched the guy from early on until they had a plausible non-TOR reason to "discover" him. After investing loads of resources into breaking TOR, would you want to throw all that away on a single bust?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I remember checking out silk road back when it started (I think there were under 300 transactions at the time). I browsed around a bit and was amused... wondered who had the brass balls to order bulk heroin shipped to them from pakistan.
Even at the time I noticed something... I noticed one guy with the same name as the site name "Silk Road" and he was selling one product: Mushrooms. I said a few times to people I knew that if someone wanted to find the guy behind silk road, he should look at the shroomery f
Re:Important to note ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not directly. Indirectly, it helped create a nice big honeypot where now lots of people got caught. This is not unlike the childporn exchanges on the tor network. Pervs flock to these sites, and create a big juicy target for law enforcement.
You have to realize that it is far more cost effective for law enforcement to break silk road and get the adresses of lots of dealers than to chase them one by one. It is so cost effective that they can use a well funded crack team (no pun intended) to do it.
So in a way, this technology is in fact helping law enforcement.
With all the problems in the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's focus on recreational drugs!
It's as if we don't want peoples attention on the real criminals.
Sociopath plutocrats and their dogs.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats [globalissues.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:With all the problems in the world... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
These guys are also murderers. Still not interested?
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the murder that didn't happen? Fact is the only reason there was any attempt at murder was the result of blackmail attempts. Blackmail which was only enabled by the laws in the first place. It was the law that created the extreme situation where he could be blackmailed with no effective legal recourse. Silk road itself wouldn't even exist but for their stupid laws. The politicians who brought us this failure of a mess take full responsibility in my eyes for creating this situation.... again and aga
Re:Mod Down - Logical Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
His point isn't that we have to choose between prosecuting drug users and bankers. His point is that drug enforcement is a distraction for the people, so that they don't demand we prosecute bankers. It's misdirection.
Re: (Score:3)
Bonus: it's quite a common tactic to make a thing that many (poor) people do illegal so you can arrest most (poor) people at any time
The thing about that is, it's not poor people who do most of the drugs. Rich people actually use more drugs than poor people. They have the money and free time after all. This makes the overabundance of poor black drug users in jail all the more obviously unjust. We know for certain that they're not enforcing this law fairly.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, he claimed that the stupid drug enforcement is just meant as a distraction in hopes that people don't notice that 'authorities' have no intent to prosecute the biggest criminals in the country's history.
Even if not, it's still not a false dilemma since both choices require significant resources from a limited pool. If we dropped the DEA crap, we really would have more resources to focus on the more damaging crimes being committed with impunity.
So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
If Japan gets involved, they'll use Samurai Jackbots.
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.
Easy to trace??? (Score:2)
WTF I thought part of the point of Bitcoin was it's bloody difficult to trace!!
Re: (Score:2)
No, Bitcoin was never designed to be hard to trace, in fact Bitcoin by design is easy to trace.
Re:Easy to trace??? (Score:4, Funny)
Weaver said in an email, while the traceable nature of bitcoin transfers means the FBI "can now easily follow the money."
WTF I thought part of the point of Bitcoin was it's bloody difficult to trace!!
I find all money difficult to trace .... my wife takes it and I see not race of it again.
Re: (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: (Score:3)
Crime rule #1. (Score:5, Interesting)
Crime rule #1: If you're going to do crime, don't do crime with anyone you haven't known since high school. Doing crime with random strangers over the Internet is just fcking stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
--
Improving myself by reading slashdot since 1996.
The balance between anonymity and accountability (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to be able to purchase my drugs anonymously, but since I'm paying Silk Road a percentage, I'd like some kind of guarantee.
Some kind of accountability, in other words.
How to balance the two? They don't balance. Even if the only accountability is a seller's good name, there must be some kind of linked identification which, over time, provides enough information to find the individual and arrest them.
Far more interesting is... (Score:2)
Hope it works out for all those people with their Terahash ASIC machine buying plans.
Liberty is dying. (Score:2)
To quote Mr. Burns. . . (Score:2)
Exxxcellent!
Lies and propaganda? (Score:2)
This is a War of Cartels... (Score:2)
You see, you are supposed to use the new Obamacare Healthcare.gov site to get your officialized care plan and see one of our approved drug advisors (psychiatrists), who will then vouch for you to purchase some meth from government licensed drug dealers. Providing profits to those major drug cartels willing to donate to the political campaigns of our politicians (Pfizer, Bayer, etc.)
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: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And the NSA is working to compromise it, as recent leaks revealed.
The US government isn't a monolith. Different departments within it are often working at cross-purposes, or even in open opposition.
Re: (Score:3)
http://cryptome.org/2013/10/packet-stain/packet-staining.htm [cryptome.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Does it surprise anyone that the NSA is working to compromise Tor? at the very lease i would expect them to make a hobby of trying to compromise any network designed to hide or encrypt communications. if not for business reasons (keeping ahead of their rivals) at the very least i would expect them to do it for fun and to hone their skills. they are crypto guys it is what they do.
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I personally hijacked my own addiction center in the brain with Skinner boxes, so I have no room for drugs on top of my MMOs.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Operant conditioning chamber
Main article: Operant conditioning chamber
While a researcher at Harvard, B. F. Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, popularly referred to as the Skinner box, to measure responses of organisms (most often, rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment. The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat could get food delivered to the tray pressing the lever. Skinner observed that when a rat was put in the box, it woul
Re: (Score:2)
Not Skinner boxes, he meant BF Skinner boxes cured him, AKA prison cells, emphasis on the BF.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (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 bo
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heroin, not heroine ...
Anyway, no, heroin does not "kill more and more until they reach a critical level and die". The AC you replied to has it more correct. MOST (not all) heroin ODs are from new batches or some other mistake. Or mixing heroin with alcohol and / or other drugs.
Which brings me to my real point. If you think that heroin is dangerous (and it is), what's your thinking on alcohol? Or tobacco? The societal costs of either drug dwarf the societal costs of ALL illegal drugs, sans law enforcement costs put together. If you plan to be logically consistent (never a strong point with humans), then we should outlaw alcohol (again) and tobacco (goodluckwiththat).
Yes, there are medical costs associated with drug use, those problems should be left to the medical community, not the legal one. We're not perfect, but our track record is considerably better. You are never going to have a society free of drug use and other behaviors that are demonstrably bad for the individual. Where the US screws up big time is believing that the legal process is the way to redress those issues. We've demonstrably shown that the "War on Drugs" doesn't work.
Time to do the American thing and re invent ourselves and switch gears. The rather interesting thing is that Colorado and Washington have waded into that vast abyss and are trying to figure out how to make an illegal drug legal. This will inevitably be (somewhat) successful and can point to the way to legalize other drugs, although not likely any time soon. Our underlying Calvinist / Puritan mythology will hang on for a while longer, I'm afraid.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Heroin kills more people than it would otherwise because it is illegal. When properly maintained on metered doses of pharmaceutical grade opiates, addicts don't overdose because they know what they are getting and can dose appropriately. You get overdose deaths when addicts go without supply for a while, and don't know their tolerance, or when a new batch of highly potent drugs hits the streets. That only happens because of prohibition.
Re: (Score:2)
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:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Portugal has had an interesting experience with Decriminalization: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html [spiegel.de]
Making drug users into felons is not a net positive for society, but man the prison industry sure benefits!
Re: (Score:2)
No, we're arguing that drugs (hard drugs is a meaningless propaganda term) exist, and there are ways to regulate them that work better than prohibition.
Re: (Score:2)
Not every Bad Thing should be outlawed.
There's no contradiction in the belief that heroin addiction is bad and that the appropriate method to mitigate that harm isn't the police.
Re: (Score:2)
Buying on a black market is never good. However,...
Excellent post. Thank you!
Re: (Score:3)
Let's be clear about this. Silk Road operators had a guy killed. They are no different in that regard than the thugs running any other drug gang. When you buy on the black market, you are paying with blood money that destroys other peoples' lives and livelihoods. You know this is the consequence of your action. You can go ahead and blame the government if you want, but YOU are providing the money that gets people killed.
Yes, maybe the product should be legal. If so and you care, talk to your represent
Re: (Score:2)
Let's be clear about this. Silk Road operators had a guy killed.
So has Obama.
They are no different in that regard than the thugs running any other drug gang.
Or the anti-drug gang we call the DEA.
When you buy on the black market, you are paying with blood money that destroys other peoples' lives and livelihoods. You know this is the consequence of your action.
Same as when you pay your taxes, or buy coca-cola, bananas, iphones, diamonds, or gasoline.
You can go ahead and blame the government if you want, b
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: (Score:2)
Buying on a black market is never good.
When you live under an authoritarian regime, black markets make you more free. That's good.
Re:Queue The Anarchist & Druggie Comments In.. (Score:5, Insightful)
3... 2... 1. GO! Write posts explaining how people buying things like herion and cocaine on the black market is okay.
hmmm! ...hmm! ... People should be the owners of their own lives and taking responsibility away from people and treating them as stupid children turns them into stupid children!
Right? ... Right? ...What did I win?
Re: (Score:2)
In all three cases the seller intends to make a profit. Any motive beyond that is pure speculation on your part.
Re: (Score:2)
No
No
No
Any other dumb questions?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He's a sad little man, and instead of looking inwards (and being disgusted) he finds easy targets and does a bit of transference.. that or he's a troll.