He escaped the dark web's biggest bust, and now he's back | Hacker News Reader

He escaped the dark web's biggest bust, and now he's back

wired.com

61 pointsvalprop136 comments

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Seems like a honeypot. Who escapes the fbi and does an interview with wired

The same factors that would make it a good honeypot would also make it good marketing.

Apparently FBI agents who escape the FBI also love to do interviews with wired.

"Former FBI Agent Answers Body Language Questions From Twitter"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9SA25OukyM

Wired also has a series with the "former" CIA agents as well.

Michael Reinoehl

https://archive.is/UTWgR

This has to be running with the ok of the government as a collection pot or he got the truncheon treatment and spit out all the passwords and the government is already running the platform.

Or he's just plain naive: "To avoid the risk of his PC being grabbed while he's logged into AlphaBay, DeSnake says he also shuts it down entirely every time he steps away from it, even to take a bathroom break"

This will be equalized by a discreet truncheon treatment.

No way this is not a honeypot. Wondering if wired does not know or does not care.

Most likely they are playing along out of a desperation for views.

Imagine that. A publisher wanting people to read their content. The nerve

I also want money, but I don't lie about my grandma dying to get it from my friends.

Wired has done some in depth articles over the years about topics that are really important about privacy and other topics that HN are interested in. It would be a shame if they are knowingly lying about anything.

But they discuss this possibility in the article? Including arguments from both sides. Why is it on wired to make a call here? Do you want them to editorialize?

The US DOJ absolutely gets its rocks off pursuing those hiding behind tech barriers, especially those who brag about it. Lots of promotions and prestige for those who nail a Mr. Big. Additionally they develop the tech to sweep up copycats.

Theoretically you could shut down after several months and take your dough to a country where the long arm of the DOJ can't get you. Russia and Iran are about the only choices.

This seems pretty obviously something to encourage naive users to find and test and get caught.

co-co-cold hearted snaekkk

And now he's telling lies.

No way this is a honeypot, LE would just co-opt an existing market instead of trying to build their own.

DeSnake has cryptographically proven his identity and there’s never been any indication that he was busted.

Edit: I’m happy to commit to a bet of up to 100k usd on this topic, preferably settled in cryptocurrency.

Why would LE not do both?

Because this would be a huge waste of time, illegal and counterproductive. The PR shitstorm would be massive if the market reached any meaningful size.

Even co-opting existing sites for limited periods of time has been controversial, nobody would risk their career doing something this stupid.

You should read up on the An0m phone.

Genuinely curious what one has to do with the other. An0m served a very specific purpose which I don't think generalizes well to the dark market "problem."

Not even close to a reasonable comparison.

Quite a close one, actually.

Not really.

An0m wasn’t illegal, provided useful actionable intelligence and didn’t enable anyone to commit crimes.

Running a platform to let anonymous vendors sell credit cards in exchange for untraceable cryptocurrency isn’t really going to be very productive

> An0m wasn’t illegal, provided useful actionable intelligence and didn’t enable anyone to commit crimes.

An0m wasn't illegal because it was operated by LE. But it did enable illegal actions, and the operating LEOs overlooked illegal actions, until enough data was collected on big fish.

An0m (the product) would be legal regardless of who operates it.

An0m did not enable any illegal actions, those same acts would have taken place regardless of An0m.

> [..] Monero, which is designed to be far more difficult to trace than Bitcoin, whose blockchain has proven to sometimes allow powerful forms of financial tracking.

Powerful forms of financial tracking? God damn journos these days are fucking idiots.

Insulting a whole profession because of some apparent mistakes of an individual seems quite idiotic as well.

People usually do this knowing full well that there are counterexamples, yet the general case warrants the strong oversimplification.

With journalism we've seen the profession decline in expertise and standards over the past decades. Mostly because too many publications hire anyone who is willing to generate articles that generate clicks.

True. You could also make the argument that journalism has declined because people will click on anything.

The industry has declined not because of hiring policies, but because we in the tech industry blew it up and because capitalism and journalism are not totally compatible anyhow.

I am also not fond of click-driven headlines and articles. But this is not a new problem; when newspapers were mainly purchased individually, exciting headlines were used to drive sales. Now that companies get paid by the view, guess what! Organizations that prioritize revenue-generating views will survive.

If we don't like that, yelling at them won't help. And blaming random things like hiring policies especially won't help. We need to figure out how to get sufficient money into journalism in ways that rewards the kind of journalism we want. Personally, between Patreon and subscriptions, I spend a couple grand a year on that. What are you doing to solve the problem?

Author of the article here. Can't help but ask: Do you not believe that Bitcoin's blockchain sometimes allows powerful forms of financial tracking? Are you aware there's a whole industry that of companies designed to do exactly this?

What is powerful about it compared to standard financial tracking? What would less powerful financial tracking look like? Sounds like hyperbole to make it sound more exciting rather than an accurate description of the process.

What's powerful about it is that it's available to literally anyone as opposed to only financial institutions.

Sure, traditional finance is also subject to powerful forms of financial tracking. (Though in some respects, Bitcoin is even less private: https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-drug-deals-silk-road-blo...) Monero is designed not to be, and that is pretty clearly the contrast I'm describing here.

The standard financial tracking of cash, which is almost none? The standard financial tracking of a single bank account, which requires a subpoena? The standard financial tracking for a single person, which requires many requests to different data-holders and then a fair bit of work to unify it?

In contrast, Bitcoin has a public global pseudonymous ledger. No warrants needed, a copy is freely available. Letting you trace flows of money from account to account instantly with no vendor issues and no judge to convince. Sounds powerful to me!

The article's phrasing is both correct and reasonable. And the reason to not explain every detail in a general-audience article is that most people don't care about the details. If they did, they wouldn't be reading general-audience material, but more specialized stuff.

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