It was always that way, Ross Ulbrect was connected to his dark website by tracing via exit nodes.
Tor was always a government tool.
Tor was always a government tool.
Ulbricht wasn't caught because of flaws in Tor, but he made other mistakes. He posted stuff on LinkedIn alluding to his activities, he used a real photo on his fake IDs to rent servers, he used his real name, posting a question on stack over flow about running a Tor service, he posted his personal gmail, looked for couriers on Google+, and lastly paid an undercover cop for a hit.
As for getting his location, once the feds gained acccess to silk road, they matched up activity logs, his posting habits were consistent with being in the pacific time zone, and they matched up his user name between his posts on silk road as altoid and he reused the same screenname, associated with his gmail address and full name, on other websites.
A series of stupid opsec mistakes got him caught, not Tor.
Unless, of course, they want everybody, which even they don't have the resources to handle.
When did he sell drugs?
He facilitated drug sales. If you setup ‘clucks brick and mortar Silk Road’ you’d be just as guilty.
I don’t think that was ever rosses ethical objective though, I’m pretty sure he felt that drugs should be less illegal and safe. I’m under the impression that Silk Road had rules on what could be sold, and that post SR markets do allow those things, but I could be wrong.
Not defending him, but clarifying that it's not proven "he directly did that"