FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market
forbes.com
forbes.com
At last the drug war has been won!
No similar site will ever be created and all the resources formerly spent fighting drugs will be returned to improving the lives of citizens.
This is as great a sign of success as when we victoriously proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, and as assuredly as we have had peace since then in Iraq, we can look forward to as peaceful and drug-free an existence as when we enjoyed the peaceful, law-abiding, alcohol-free times of Prohibition.
Resources well-spent. We can finally sleep well tonight under the FBI's benevolent watch.
They don't want to win, they want to continuously fight with it.
Irony would be that there is a news tomorrow to the effect " Half a dozen new web sites sprung up after Silk road bust and FBI is struggling this time to catch the perpetrators. They wised up from Silk Road's mistakes described in detail by FBI"
Not this shit again.
Unless you are a Wall Street insider and then we will gladly help the SEC harass your detractors.
"Constitution? What constitution?"
> users migrate to other, smaller but similar anonymous black markets
Not only will they find you, the FBI has clearly put an end to the online drug trade.
They're not going to be very happy about it, though. They were on SR for a reason. With Atlantis shuttering the other week, that leaves just BMR (old, but full of scammers) and Sheep (less than a year old and tiny).
Like that article about the guy trying to extort poker players. The FBI agent admits she always wanted to be like they were on the TV show "CHiPS" and how they've got the hardest cybersquad available and will break you so better just 'fess up. In reality? Guy logged into his Gmail account from his house, and proceeded to blackmail via email. I mean, come on. Asking Google for an IP is now badass? Yet from the reading, hoo boy do they like busting down doors with guns out as if it was some criminal overload's lair.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/how-the-fbi-crack...
A message like, "We will catch you" isn't just about going on some power trip. It's a preemptive PR play.
The intimidation is also used in personal confrontation to try to get the suspect to drop their rights and not wait for a lawyer or stay silent. That's why they love busting in with guns and telling you how much they know and how you better not "piss them off".
Also, the suspect only needs to slip up once to be caught. A perfect 100% success rate in staying hidden is almost impossible.
On the story I linked, it was literally a case of "Hey Gmail, which IPs used this account? Thanks. Hey Comcast, which subscriber is <IP>? Cool, locked and loaded!"
I'm not sure how "hard" this work is when you're the federal government and can compel everyone to cooperate with you.
Some people think the other stuff sold on SR is bad, and want to stop people selling that other stuff.
Some people just want criminals to pay the tax.
[1] I strongly think that legalising drugs, and treating them as a public health not criminal justice issue would help a lot.
Sure, it's a dumb law, but if you choose a career as a LEO you're not signing up to decide what the laws are. That's the legislature's job. Your job is to enforce the dumb ones along with the smart ones.
It's like the scene at the end of The Untouchables, after we've watched Eliot Ness throw everything he has into fighting bootleggers for two hours. Someone runs up to him waving a newspaper announcing that Prohibition has been repealed and asks him what he's going to do now. And he looks at the paper and replies "I'm going to have a drink."
> “This is supposed to be some invisible black market bazaar. We made it visible,” says an FBI spokesperson, who asked not to be named. “When you interviewed [Ulbricht], he said he would never be arrested. But no one is beyond the reach of the FBI. We will find you.”
I wonder what it was...
When will you learn that the nerds win in the end, jocks? :)
I thought it was "If your number is up, we will find you."
The documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOnQ8CD3v4g