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Comment by dailo10 | Hacker News Reader

This is why you don't do an interview with Forbes and thumb your nose at the FBI when you're running an illegal operation. When I saw that interview, I knew his days were numbered.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-inte...

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By the time that interview was posted in August, the FBI had already imaged the SR server (in July).

From the Forbes article: "So this was not merely a distributed denial of service attack? It was a zero day exploit? Did it gain access to any data or simply knock the site offline?

I’m not one hundred percent on this, but I don’t think it’s possible to do a DDoS over Tor, or at least it is much harder than doing it over the clear net. The effect of the attack was to block access to Silk Road. No data was leaked, in fact we’ve never had a data leak. "

Posted after the feds imaged the server. OOOPS. Hubris is dangerous.

If the guy had never talked to the press at all... you think the FBI and DEA would have just ignored a massive drug marketplace running essentially out in the open?

I think the point here is that, even though the letter agencies would not have ignored it... they surely got a lot more "incentives" internally to focus on SR when it got more mainstream attention. More analysts, more easily approved wiretapping/surveillance actions (not that they need approvals of any kind nowadays), essentially more money into it.

People slip, it's inevitable. How fast that happens probably got accelerated by SR's owner appearances and the dent it was making in the agencies' reputation.

This is like saying nana nana boo boo stick your head in doo doo. You can't run an illegal business and then vehemently flaunt it to a major news publication that gets read around the world essentially saying that your smarter than the government won't end well for anyone.

I'm going to assume the FBI (or DEA) were going after Silk Road, interview or not.

Rather, the type of person who was willing to engage in illegal activities while also doing a high-profile interview was unlikely to be the sort of person who was paranoid enough to cover their tracks (e.g., avoid re-using handles and other identifying information).

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