Having the world believe they can't reverse Tor would clearly be more valuable than having the world believe they can. Remember that Tor explicitly doesn't protect against a global passive adversary.
I'm betting a dozen entrepreneurs are looking at this right now thinking "I can do this better" and are designing their systems as this is happening.
All joking aside, I hope you're right, and that the next few SR alternative sites figure out how to get it right, and that Tor itself isn't fundamentally broken by the FBI.
Unfortunately that all now needs to be viewed with the suspicion of "parallel reconstruction" - I'm somewhat less convinced that if the NSA targeted someone specific that SSL and TOR would resist their efforts (and that for something like Silk Road, that the NSA wouldn't happily break and read everything DPR did over his SSL secured TOR connections, and "share" just the right tidbits with the FBI for them to go and create a plausible explanation involving google searches and old forum posts).
Welcome to the post Snowden era - where we know that our governments not only don't have our best interests in mind, but have sophisticated programs in place to lie to us about how they arrive at the evidence they present (in those annoying occasions where they have to use courts who aren't just rubber-stamping everything they're told too).
(Edit: on reflection, it's kinda sad that this might well have been good detective work by diligent, talented, and persistent FBI investigators doing exactly what he taxpayer employs them to do - but that effort is now permanently under the dark cloud of suspicion of unconstitutional dragnet surveillance and morally corrupt processes like "parallel reconstruction".)
The trust and review system, the search engine and the communication platform can all run independently and don't need to happen on the same platform.
The web interface can be provided by an open-source turn-key package, so the next DPRs only need to figure out the hosting.
Who are you talking about? Everywhere I look people are saying tor is certainly broken, the NSA is watching us, etc.
Yes, they are legally obligated to not lie about the true means of how they came to have the evidence. But if nobody can prove you're lying, they can't call you on it.
Obviously, the disappearance of such a site leaves a gaping hole on the Web:
Silk Road has proven that the demand/market is there, that people are willing to use the Web to acquire those goods, that they are willing to pay, that the whole transaction works and that this leads to a massive amount of cash.
So, make no mistake, the next Silk Road creator is certainly out there, probably technically more astute and careful, and already building.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fwi48/im_the_ceo_of_a...
> A: The road has more users, but our service is better (to put it bluntly).
> [...] We have automated PGP encryption of messages for the members who refuse to send their messages using PGP.
Ouch.
Black Market Reloaded is the odds-on favorite to be the new Silk Road.
Drugs are bad, mm'kay?
And almost as certainly: more experienced in the use of serious violence. The next guy won't be hiring hitters without introductions from fellow violent criminals. (Not that undercover cops have never been vouched for in such a manner, but it raises the stakes significantly.) Yay Drug War!