So does this new information validate that this service that provided for the exchange of illegal narcotics was in fact evil and should have been shut down much sooner.
How does this knowledge effect the ongoing debate about digital privacy ?
How does this knowledge effect the ongoing debate about digital privacy ?
Not at all. You cannot encrypt a dead body, or a blood smear, or the fact that someone connected to you has disappeared. This is kind of like asking how the news that the mafia avoids using telephones to conduct their business will affect the debate about privacy in one's home.
The right to privacy will always be use by criminals. That is the price we pay for our civil rights.
> How does this knowledge effect the ongoing debate about digital privacy ?
We need things like tor because governments have demonstrated willingness to break strict controls. More innocent regular people use anonymous or private communications. As a side effect genuinely bad guys have better protection. The blame lies with over-reaching governments, not with the technology.
Until DPR has tried and convicted we should assume that all reporting on this criminal investigation is lies and slander. I'm not trying to defend DPR, torture, or any of that, but we need to hold ourselves to higher standards.
This kind of news caters directly to us -- the affluent tech crowd -- and we should be especially careful. The submitters of these news articles will need to be closely scrutinized as well.
Of course, those doing the shouting will be the mainstream media -- mouthpieces of the government.
Criminal investigations are one thing, but guiding and manipulating the general populace is something else entirely. Tomorrow we will definitely be seeing lots of news about DPR, Bitcoin, Tor, and drugs -- this situation will be spun to high hell, both for supporting decriminalization and undermining it.
Sad, really.
If the US government wanted to "crack down on Tor", they could just stop funding it; the US government created Tor, and has always been the main funder of Tor development.
> Until DPR has tried and convicted we should assume that all reporting on this criminal investigation is lies and slander.
There's healthy skepticism, and there is credulous conspiracy theory. You seem to have opted for the second.