FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/02/end-of-the-silk-road-fbi-busts-the-webs-biggest-anonymous-drug-black-market/

by tjaerv • 13 years ago

43 47 13 years ago

forbes.com

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

Of course the FBI have to be chauvinistic about it.

untog• 13 years ago

Weird that the title includes a quote that isn't actually contained in the article.

tjaerv• 13 years ago

The article has been edited since it was originally posted. The paragraph in question now reads:

“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.”

randyrand• 13 years ago

TL;DR "Basically he made a simple mistake and we were able to find him."

I wonder what it was...

adrr• 13 years ago

He posted about SR on the bitcoin forums, even going so far to using his real email address on one of the postings.

swayvil• 13 years ago

said every secret police since the beginning of time

jbigelow76• 13 years ago

If the existence of the FBI is supposed to be a secret they're doing a poor job on that front.

readme3• 13 years ago

It's not.

fleitz3• 13 years ago

The stasi are generally consider 'secret police' and they were also official acknowledged by the state. I've always understood secret police to refer to the methods rather than official acknowledgement of their existence.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

More like "You can't make much more than 80MM resisting the FBI while living a normal, above-ground life within the United States, unless you avoid associating your real name with your criminal-conspiracy-in-development on a public messageboard."

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

Isn't $80MM the total amount Walter White made during the course of his meth career on Breaking Bad? Fun coincidence.

flatline• 13 years ago

We will find you. If you are high enough profile, and your crime happens to match the current set of prosecutorial priorities laid down by the administration, justice dept., etc., then we will find you. With reasonably high probability.

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.

readme3• 13 years ago

Even the FBI has to optimize their resources dude.

fleitz3• 13 years ago

Indeed, the FBI has been so successful in the war on drugs, they are now actually able to keep drugs out of prisons.

readme3• 13 years ago

Did you bother to research the FBI or what it does before you spouted this nonsense?

gwern2• 13 years ago

> users migrate to other, smaller but similar anonymous black markets

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).

OvidNaso2• 13 years ago

Nobody in California was happy when their favorite dispensery got raided 8 years ago and there weren't many alternatives. But there is 3 per block in Los Angeles these days.

b6• 13 years ago

It's one of my shortcomings that I just cannot get into the mindset of an FBI agent who is happy about this. How do you keep wanting to go to work and investigating this kind of thing?

DanBC• 13 years ago

Some people[1] think drugs are bad, and want to stop people selling drugs.

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.

8_hours_ago• 13 years ago

Regardless of the pros/cons of the war on drugs, I can definitely see why this would be super fun to work on as an investigator. It's an incredibly complex problem to identify someone who is using all available technology to remain anonymous. And once you actually found them, I imagine that you'd be pretty excited about it.

waps2• 13 years ago

The part where he paid $40k to kill that person for knowing him seems less fun.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

Because you're a law enforcement officer, and it's the law?

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."

alexeisadeski3• 13 years ago

El Chapo to the FBI: "No you won't."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Guzm%C3%A1n_Loera

avty• 13 years ago

Insider trading is legal for politicians and the fat cats, but if you dare do it, FBI is onto you.

zackkitzmiller• 13 years ago

It's pretty close.

spodek• 13 years ago

"You can't resist the FBI. We will find you."

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.

conductor• 13 years ago

At last the drug war has been won!

They don't want to win, they want to continuously fight with it.

swombat• 13 years ago

woosh

xradionut• 13 years ago

"You can't resist the FBI. We will find you."

Unless you are a Wall Street insider and then we will gladly help the SEC harass your detractors.

"Constitution? What constitution?"

lectrick• 13 years ago

It seems to me that the conversation out there is looking more and more like the nerds (tech folks) vs. the jocks (FBI) all over again.

When will you learn that the nerds win in the end, jocks? :)

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

That's not ominous at all.

MichaelGG3• 13 years ago

Every single high-level FBI bust is always about the operator doing something really simple and dumb, then the FBI puffs its chest and acts all powerful.

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...

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

Hubris has a place. Studies have found that swiftness/certainty of capture and punishment are far more effective at deterring crime than harshness of punishment.

A message like, "We will catch you" isn't just about going on some power trip. It's a preemptive PR play.

MichaelGG3• 13 years ago

The FBI press releases might be PR. Agents' actions (not just FBI, but local police to federal) from personal and other experience (where there's no publicity) seem to indicate a lot of them simply get off on the power.

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".

josefresco• 13 years ago

You are wrongfully downplaying the (probably) years of hard work by multiple people that goes into an investigation like this.

Also, the suspect only needs to slip up once to be caught. A perfect 100% success rate in staying hidden is almost impossible.

MichaelGG3• 13 years ago

As far as DPR, there's most definitely more than what's in the complaint. They got an image of the server but don't mention how. Now, it might have been something super easy (external IP leak due to shitty PHP code or webserver config followed by a subpoena), or it could have been Tor hidden service analysis. Bottom line is that he reused a handle and linked it to his real ID, didn't use Tor to access his box, etc.

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.

waps2• 13 years ago

Paying $40k to someone to order them to torture or kill another American is not a "slip-up".

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

"You can't resist the FBI. We will find you."

I thought it was "If your number is up, we will find you."

The documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOnQ8CD3v4g

LukeHoersten• 13 years ago

Resistance is futile.

astangl• 13 years ago

Hmm, it makes you wonder if NSA help and parallel construction are in play here.

FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market

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