After Silk Road

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/03/after-silk-road/

by 0cool • 13 years ago

67 76 13 years ago

GunlogAlm• 13 years ago

Is Atlantis still around? I can see that growing to replace Silk Road, Black Market Reloaded I admittedly know little about.

TwoFactor• 13 years ago

No, Atlantis dissapeared over a week ago without refunding user's money.

gwern2• 13 years ago

That's a bit debated. People did report withdrawing their funds, and other people reported bugs, random amounts showing up in accounts, etc. Given SR's immediate demise, I'm more willing to credit the theory that Atlantis got spooked and the site was falling apart when they announced the closure.

CrunchyJams• 13 years ago

Closed two weeks ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/20...

ledge2• 13 years ago

While Atlantis has disappeared, there are three other hidden services currently vying for marketshare:

BMR: 5onwnspjvuk7cwvk.onion/index.php

Sheep: sheep5u64fi457aw.onion/manager/login

Deepbay: deepbay4xr3sw2va.onion/

P.S. federal agents, I don't use recreational drugs (anymore), I'm simply a longtime occasional reader of the SR forum... so please don't come kicking down my door.

betterunix6• 13 years ago

"P.S. federal agents, I don't use recreational drugs (anymore), I'm simply a longtime occasional reader of the SR forum... so please don't come kicking down my door."

Saying this will not make a difference. Given the general lack of consequences when paramilitary raids occur against innocent people, and the strong financial incentives for attacking people and seizing their property, you would not be safe even if you had never been near illegal drugs in your entire life.

GeorgeOrr4• 13 years ago

Good article, it's nice to start looking forward. And to remain optimistic.

I was never actually a customer, but it clearly filled a need many had. It would be a shame if the void it left isn't filled.

But as covered in this article, it is far more likely that it will be filled and in fact improved on.

The more they tighten their grip ...

sycren• 13 years ago

I find it surprising that instead of shutting it down they didn't turn it into a huge honey trap.

Afforess• 13 years ago

Why? DPR was a much bigger criminal threat than most of the users that went on the SR. You don't let the head of the cabal get away to nab the underlings, that's just plain stupid.

CodeCube• 13 years ago

See, I don't know ... DPR was definitely a big fish, but only in a certain context. He obviously had the technical chops (and moral compass) to set things up the way he did, but at the end of the day, all he did was facilitate business for other (IMO) much bigger fish.

I'm not in any way justifying his actions or anything like that. But I too was surprised that they just shut it down instead of just assuming control and going after what could have turned out to be cartels (assuming it wasn't just small time growers, etc.).

WildUtah2• 13 years ago

Catching drug kingpins is about publicity for the police and the unaccountable revenue stream of seizure proceeds for bonus income and toys for cops.

It is well known that the ostensive purpose of prohibition -- the reduction of harm from drug addiction -- is not served by going after kingpins and cartels. There are always candidates to replace kingpins waiting in the wings and catching them only promotes violence as the candidates vie for status.

The effective policing tactic is to arrest middle class casual users and subject them to the shame of felony records and probation. You hunt down the soft targets at their homes and parties in vast numbers and hit them where they care -- in their job prospects, reputation, and freedom -- by briefly imprisoning them long enough to disrupt their jobs or school. Then you require them to report for weekly drug tests for years with a guarantee of longer imprisonment if they use unauthorized drugs again.

But the middle class voters won't support the drug war if you do that and there's no cash reward for cops in it or big media display either. So we're stuck with the wasted effort and public violence of going after kingpins.

And the credulous public always goes for the lie that the really important work is going after kingpins. Somehow it sounds meaningful to people who haven't thought about the subject. It's the opposite of effective policing, though.

simias• 13 years ago

Maybe they did for a little while, but that seems hard to do unless they target some users specifically.

Tor hides the source IP of people connecting to the server and tracking bitcoin transactions is pretty difficult as well.

binaryatrocity• 13 years ago

Tracking bitcoin transactions THROUGH THE TUMBLER was pretty difficult. Any regular bitcoin transaction can be clearly followed on the blockchain.

dopamean• 13 years ago

They spent a lot of resources going after the big fish. You generally don't go deep see fishing, catch a marlin, and then trawl of minnows on the way back to port.

swamp402• 13 years ago

Where's the glory in that?

damoncali• 13 years ago

Are you sure they didn't?

gesman• 13 years ago

There is already a race underway for the new winner in this hungry, insatiable market.

It's a cat and mouse game where mouse have an distinct edge.

jerf3• 13 years ago

Actually, I think the cat & mouse metaphor is fairly apt. The cat actually has a powerful set of advantages... but the mice have numbers, persistence, and in violation of the metaphor, a lot of learning capability. This will not be the first market the feds will manage to destroy, but it will get harder each time.

I am neither applauding nor deploring this; just predicting it.

(One of the things the mice may learn is that the slightest identity leak can give them away. One mis-click on a Facebook login or something and that could well be that. If I were a mouse, I would be working on building something like an encrypted VM image that only contains "safe" software on it, like browsers configured with TOR or whatever, and make sure to do all my business in that VM, and only my business in that VM, while maintaining a "normal" identity on the outside of the VM. The best way to prevent identity leakage is not to share it at all. And I would not install clipboard sharing between VM and host, and I would not enable shared windows; I would deliberately leave the VM console up, and distinctly less than full screen, so it is very visibly obvious that I am either in or not in the VM. I would not use any of the conveniences designed to blur that line.)

finnw2• 13 years ago

It is probably cheaper to use a dedicated (physical) machine.

praptak• 13 years ago

There exists an OS designed for similar things: http://qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/GettingStarted

ufmace• 13 years ago

I get the sense that one of the issues with Silk Road was that the people involved in it didn't really realize how big it would get and how hard the feds would go after it. That's why, at the beginning, there were a lot of rookie/lazy identity leaks that the FBI eventually tracked down.

That is, assuming you don't go for some NSA parallel construction thing. But if that's the case, it will probably become clear after a couple more site busts.

Whoever does this next will know how much of a risk they're at, and will probably take appropriate steps to protect their real identity from day 1.

It sounds like they need to harden the server better too. Not just the code base and platform, but even configuring things such that whatever OS the site is hosted on can only see the outside world through Tor.

jrochkind1• 13 years ago

While I don’t support what went on on the Silk Road – the hacking services and illegal gun trading alone made it more like the Wild West than Utopia, not to mention the alleged murder-for-hire plots – I do support its right to exist. No government should be able to shut down a conglomeration of like-minded people who wish to do business anonymously. We cannot judge the pot dealer or the LSD buyer any more than they can judge our habits and predilections. The morality of this can be debated but the right to an anonymous exchange cannot.

This makes no sense at all. Why the heck can't the 'right' to an anonymous exchange facilitating illegal activities 'be debated'? Just cause the author says so, apparently. Why does he think no government should be able to shut-down a 'conglomeration of like-minded people' (what?) who want to buy and sell weapons, computer intrusions, and murders? I don't know, he doesn't say, it's just obvious, right?

He doesn't 'support' people selling murder on an anonymous exchange, but does 'support' 'the right' to have an anonymous exchange where you sell murder? He thinks you can debate 'the morality' of 'this' (what?), but you can't 'judge' the people doing the thing whose morality you are debating, and in fact apparently can't (can't? ethically?) judge anything that can be described as a 'habit or predilection'?

What does all that even mean? It's just nonsense put together into sentences.

There might be some ethical defense of Silk Road that makes sense, but that sure wasn't it. This is what passes for thought on the techno-libertarian internet? Really, tech crunch?

DizzyDoo• 13 years ago

Western culture, generally, tends towards a "you can think what you like about morality, but don't you dare measure other people up to that standard" mindset. What you have noted is a good example of where such a mindset tends to snap.

Additionally, the person making the statement "I don't think you should measure other people up to your own standard of morality" is actually doing exactly what they purport to rail against.

stinkytaco2• 13 years ago

"you can think what you like about morality, but don't you dare measure other people up to that standard"

This is an interesting thought because where I think it works well in our thought experiments and our online forums, it's the very business of government to do just as you say: measure people by a social standard. And it's not like government just popped up out of nowhere one night, the standards and institutions that it uses are ones that have evolved over time to deal with specific problems. It's an organic development and as such it has all the weird inconsistencies of an organic creature.

So where I think lots of us (myself included) probably think what you say in our heads, I doubt many of us (if we were totally honest with ourselves) go about our daily business not actually measuring people by our standards and expecting the state to do the same.

return0• 13 years ago

The technolibertarian generation is still looking for its utopia apparently. Sometimes people forget that democracy is about the majority oppressing the rest.

vidarh• 13 years ago

Sometimes people forget that democracy is about the majority oppressing the rest.

That is just one form of democracy. There's a lot of works that discusses forms of authority and democracy and various ways of balancing the rights. One of my favourites on the subject is "After the revolution? Authority in a good society" by Robert A Dahl - particularly because it is short, clear and to the point.

But incidentally, your reasoning is the basis for Marx use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" - in Marx view, a state wielding power over one group against another is a form of dictatorship whether or not the group wielding the power has a majority or not.

acron02• 13 years ago

Your dissection is totally out of context. The author is expressing support for the nature of anonymity, in which Silk Road was an almost perfect example. It's not concerned with the legalities - as far as the US is concerned, anyway - of what Silk Route was facilitating, but the fact that anonymous pockets of people have a right to exist and now the very belief that such a thing is possible on the internet is under threat.

EDIT: Changed 'Silk Route' to 'Silk Road'; the former is actually an Indian restaurant near me!

GeorgeOrr4• 13 years ago

If I and others want to get together and communicate without divulging our identities, to each other or to third parties, that is our right in a free society. It's not anyone elses business. Not yours, not the NSA's and not the FBI's

Certainly you can gainsay that, as you do. So if that's what you mean by it can be debated, point taken.

But I'd agree with the author that it can't be debated - if you are referring to a free society. Unless we adopt an Orwellian New speak version of the word free.

netrus• 13 years ago

Exchange of money and goods is not "communication" in the sense of "free speech" or "privacy". The state needs to protect my freedom to not be killed by a hitman, be threatened by guns etc.

I am all in for legalizing drugs, but don't pretend that all weapon trade, offering hacking services or other nasty stuff needs to be protected in a free society. Freedom of speech is about inconvenient opinions, not about "everything you can do by communicating with others".

jasonwocky2• 13 years ago

Why does a "free" society take away my right to eavesdrop?

SCAQTony• 13 years ago

I was just going to quote the same paragraph - the Silk Road was a distribution center of drugs and mayhem. It's an oxymoron to say that people want to do business anonymously. The majority of legal businesses want to be well known and well thought of but with those rare few exceptions who do operate anonymously they have corporate identities for that.

betterunix6• 13 years ago

"the Silk Road was a distribution center of drugs"

You say this as though there is something immoral about selling drugs. There has never been a strong moral argument for drug prohibition, and in fact many "illegal" drugs (many that were sold on SR) are legal by prescription (cocaine, methamphetamine, opiates, etc.). Drug prohibition is and has always been a combination of racism and corporate profits.

swamp402• 13 years ago

Yes, that paragraph jumped right out at me as well.

Those are some radical statements.

The rule of law is the foundation of civilization.

People most certainly do have the right to enact laws which protect themselves and their families from chaos and anarchy.

gwern2• 13 years ago

To be fair to the Silk Road, they shut down arms-trading after a while (apparently getting guns offline is way too easy and convenient to make it worthwhile), and the murder-for-hire was against the official rules which were indeed enforced (you couldn't go on SR and find hitman listings) - DPR did that on his own, and as the first plot indicates, didn't even need the SR infrastructure to do it. (He communicated mostly over TorChat, according to the indictment, and paid via a wire transfer.)

orblivion• 13 years ago

You can be against something while believing in the right to do it. You can think it's destructive, and implore people to not do it, but believe it's not your place to use physical force to stop it.

Taking about the right of exchange is a bit more nuanced. I suppose you could make the argument that it's moral to possess a drug as long as you don't use it? Like if you own a machine gun but never load it, you're clearly not hurting anyone.

Confusion• 13 years ago

I think you are misconstruing the author. He supports the right to have an anonymous exchange. That an anonymous exchange makes it possible to hide illegal activities is unfortunate, but unavoidable, in his view. This is similar to the common opinion that encryption software should not be outlawed just because it can also be (and is) used to hide evidence of crimes.

I agree that it's strange to say this isn't up for debate (I don't think there is anything that isn't up for debate and this exact point is being debated all the time). The article seems to be a reiteration of the author's beliefs on the issues of privacy and drugs, to which Silk Road is only tangentially relevant.

rainsford• 13 years ago

I think the author seems to believe in the techno-libertarian (I like that phrasing) idea of rights as absolute technical guarantees against government action instead of legal ones. There is a significant difference between saying "No government should shut down..." and saying "No government should BE ABLE to shut down..."

If you believe the former, then the shutdown of the Silk Road doesn't threaten the right to anonymous exchanges or communication any more than the police getting a warrant and searching the house of a murder suspect threatens my right to be secure in my house. But if you believe the latter, the shutdown of Silk Road IS a problem because it demonstrates that being able to technically and absolutely guarantee your ability to engage in anonymous exchanges might not be possible. In the same way that the police searching a suspect's house might trouble you if you believe that the right to be secure in your home means you should be able to physically prevent the police from getting in.

It's an interesting concept, but one that becomes a little hard to justify when you look at what some people do with those absolute rights. The author's defense, that he doesn't support what they did but supports their right do it comes across, at least to me, like a cheap cop out (not to mention a bit nonsensical). I'm not so sure you can easily shrug off your Utopia leading to the Wild West by saying, "Well, I don't support the Wild West".

WildUtah2• 13 years ago

"There might be some ethical defense of Silk Road that makes sense, but that sure wasn't it. This is what passes for thought on the techno-libertarian internet? Really, tech crunch?"

The same law enforcement tactics we might sadly accept to save us from murder are obviously outrageous when they're applied to crimes we don't really consider crimes.

Quite a lot of the middle class, a vast majority of techies, and a majority of the working class and underclass consider drug use and trafficking to be less of a crime than double parking. The cops and statutes treat drugs as if they were in the same class as rape and murder.

The result is going to be some foolish opinions and practices about law enforcement and privacy.

jasonwocky2• 13 years ago

a vast majority of techies, and a majority of the working class and underclass consider drug use and trafficking to be less of a crime than double parking

Citation badly needed.

wcfields2• 13 years ago

Could someone explain how Silk Road handled it's transactions?

I've been reading on it and it seems they kept in escrowe the Bitcoins until the package had been marked as "Shipped"?

Was there a central wallet that one would send/receive coins from or was it flushed on the in/out through random wallets? Can the blockchain be traced to DRP's primary wallets?

berberous• 13 years ago

Check out the criminal indictment if you are interested, they explain it a bit.

From memory (which may be wrong), it sounded like he had something like 11 internal hot wallets, but while the coins were in escrow he used a database to link what user had what amount of coins. The government seized those 11 wallets, and based on the average daily holdings, now have like $3mm worth of BTC which they transferred to a single wallet (if you google, you can find the public record of that govt controlled wallet).

The indictment also explains that Silk Road used a "tumbler", which would route the BTC's through a series of random wallets so that it was not possible to match a user's initial sending of BTC to Silk Road with the eventual withdrawal by a seller of BTC's to another wallet or exchange.

veridies• 13 years ago

What can the government do with seized BTC? They don't serve any purpose as evidence, obviously (since all the transaction info is public record). Can they be auctioned off? Sold?

JengaGov• 13 years ago

The silk road did work like an escrow where SR would hold the bitcoins until the buyer finalized (FE for short). Bitcoin would have an internal tumbler that would generate multiple addresses and would make it difficult to track the transactions.

Most vendors would ask for early FE or no product would be shipped but that was too risky for most buyers. FE was supposed to occur when the buyer received the product and gave it thumbs up.

wcfields2• 13 years ago

How was a trust relationship built?

I could assume that major vendors with high ratings could do early FE as their means, but would unrated vendors have to essentially front and hope that the buyer would FE?

Was the FE ever automated based upon FedEx/UPS tracking numbers?

After Silk Road

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