How the Feds Took Down the Silk Road Drug Wonderland

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/11/silk-road/

by hepha1979 • 13 years ago

92 63 13 years ago

jdmitch• 13 years ago

This seemed a bit worrying:

Federal agents say the use of Tor and Bitcoin were major obstacles for them and that investigating the site was “uncharted territory” that involved a reversal of their usual investigative methods. Instead of starting with probable cause against a specific suspect who is already identified and then obtaining a search warrant to collect more evidence, the investigation of Silk Road involved collecting evidence from the site first and then trying to identify individuals.

Sure it is "uncharted territory" in terms of the technology for maintaining anonymous identities, but shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime? Maybe I am naive, but sounds like dodgy criminal investigation methodology to me...

carbocation• 13 years ago

The real concern would be if they used parallel construction and actually used the NSA's warrantless surveillance. The core of parallel construction is to use fruit of the poisonous tree to identify the dots you need to connect, then do your sleuthing purely to figure out how to connect those dots.

However, given the story told so far, it's actually pretty straightforward to identify the founder of the Silk Road based on a few of his missteps.

deathhand• 13 years ago

This cannot be stated enough.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

You are ignoring the 'already identified' in the text you quote.

I'm sure there is occasional abuse, but I'm also sure that most investigations start with an examination of the available evidence to look for leads about who committed the crime.

devindotcom• 13 years ago

It's not so strange. Conspiracy to ____ is often shown before the individuals participating in the conspiracy. In this case there was evidence galore of illegal drug trade, so it became a matter of finding the individuals responsible.

saraid2162• 13 years ago

shouldn't most investigations start with evidence of the crime and an empirical investigation into who could have committed it, rather than starting with suspects and trying to link them with the crime?

This might surprise you, but there are very often situations where the police and the public are remarkably aware of the facts of the crimes being committed, but unable to do anything about it. Drugs fall into this category. Everyone knows that "that's where the deals go down" and "that's where they count the money", but that's only because we're not completely stupid. Proving direct culpability, on the other hand, is an entirely different story, as is proving the culpability of people who matter. (Street level dealers, for instance, are pretty interchangeable: one gets shot, you get someone else to do his job. Ain't no thing.)

If you find a druggie on a corner, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to recognize he's probably guilty of possession. It's also sort of pointless to prosecute him, since the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation. You want evidence of that crime? That's also the druggie on the corner. Half of whom can tell you exactly who it is who manages the city-wide operation. None of which are willing to take the witness stand to accuse him in a court of law. Because he knows that he goes right back to that corner the next day and not only does he no longer have someone bringing him drugs, but he's also get a bullet in his head for the trouble.

If you want a visceral primer, watch The Wire.

WildUtah• 13 years ago

the actual issue you're fighting is lots of people taking particular drugs, which means what you care about are the people managing the city-wide operation

That is a complete non sequitur.

Actually, if you really want people to stop using drugs, arresting and imprisoning users is the single most effective technique yet known. It's especially effective against the middle class white population that consumes most drugs in the USA, but it works against poor minorities and addicts, also.

And if you want to stop dealers, arresting and imprisoning retail dealers is the most effective technique. It clears the ones that work in public or sell to strangers out quite quickly.

Arresting the kingpins or traffickers is totally ineffective at reducing drug use or reducing drug availability. If reducing public harm were a priority, the kingpins and traffickers could be ignored. Once the users and retailers are imprisoned, the bosses are out of business, anyway.

And if you do catch the kingpins and traffickers, your efforts are completely ineffectual. There are always more kingpins in line to get rich quickly and easily. Decades of police targeting kingpins has only seen increases in drug availability. In fact, the faster you turn them over, the more violent the whole business becomes.

The reason police agencies target kingpins and traffickers is because the purpose of the war on drugs, from the point of view of police administration, is to seize cash to fund police operations. There is no law enforcement justification for such a policy, merely an agency budgeting justification.

peterwoo• 13 years ago

Yup. There's a certain absurdity to it. The names of the current mafia bosses in the New York area are listed on Wikipedia (Five Families).

sireat• 13 years ago

This is how the government found MrSlippery in the opening pages of Vernor Vinge's True Names, that is they went through a list of likely suspects until they hit paydirt.

Amazingly prescient for something written in 1979.

belorn4• 13 years ago

If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest.

They did not identify the server by some advanced technical hacks against tor. They used simple basic police methods and arrested an administrator with the use of an undercover agent posing as a drug seller. The administrator purchased a kilo of cocaine, and by doing so, gave his home address to the undercover agent. After interrogation, they gained user credentials that even included DPR's private messages.

This could have easily been a episode script for the wire.

bediger40003• 13 years ago

If simple, basic police methods sufficed here, then why the massive dragnet surveillance the rest of us are caught up in?

Either (a) the dragnet surveillance isn't doing what it's supposed to or (b) there's another reason for the spying.

And yes, I could be accused of whipping on the NSA no matter what, that in my view, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. So what? Even if I don't have "standing", and the NSA is doing "legal" things, and the 3 Prong Test for Violations of Privacy hasn't been met, the NSA is still doing things that until recently were considered grossly unamerican, a violation of the principles that made the USA different than commie Russia.

philwelch2• 13 years ago

The NSA is not a law enforcement agency.

nitid_name• 13 years ago

You're forgetting: (c) parallel construction lead to the "simple police work" success.

It possible that this wasn't such a cut and dry case of police work, and instead the police were handed leads that came from the NSA work.

belorn4• 13 years ago

The massive dragnet surveillance is used for:

Spying on political activists and leaders, foreign as well as US citizens.

Spying on diplomats and trade negotiators.

Spying on international commerce.

Doing industry espionage, for the benefit of US companies.

Protecting embarrassing information from being leaked, including covering up crimes.

Targeting political important targets, even those with no significant threat to national security. Megaupload might be an example.

Lastly, the cold war showed NSA the importance of good spy network, and might be maintained for the purpose of maintaining one.

tedunangst• 13 years ago

If simple basic police methods sufficed here, then simple basic police methods must suffice everywhere?

mpyne4• 13 years ago

If simple, basic police methods sufficed here

What's interesting is that the article itself noted the difficulty that the LE investigators perceived when running this case.

Normally they get a specific suspect or possible set of suspects in mind and then get specific warrants to find the evidence needed.

In this case the "proof" was right in front of them on the Silk Road front page but they had no suspects (or alternately, an infinite set). So even in this case "simple basic police methods" are insufficient to be mechanically applied; it was a probabilistic investigation, at best, in this case.

With a few less slip-ups by Silk Road users we may very well not be discussing these arrests at all, except perhaps for the Silk Road admin who accepted delivery. But that alone needn't have fingered DPR, he helped tighten the noose himself with his later actions.

MichaelGG7• 13 years ago

It's not clear why the SR admin would be buying cocaine in the first place, though. Wasn't the whole point to just be a marketplace and make money by transaction fees? Did the SR admin decide to also become a vendor? If so that's just... really poor form.

And some of the other arrests, like the vendor "NOD" included some rather fortuitous circumstances. Like random inspections over a day or two just happening to pick up multiple packages with the same handwriting.

If Tor was compromised, you can bet they'd take ever measure possible to prevent leaking that information. That'd include making sure they have very solid, plausible, cover stories. But yes, it does look reassuring that all the arrests seem to based off of basic police work and simple mistakes.

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

It's not clear why the SR admin would be buying cocaine in the first place, though.

Probably for one of the same reasons that anybody buys cocaine. Either because they like cocaine, or (judging by the amount), because they want to make lots of money selling cocaine. Making money on transaction fees doesn't mean you don't want more money.

IvyMike• 13 years ago

If this has not been posted before, its good to see that all the worries about the tor protocol can be laid to rest.

A year ago I would have said that DEA using "parallel construction" to hide the origin of intelligence was just a paranoid conspiracy. Today I'm not sure I'm being paranoid enough.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...

Xeroday• 13 years ago

I wonder how much of this was actually parallel reconstruction vs "investigative research"

tptacek9• 13 years ago

How exactly would parallel construction have helped here? To effect a search, with or without "parallel construction", you have to have probable cause.

aliakbarkhan2• 13 years ago

Citation needed.

simplemath2• 13 years ago

Serious question - do you really think the 4th is anything but some words on a piece of paper any longer?

MichaelGG7• 13 years ago

Well for instance, if you know that a certain person is mailing or receiving drugs, then it's easier to make sure particular packages are "randomly" inspected and get probable cause for a warrant.

bandushrew2• 13 years ago

the entire point of parallel construction is to construct a legal explanation for the presence of data needed for the conviction.

ie, I would use illegal means to obtain proof that you have convicted a crime, then I would use parallel construction to provide a legal explanation for how I obtained the proof.

iee, parallel construction is what they use when they did not have probable cause.

I am having trouble believing that you do not understand that? what am I missing?

tptacek9• 13 years ago

Investigators staged the torture and killing — which included mock waterboarding according to officials — and sent Dread Pirate Roberts about half a dozen pictures, including photos depicting what they said was his corpse.

So much for the absolutely inane "it was all a face-saving ruse" theory of the murder-for-hire scheme.

MichaelGG7• 13 years ago

I think that "face-saving ruse" was in relation to the second "hit", which sounded incredibly implausible. Someone says they need $500K and blackmails DPR, then the creditor shows up and is willing to kill the blackmailer for 20% of that? Yeah, OK.

The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they?

And it still doesn't invalidate the logic behind it some people were proposing: Given the prior that the USG will do harm to SR users and dealers, is it less harm to kill one person that is going to give information to the USG? (Again, that logic only works if you take the assumption that the USG is acting immorally and will impose a large amount of suffering onto many others.)

tptacek9• 13 years ago

It freaks me out that anyone would believe that any amount of message board political bullshit could justify murder. But I bet you're right.

mpyne4• 13 years ago

The details on the first "hit" weren't known before, were they?

It was known from the day that DPR was arrested that there were two "hits" that had been arranged, including many of the details (not all the details described here, but including that a Baltimore-area LE was the undercover agent for one of them).

hotpockets2• 13 years ago

I don't know about any "face-saving ruse", whatever that means. But couldn't he have known he was just purchasing "good fakes", for future usage as threats, should he need them?

tptacek9• 13 years ago

No, because the FBI was on the other side of the ruse.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Sounds like a police thriller novel. That said, and BitCoin hitting an all time high, is it even possible to convert BitCoin into dollars any more? I note that the article says the agents seized over two million dollars from the Mt GOX founder [1]. So given how many btc to dollar exchanges have been targeted how does that work now? Western Union or something?

[1] "The seizures included $2.9 million from a Dwolla account that was controlled by a U.S. subsidiary of Mt. Gox and $2.1 million seized from two Wells Fargo accounts, one controlled by the same subsidiary, the other by Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles."

Synaesthesia• 13 years ago

Yes, it's easy to convert Bitcoin to USD. You can sell them at Coinbase, Bitstamp, LocalBitcoins and all kinds of other exchanges.

etler• 13 years ago

Wow, this is the funniest thing I've read all week!

How the Feds Took Down the Silk Road Drug Wonderland

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