Silk Road (drug marketplace) shut down, founder arrested

[Kitteh]

http://m.slashdot.org/story/192387

F**K

Glad the government is still finding the resources for this despite the whole "shutdown" thing

[Kitteh]

 So some more details are emerging:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/10/02/feds-shut-down-silk-road-owner-known-as-dread-pirate-roberts-arrested/

He was caught when Canadian customs found some fake IDs in the mail being sent to him during a normal random check and they alerted the US govt, who put them together with some of his known social media accounts and started building a case. that's sorta good news, means that the entire tor network isn't necessarily compromised. Confirms what every SR user knew: for all this cyberdrama you're still much more likely to get caught on the low tech end of things (snail mail).

Also interesting, accotding to the govt ( so not necessarily 100% trustworthy), he ordered an assasination against a hostile user once (SR used to offer hitman contracts but my impression was they were all scans) and was not actually the original founder of SR.

[Kitteh]

Wow that evil tyrannical big government is now arresting people who put out assassination contracts! OMG RIP freedom.

This is yet another example of "creepy egotistical nerdy white dudes doing stuff  on the internet that is nevertheless good" (the drugs, not the  assassination stuff obvs)

[Kitteh]

Wow that evil tyrannical big government is now arresting people who put out assassination contracts! OMG RIP freedom.

This is yet another example of "creepy egotistical nerdy white dudes doing stuff  on the internet that is nevertheless good" (the drugs, not the  assassination stuff obvs)

I understand the temptation to classify it like that but even if we concede that this sort of thing is not as AWFUL TERRIBLE EVIL as the people in charge of government drug policy think I remain unsure how one could argue that it is actively 'good'. Selling such substances as cocaine and heroin on the Internet strikes me as the sort of thing that's morally neutral at best.

At the risk of sounding hippieish, i do believe that many currently illegal substances have life-enhancing potential, so I see expanding access to them as a good thing (rather hard to get DMT on the street for example).

[Kitteh]

So reading the actual criminal charges now, it's really interesting. Also a good summary on reddit. Apparently he f**ked up multiple times; by using his actual email address (with his real name) to promote the site when it was starting up in 2011, and by telling the police when they came to question him about the fake IDs (not knowing anything other than that he was some guy ordering fakes on the internet at this point) that "hypothetically" one could buy these things on some strange place called the "Silk Road". *facepalm*

Still a huge amount to piece together; whether this murder he supposedly paid for actually happened (local police don't recognize the alleged photos), whether there was in fact a second murder (which he allegedly bragged about in messages to other people on SR), what actually happened to the SR servers (the report says they were "in a foreign country" but doesn't say where or how they found them or what exactly happened to them), a whole bunch of other stuff.

And of course, because this is the 21st century, somebody pulled drunk beer pong photos and political rants from his Facebook and screencapped them lol

This whole thing could make a great movie some day.

[Kitteh]

Well, fwiw, there were also a huge amount of btc seized by the feds during this. What happens to those (presumably the government isn't going to sell them, just..destroy them? not even sure how that works with btc) will have a huge impact on this, since it could lead to a very measurable decrease in the total supply of btc in circulation, especially given the fixed supply of btc and it's inherently deflationary nature.

And ofc, knowing btc half of this price decrease is short sales and it'll be back up soon as speculators look to pick up some while they're cheap, followed by enough price fluctuation in the next few days/weeks to give some nerds in SF heart attacks.

[Kitteh]

oooh, the plot thickens! it turns out that the hitman that DPR hired to carry out that second hit he bragged about was actually an undercover gov't agent, and a separate indictment has been filed against him over it:
https://ia601904.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10/02/ross_william_ulbricht_maryland_indictment_the_alleged_silk_road_mastermind.html

Appearantly the target was a former employee of his who had been arrested, who he wanted killed to prevent the feds learning anything from

lol this just gets better

[Kitteh]

I'm all in favor of shutting down a place that enganges in providing child pronography, illegal arms and hitmen. I  hope this guy rots in prison for the rest of his life.

CP and weapons were never sold there.

[Kitteh]

Really, he called himself "Dread Pirate Roberts"? Doesn't he remember what happened to him in that film?

If only he had followed this advice:

[Kitteh]

A substantial amount of trade on the Silk Road was of child porn, illicit services and very illegal firearms. The guy who ran it was a weird psychopath.

Um no, as mentioned, the site very strictly banned weapons and CP. Might wanna know what you're talking about rather than just reading hysterical media reports.

(Not that I disagree about him being a sociopath, pretty much anyone who spends that much time behind a computer screen has to be)

Really, he called himself "Dread Pirate Roberts"? Doesn't he remember what happened to him in that film?

Nah, he only mostly dies in the film.

I guess you could call life imprisonment "mostly dying".

[Kitteh]

I watched a man in a fedora explain the Silk Road, Bitcoins, and 4chan on PBS the other day.

The idea of suburban soccer moms hearing all this stuff cracks me up.