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Desolator (OP)
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July 20, 2011, 07:36:28 AM |
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Every news story about bitcoins seems to say that people can use it to buy illegal stuff. The more correct ones reveal that anyone can look at the exact history of transactions and trace them all, just not back to people in the real world so easily.
So let me ask...if those morons buying fake and stolen prescriptions and rare illegal dog breeds and stolen art and russian brides and crooked roulette tables and crap get busted by police, all the evidence they need is to boot up their computer and look at their bitcoin app, right? I know you can easily view someone's list of receiving addresses but what about sending? Or is that the same thing? Cuz it sounds to me like that kinda takes care of the problem. Catch someone on a minor offense and go poking around or have an FBI bulletin of addresses to watch out for and give it to all the computer repairers in the world with a reward to report them if found. That'll bust so many people, most of the illegal evil doers will leave the system.
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Once a transaction has 6 confirmations, it is extremely unlikely that an attacker without at least 50% of the network's computation power would be able to reverse it.
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Chick
Member
 Offline
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
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July 20, 2011, 07:47:10 AM |
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Every news story about bitcoins seems to say that people can use it to buy illegal stuff. The more correct ones reveal that anyone can look at the exact history of transactions and trace them all, just not back to people in the real world so easily.
So let me ask...if those morons buying fake and stolen prescriptions and rare illegal dog breeds and stolen art and russian brides and crooked roulette tables and crap get busted by police, all the evidence they need is to boot up their computer and look at their bitcoin app, right? I know you can easily view someone's list of receiving addresses but what about sending? Or is that the same thing? Cuz it sounds to me like that kinda takes care of the problem. Catch someone on a minor offense and go poking around or have an FBI bulletin of addresses to watch out for and give it to all the computer repairers in the world with a reward to report them if found. That'll bust so many people, most of the illegal evil doers will leave the system.
Hey, I have a brilliant idea. Issue a search warrant for every single house in the United States. And this is just not practical, lmao. |
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repentance
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July 20, 2011, 08:04:06 AM |
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Every news story about bitcoins seems to say that people can use it to buy illegal stuff. The more correct ones reveal that anyone can look at the exact history of transactions and trace them all, just not back to people in the real world so easily.
So let me ask...if those morons buying fake and stolen prescriptions and rare illegal dog breeds and stolen art and russian brides and crooked roulette tables and crap get busted by police, all the evidence they need is to boot up their computer and look at their bitcoin app, right? I know you can easily view someone's list of receiving addresses but what about sending? Or is that the same thing? Cuz it sounds to me like that kinda takes care of the problem. Catch someone on a minor offense and go poking around or have an FBI bulletin of addresses to watch out for and give it to all the computer repairers in the world with a reward to report them if found. That'll bust so many people, most of the illegal evil doers will leave the system.
If law enforcement doesn't have the resources to chase down every single person who buys something illegal through conventional payment methods then it certainly doesn't have the resources to perform forensic analysis on the computers of every person they catch committing a minor offence. And it's certainly not the responsibility of other jurisdictions to worry about whether US citizens are committing offences in the US - that's what US law enforcement organisations are for. At best, law enforcement agencies can try to shut down the providers of illegal services or disrupt the flow of money to them (as they did with online poker) - but realistically, there are so many "evil doers" out there and it takes so many resources to gather evidence and prosecute them that only a tiny fraction of them will ever be forced to "leave the system" due to legal issues. More of them will probably go out of business for other reasons than even come to the attention of authorities in any jurisdiction. |
All I can say is that this is Bitcoin. I don't believe it until I see six confirmations.
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Desolator (OP)
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July 20, 2011, 03:23:26 PM |
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my theory is the websites selling illegal physical objects have to get your shipping address. Once that's intercepted or the website is somehow forced to cough up that data when it's seized by police, they have everyone's shipping address. Then let the search warrant-getting begin! woohoo! Instead of searching the person's house for like 1 bottle of illegal prescriptions, they just search their computer to see if one of their bitcoin addresses matches. So that's why I think this is less secure. The DEA occassionally has nothing to do and that seems like a really easy warrant to get with that much evidence.
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natman3400
Member
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Activity: 98
Merit: 10
firstbits: 1nathana
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July 20, 2011, 03:51:43 PM |
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And this is why we have truecrypt hidden volumes kiddies...
Also, what about he possibility that the addresses used on these illegal sites are temporary and destroyed.
What about if there was legal business also done with these addresses?
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Rassah
Legendary
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Activity: 1680
Merit: 1035
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July 20, 2011, 04:08:35 PM |
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From another article I read recently, the addresses exchanged are encrypted with GPG public key stuff, so only the seller and the buyer can get them.
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billyjoeallen
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1106
Merit: 1007
Hide your women
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July 20, 2011, 04:34:58 PM |
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my theory is the websites selling illegal physical objects have to get your shipping address. Once that's intercepted or the website is somehow forced to cough up that data when it's seized by police, they have everyone's shipping address. Then let the search warrant-getting begin! woohoo! Instead of searching the person's house for like 1 bottle of illegal prescriptions, they just search their computer to see if one of their bitcoin addresses matches. So that's why I think this is less secure. The DEA occassionally has nothing to do and that seems like a really easy warrant to get with that much evidence.
Simple way for Silk Road to evade that. Randomly have drugs shipped to the address of someone who didn't buy any. extra bonus points if it's a D.A somewhere. If you can't prove the order, then you can't prosecute the purchase. It's no crime to have a shipping address to which anybody can ship. |
insert coin here:
Dash XfXZL8WL18zzNhaAqWqEziX2bUvyJbrC8s
1Ctd7Na8qE7btyueEshAJF5C7ZqFWH11Wc
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fitty
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July 20, 2011, 04:57:15 PM |
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Every news story about bitcoins seems to say that people can use it to buy illegal stuff. The more correct ones reveal that anyone can look at the exact history of transactions and trace them all, just not back to people in the real world so easily.
So let me ask...if those morons buying fake and stolen prescriptions and rare illegal dog breeds and stolen art and russian brides and crooked roulette tables and crap get busted by police, all the evidence they need is to boot up their computer and look at their bitcoin app, right? I know you can easily view someone's list of receiving addresses but what about sending? Or is that the same thing? Cuz it sounds to me like that kinda takes care of the problem. Catch someone on a minor offense and go poking around or have an FBI bulletin of addresses to watch out for and give it to all the computer repairers in the world with a reward to report them if found. That'll bust so many people, most of the illegal evil doers will leave the system.
It's extremely hard to convince a jury that an IP address means it was you at the computer doing it. When you're trying to prove a crime, saying it was from "XX.XX.XX.XX" IP doesn't really mean it was you. Now let's convince a jury that an IP is you, and that you sent Bitcoins. Have fun explaining Bitcoins to the jury. Unless you're a major drug dealer, you're moving $100,000s through bitcoin, no one gives a shit. The amount of trouble, money, it would take to charge someone with the main evidence being IP addresses and "bitcoins" is the equivalent of burning money and they'd probably still lose the case. Big deal you bought 20 ecstasy pills from some dude in Poland. The DEA could bust raves every weekend and grab people for that shit. And it's way easier to prove then IP address + bitcoins = you to a noob jury. |
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Desolator (OP)
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July 20, 2011, 05:25:43 PM |
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Okay, I'm confused because none of those answers seem correct. First of all, it sounds like you're all promoting illegal use of bitcoins and saying you're never going to get caught. That's great for the reputation of this system.
Also, Bitcoin has nothing to do with IP addresses, which are not logged and would not play a part in court.
I don't think any illegal business is randomly going to ship expensive drugs internationally or even dummy items to random people at such a high rate that the volume of fakes makes it not worth it to pursue real ones. That would cost a lot of postage and time to get verified random fake addresses.
And I only 90% understand how the bitcoin network operates but...transactions and data on who owns what is publicly viewable, right? Like if address xxxxxxxxxxxxxx sends money to yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy then everyone can view that that transaction takes place. Otherwise if the network doesn't know specifically who owns what and who sent what where, it wouldn't work. So to say it's an encrypted operation between 2 people and then it's forgotten forever or random scrambled data that the rest of the network can't interpret is incorrect.
Also, there is no such thing as a "temporary" address. You can't abandon an address. The network does not forget or erase a transaction nor does it fail to follow the transaction path if they try to route it to another address and another address and another address, making money laundering pretty well impossible.
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elggawf
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July 20, 2011, 05:26:58 PM |
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my theory is the websites selling illegal physical objects have to get your shipping address. Once that's intercepted or the website is somehow forced to cough up that data when it's seized by police, they have everyone's shipping address. Then let the search warrant-getting begin! woohoo! Instead of searching the person's house for like 1 bottle of illegal prescriptions, they just search their computer to see if one of their bitcoin addresses matches. So that's why I think this is less secure. The DEA occassionally has nothing to do and that seems like a really easy warrant to get with that much evidence.
I gather that most people on SilkRoad exchange PGP public keys at the start of the transaction, so when you send your shipping address through SR to the seller, you encrypt it with the seller's PGP key. SR holds the encrypted text, but they can't see your address - so it's the seller that has to be compromised, not the website. Good luck compromising a TOR hidden service anyway, unless the owner of it is a giant retard and codes some kind of accidental information disclosure into it. |
^_^
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elk-tamer
Member
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Activity: 87
Merit: 10
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July 20, 2011, 06:18:43 PM |
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.. fake and stolen prescriptions and rare illegal dog breeds and stolen art and russian brides and crooked roulette tables ...
What a great list, is there a url where I can get some sort of package deal? |
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Desolator (OP)
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July 22, 2011, 04:54:03 AM |
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probably  I just figured since I've heard about some pretty funny crap that's been sold in the last 100 years online and obviously offline, I'd throw some in lol. Oh and counterfeit intel hologram stickers! lol. |
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freeloader247
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 34
Merit: 0
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July 22, 2011, 05:34:16 AM |
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I have the answer, legalize every drug, we need people to flip burgers to. Really, if you are stupid enough to use coke or heroin then you deserve to get what ever the drugs do to you. IMO the government should be spending the money it uses to catch dealers to educate children early on about drugs(not to give then a biased opinion saying that all drugs are bad, take marijuana for example).
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