SilkRoad domain Seized?

[Rampion]

Wonder what took them so long? DPR was an arrogant schmuck, and this was inevitable. Poke the bull, get the horns.

Gathering evidence is a lengthy process.

Anyhow, I hope that everybody realizes now that everything they say in the internet is being monitored, everybody is being profiled and what they say and *how* they say it is being analyzed.

Being on the internet is like being fully naked on your town's main street. If you have something to hide, better not being online *at all*. The things you write about your interests, your opinions, your grammar vices, etc. will be linked together. Believing otherwise is being delusional.

But, as I said earlier, I'm glad he was caught. A cold blooded murder less on our streets.

[FrictionlessCoin]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Smart kid ( Bachelors in Physics, Masters in Materials Engineering).  Unfortunately, wrong side of the law.

The warrant says that the exchange was moving like 1.2 billion USD a month!   His bitcoin account was at 3.4 million.

I think he got caught up in all the money and there was no way he could ever cover his tracks once he made the first fatal mistake early on.

[cbhelp]

That interview he did a little bit ago poked the government the wrong way.  Dumb guy. Definitely sped up the pursuit and arrest.

[alexanderanon]

Off his facebook page:

Ross Ulbricht
Thoughts on FREEDOM
July 5, 2010 at 11:32pm

In light Independence Day, I have been inspired to write down my thoughts on freedom, about a page in length. I hope they will stimulate YOUR thoughts, which I would most enjoy hearing.

What does it mean to be free? This word has been used to describe many things, including feelings, states of being, political and social arrangements, mental states, and physical states. Like something beyond the power of words to describe, freedom exists, but only as it occurs to someone experiencing it. Is it possible for someone locked in a cage to be freer than someone who isn’t? What if they are free from limiting beliefs and can imagine experiences without limits, while the other limits themselves to a prison of dull routines? Can freedom stand up to inter-personal comparisons, or is it a wholly personal experience?

Because of its vague nature, it is useful to make further distinctions. One way to identify freedom is by what one is free from. For example, social freedom could describe freedom from limitations imposed by others. Physical freedom could be freedom from physical restraint either imposed by others or by nature. Personal freedom could describe freedom from beliefs one may have about one’s self, others, and nature that limit what one believes is possible. Always, freedom arises in the absence of limitation. When someone is not limited by others, their physical environment, lack of knowledge or skill, or their own beliefs about what is possible; it is natural for them to expand how they express themselves in the world until the next barrier to their self-expression is reached.

One’s limitations can be difficult to identify because they are not always in plain view, especially the self-imposed ones but also the ones imposed by others and nature. For example, death and taxes are widely agreed upon to be inevitable, but are they? While one may have a choice in how they respond to external limitations, this does not negate their existence. Death and taxes are still real and observable, but inevitable? This is an interpretation. It is an extrapolation from the past in an attempt to predict the future, is not the truth and therefore limits what is possible.

That being said, it is my observation that far too much attention is directed, by people in general, toward limitations that arise out of a lack of skill or knowledge that could be better directed toward eliminating self-imposed limitations and one’s beliefs about seemingly inevitable external limitations. This is understandable because, for limitations in skill or knowledge, the problem, solution, and benefit are easy to see and predict. For example, I know I will have more freedom if I know how to play the piano and that all I need to do is learn to play and practice. However, the solution to and benefit of ridding one’s self of a belief such as “I’m shy” or “telepathy is impossible” are not so apparent. Imagine how rich and fulfilling your life could be, well beyond learning a new skill, if you could let go of the beliefs you have that limit you and live your life to its fullest potential. Imagine what could be accomplished and experienced.

Are you free? Yes and no. Freedom is a relative and unquantifiable thing. The question is, “How can I be freer?” and the answer to that depends on YOU. For me, I could be freer by letting go of beliefs like “life is hard,” “if you want something done right you should do it yourself,” “why try, I’ll probably fail” and so on. I could also be freer by creating and acquiring more resources that allow me to express myself in bigger and broader ways, both physical in form and in the form of relationships.

Let Independence Day be a reminder to us that we live in a most unique time, and are freer, as a generation, than any that has come before us. Let us be thankful for our freedom, and build a world where we, and the generations that follow us, will be freer than any that have come before!

[Rampion]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

[alexanderanon]

DPR:

[Melbustus]

Someone tell me when its time to buy   How low could this possibly go?  Do you think it will hit $75 like it did back in July?

Buy now, I guess? Has anything permanent changed with regard to bitcoin's value proposition to the world? It should be fairly obvious that services which directly antagonize law-enforcement agencies are going to be shutdown much of the time. Bitcoin is, and always was, about far more than black-market transactions.

Again, we're in the phase of bitcoin's development where daily transaction volume is 2nd order. The future potential and store-of-value properties far outweigh current transactional usage with regard to price support, so the fact that SR transactions are off the table for the moment should be a mostly irrelevant turn of events to anyone who's thought this through already.

[VolanicEruptor]

[FrictionlessCoin]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

Well, to be honest, this did not require monitoring everyone.   It only required determining which account was the first to mention SR.  Once you got the account, you can check all the correspondence in the account.   From there you could determine the actual person behind it.   I mean, even if he didn't use a google account, he could have used a server name and could still get traced back by that.

Investigations on the virtual world may in fact be much easier than the physical world!

[alexanderanon]

Ugh. Posting your email on the forums, advertising SR...paying for a hit on someone.. come on man.

[BitCoiner2012]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

Well, to be honest, this did not require monitoring everyone.   It only required determining which account was the first to mention SR.  Once you got the account, you can check all the correspondence in the account.   From there you could determine the actual person behind it.   I mean, even if he didn't use a google account, he could have used a server name and could still get traced back by that.

Investigations on the virtual world may in fact be much easier than the physical world!

Point is that 1984 is far beyond here I think. Children posting all over FB have no idea how their future lives will be controlled, constrained, and prosecuted for pastcrimes.

[tinus42]

Just curious, how did it get seized.

As I understand it, seizing an onion domain involves compromising the private key associated with it - just like a bitcoin address.

I guess they just raided the server in this case.

But astonishing that they go all the way to upload their nice picture. They mark the conquested territory.

They always put that picture.  Same thing they did when they seized pokerstars and full tilt.

Are you committing an offense when you see such a picture on a site? I assume they log all IP's of people who access it.

[superduh]

i guess people think SR IS bitcoin and are crashing the price

[romerun]

he probably even attended that bitcoin conference in San Fran

[Alpaca Bob]

Question: could a website like SR run as an autonomous agent? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Agents

[madmadmax]

It was only a matter of time before the FBI found out that bitcoins blockchain can be traced.
This may be good news since there is nothing holding bitcoins back from becoming mainstream anymore.
Meanwhile anoncoin and/or megacoin will take over the underground.

BTC was traced months after it was invented, by the time mt. gox got big real identities were already linked to bitcoin addressess....

[cbhelp]

100.00 on coinbase in 5 minutes

[greaterninja]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

obviously the guy was a idiot.   He ran an anonymous peer to peer merchandise business that acted as a medium for drug trafficking from Texas, USA....Feb 2011...he admits he is a noob using linux.
Then he pays 150k in bitcoins to pull a hit.   With millions of USD in btc the guy should have hired a good lawyer or two.   Looking back he had 22-24k of bitcoin in 2011.   I bet he still has thousands of BTC elsewhere.

I doubt the FBI has seized everything.

[FrictionlessCoin]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

Well, to be honest, this did not require monitoring everyone.   It only required determining which account was the first to mention SR.  Once you got the account, you can check all the correspondence in the account.   From there you could determine the actual person behind it.   I mean, even if he didn't use a google account, he could have used a server name and could still get traced back by that.

Investigations on the virtual world may in fact be much easier than the physical world!

Point is that 1984 is far beyond here I think. Children posting all over FB have no idea how their future lives will be controlled, constrained, and prosecuted for pastcrimes.

What gave him away wasn't anything in Facebook or LinkedIn... it was a post on StackOverFlow!!!

[FrictionlessCoin]

"to send their responses to rosselbricht @ gamil.com", how could he be so sloppy ?

Read the full indictment, he registered his "altoid" account in here with that email, and they already had that.

But everybody wait and think: he just wrote ONE post about SR, and the October 11th post in which he said he was looking for an IT pro was very generic. And they caught him BECAUSE OF THAT, meaning that they have been thoroughly monitoring everybody that wrote ANYTHING about SR. And this applies to everything.

Creepy...

obviously the guy was a idiot.   He ran an anonymous peer to peer merchandise business that acted as a medium for drug trafficking from Texas, USA....Feb 2011...he admits he is a noob using linux.
Then he pays 150k in bitcoins to pull a hit.   With millions of USD in btc the guy should have hired a good lawyer or two.   Looking back he had 22-24k of bitcoin in 2011.   I bet he still has thousands of BTC elsewhere.

I doubt the FBI has seized everything.

It is just crazy that this guy thought he could get away with it!   I think all that BTC that he was raking in was clouding his judgement.