SilkRoad domain Seized?

[KGambler]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_mass_surveillance_disclosures

The Special Operations Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance.[3]

[Severian]

For someone with a B.S. degree in physics, this seems like an incredibly dumb way to get caught.

Or perhaps LE doesn't want to let on how he was actually caught. They had his server in July. Any communications to or from Silk Road were probably LE, not DPR. I expect a few more folks will be busted from this caper.

[CompNsci]

The big difference in the price hit this time may be that so far the Mt. Gox trading engine is holding up.

[RoadToHell]

I found DPR's altoid account, but I don't see the silk road advert post dated January 29th, 2011. The earliest post is from February 25th, 2011, and is about running bitcoind on Debian...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3905;sa=showPosts;start=40

I suspect DPR deleted the post (wouldn't you?) and the FBI found it by requesting logs from bitcointalk admins.

Theymos, can you confirm?

Even if he could confirm, he is probably under restriction not to.

I thought this was the post they are referencing? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg568744

Yup - that's the one.  It is from 11 Oct 2011.  It's been necro'd with a bunch of posts today.

[UncleBobs]

We'll, we needed to clean up bitcoin sooner or later.

What needs to be cleaned up is the anonymity issue.  The true fallout from this will only become apparent when the seized bitcoins are analysed.  The FBI and friends will make sure this aspect is given maximum publicity, as a warning to others.  As this article

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/

concludes: "If you’re an amateur Bitcoin user and you don’t want to mess with complicated Bitcoin clients and just use an online service, your anonymity is quite a lot less than what you might imagine."

The really positive thing about this bust is that the level of fear may prompt some extra energy to go into projects like Zerocoin.

[bbit]

Apparently SR was hosted out of San Francisco?  Seems like an amateur move, maybe it will reopen with new hosting somewhere where the DoJ doesn't have supreme authority.  

Posting interviews on YouTube probably doesn't help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olib3jnvSmw

[alexanderanon]

I found DPR's altoid account, but I don't see the silk road advert post dated January 29th, 2011. The earliest post is from February 25th, 2011, and is about running bitcoind on Debian...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3905;sa=showPosts;start=40

I suspect DPR deleted the post (wouldn't you?) and the FBI found it by requesting logs from bitcointalk admins.

Theymos, can you confirm?

Even if he could confirm, he is probably under restriction not to.

I thought this was the post they are referencing? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg568744

*Edit: Ok maybe it was this post that was deleted https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.msg42670#msg42670
Quoted here:

(probably berried in the desert or in a forest)

Somehow, I'm seeing tremendous increase of popularity of forest sightseeing

What an awesome thread!  You guys have a ton of great ideas.  Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?  It's kind of like an anonymous amazon.com.  I don't think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff.  They basically use bitcoin and tor to broker anonymous transactions.  It's at http://tydgccykixpbu6uz.onion.  Those not familiar with Tor can go to silkroad420.wordpress.com for instructions on how to access the .onion site.

Let me know what you guys think

So here we go, first Bitcoin drug store.
We're going into deep water faster than i thought then.

I wonder how long will it take for govs to start investigating Bitcoin.

Yeah that's it. So I guess they didn't need logs, just the indelible quote function. Silly Ross.

[Chronikka]

For someone with a B.S. degree in physics, this seems like an incredibly dumb way to get caught.

Or perhaps LE doesn't want to let on how he was actually caught. They had his server in July. Any communications to or from Silk Road were probably LE, not DPR. I expect a few more folks will be busted from this caper.

Agreed. They probably continued to operate the site hoping to find any information on the big fish. In one of the articles it says there were 100k+ users who made transactions on SR. Way to many to track down so they will instead just go after the big time sellers. They probably have logs of all communications/transactions between buyers and sellers from July onward. If they had the hard drive they most likely had the key to operate the site and thus access to that information.

[justusranvier]

By the way - I'm amazed at how many people are surprised that a drug dealer with extreme anarcho-capitalist tendencies turned out to be not a swell guy! Imagine that!

This comment reveals a lot more about your character than DPR's.

[nandika]

I'm really not sure why you people are saying SR was a bad thing for bitcoin.

I thought bitcoin was about freedom, about our liberty, an innovation, getting out of our governments / the banks sight. I mean, transferring money worldwide without regulations or a central authority. Shouldn't that be illegal? For example if Person A in EU wants to give $500k to person B in the US, A splits the money between his relatives up to the legal limit, puts all of them to a plane, they take the money to person B, that would be illegal, no? Bitcoin works almost the same way..

SR was about the freedom of choice. No one forced you with a gun to buy any drugs from the market. In fact, it helped a lot of people getting better quality drugs at cheaper prices, and looking at the feedbacks anyone could easily decide if they want to buy from a seller or not.

I'm really not sure why some drugs are even banned on the 1st place. Alcohol can ruin lives. Stupidity can ruin lives. Even cigarettes change a person's mind & thinking. Why not ban the so used E additives or genetically modified food, which doesn't even have a long enough history or testing before releasing it to the public? It's much harder & more expensive to buy 100% bio food without additives in my country than to buy alcohol.
Like, why ban a plant, which grows on the ground by itself (discovered by ancient Assyrians 24th century BC), and why let something stay legal which genetically modifies foods (like creating a watermelon without seeds, growing oversized tomatoes without any taste...), which we really don't know anything about. Why let alcohol stay legal which causes PHYSICAL withdrawal symptoms if stopped using, in which you can DIE!!!

I'm saying this even though I care for my and everyone's children, but I don't really think banning something makes it less risk, since any youth can get hooked up in a disco if they wanted to or get drugged by some date-rapist. That's with SR up or SR down, making it illegal or not. But taking away the free choice from people I think is almost the same as putting them into prison..

Even though I vouch with SR, I'm REALLY against getting someone killed, and I really judge like DPR doing that. Also I'm NOT a drug user, not that I have never tried, but I've made a choice.

What about the people who depend on their fix, like heroin, or much better - normal functioning GBL/opioid addicts, who can DIE after the site closure? I know they shouldn't have gotten addicted in the 1st place, but maybe they had a bad time of their lives, had no friends to talk with, and made a bad choice.

just my 2 cents...

[Severian]

If they had the hard drive they most likely had the key to operate the site and thus access to that information.

Which also means that his words about hiring a hitman could be forged in order to screw him to the wall harder and remove support from the Bitcoin community.

[TheButterZone]

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 immunity

What next, Craig Newmark (craigslist.org) going down for conspiracy to commit everything but murder?

2) Someone was texting me from 2 different numbers last night trying to fund SR. Gave me an invalid BTC address, and gave up

3) Wasn't there a news article just yesterday about Silk Roadies donating to charity? They must be stopped! http://allthingsvice.com/2013/10/01/when-drug-dealers-get-all-warm-and-fuzzy/#more-466

4) So the server was seized months ago, and the founder who was right there kept it running... as a honeypot for the government in exchange for what, exactly?

[og kush420]

there will be a new one by the weekend

[crazy_rabbit]

Seriously, the owner ordering assassinations is fucked up. Not cool, not okay. I am not a drug user, although I think people should be free to make their own decisons however murder is not acceptable. This guy was a bad guy. Bitcoins "Walter white".

[cryptasm]

If they had the hard drive they most likely had the key to operate the site and thus access to that information.

Which also means that his words about hiring a hitman could be forged in order to screw him to the wall harder and remove support from the Bitcoin community.

Yeah I call bullshit on this hitman stuff, he does not look like the sort of person who would put hits out on people. Probably a smear campaign to make him out to be a hardened criminal rather than an business man.

[og kush420]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 immunity

What next, Craig Newmark (craigslist.org) going down for conspiracy to commit everything but murder?

i am not sure that is the same thing, SR had categories for drugs. it was intentional. Craigslist has people abuse it and go against their policies. totally different.

[Chronikka]

If they had the hard drive they most likely had the key to operate the site and thus access to that information.

Which also means that his words about hiring a hitman could be forged in order to screw him to the wall harder and remove support from the Bitcoin community.

Don't know about that...the alleged "hitman" incident was from March of this year, months before they seized his server. I doubt they would have just made something like that up to help their case

[keelba]

Someone needs to start working on the Hollywood movie of this story. That kind of publicity can only be good for Bitcoin.

[papaminer]

its still up?


http://www.silkroad.com/

LOL

[Wassupia]

"seized 3.2 million worth of bitcoin"

How would that have happened? Why isn't that money stored in safe cold storage?