Feds shutter online narcotics store that used TOR to hide its tracks

[El Cabron]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/feds-shutter-online-narcotics-store-that-used-tor-to-hide-its-tracks.ars

"Each faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted."


Selling drugs and laundering money gets you life? No wonder Silk Road uses bitcoin.

[Etlase2]

looking at a person of authority the wrong way pretty much gets you life in prison in the usa

land of the prison lobbyists

[stochastic]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/feds-shutter-online-narcotics-store-that-used-tor-to-hide-its-tracks.ars

"Each faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted."


Selling drugs and laundering money gets you life? No wonder Silk Road uses bitcoin.

No, laundering money gets you life while illegal drug selling gets you about 20 years.

[Clipse]

There is a good reason to try and prosecute and place people in prison, specially in the US OF A.

Some shocking statistics shows that the privately owned(yes most prisons seem to be privately owned by large corporate groups) prisons profit upwards of $50k per prisoner per year from the government.

So get caught with weed and they throw you in some arbitrary prison for a year or 2, thats a easy $100k profit for the prison you end up at and a -$100k from the government and directly paid by taxpayers.

Fucking depressing how corrupt all these things are, its not about putting real convicts behind bars anymore.

[El Cabron]

1. buy jail stock
2. get arrested with weed.
3. ? ? ?
4. profit!

[Raoul Duke]

This (USA) is called "the land of the free and the home of the brave"; it is (really) called the "asylum of the oppressed," and some have been foolish enough to call it the "Cradle of Liberty." If it is the "Cradle of Liberty," they have rocked the child to death.”

~William Wells Brown

I would call it the "Cradle of Filth" but I wouldn't be original

[stochastic]

There is a good reason to try and prosecute and place people in prison, specially in the US OF A.

Some shocking statistics shows that the privately owned(yes most prisons seem to be privately owned by large corporate groups) prisons profit upwards of $50k per prisoner per year from the government.

So get caught with weed and they throw you in some arbitrary prison for a year or 2, thats a easy $100k profit for the prison you end up at and a -$100k from the government and directly paid by taxpayers.

Fucking depressing how corrupt all these things are, its not about putting real convicts behind bars anymore.

Bingo.  I have heard arguments where the government should legalize drugs as it wills ave money, but then that money the government does not pay anymore does not go into someone's pocket anymore.  The people fighting the war on drugs make more money than all the cartels selling cocaine and heroin every year.

Think about it this way, if drugs were legal then there would not be a need for most of the police state, and that police state is unionized.

[Justin00]

If I am not mistaken the site only switched to TOR in the last year or so.. Think the article ses they had been under investigation since 2006.
Also again.. if I am not mistaken they got the people who run hushmail to give up the emails.

*edit* Interestingly.. on a related topic... tormail.net domain was shutdown yesterday.

[R-]

Why is the title of this "shutter"?

[rjk]

Why is the title of this "shutter"?

shutter
[shuht-er]   Origin
shut·ter
   [shuht-er] Show IPA
noun
1. a solid or louvered movable cover for a window.
2. a movable cover, slide, etc., for an opening.
3. a person or thing that shuts.
4. Photography . a mechanical device for opening and closing the aperture of a camera lens to expose film or the like.
verb (used with object)
5. to close or provide with shutters: She shuttered the windows.
6. to close (a store or business operations) for the day or permanently.

[R-]

*intelligent answer*

Haha wow. Never heard shutter used in that context.  Get with the 21st century vocabulary Arstechnica.


The article should read "Trololol Piggies Pwn Druggies".

[R-]

*intelligent answer*

Haha wow. Never heard shutter used in that context.  Get with the 21st century vocabulary Arstechnica.


The article should read "Trololol Piggies Pwn Druggies".

oh lol!

[Dutch Merganser]

I had been waiting to see something like this for some time, not that I approve. The drug war is a huge failure/boondoggle, period.

However, Bitcoin pretty much stands on a three-legged stool: Contraband trade, money laundering, and speculation. Rut-roh!

[repentance]

People have no imagination anymore. Contraband trade, money laundering, and speculation - oh please! These are chump change when compared to Bitcoins most obvious usefulness. Tax avoidance!

There is no one on the earth other than the Tax Man that appreciates giving their hard earned pay to taxes. If you can figure out a way to get even a few of your employees to accept even a portion of their pay in Bitcoins in lieu of fiat both you and the employee will profit every payday and it will require nothing outside your normal course of business. There is no extra work required, no meetings in dark alleys, no worry about your next shipment being confiscated and no worry about the price falling or rising too fast. Simply teach the employee about Bitcoin and how to exchange it to fiat, reduce the employees pay on paper to a lower wage rate (that’s reported) and get them to agree to accept the remaining portion at a higher wage than they were making before dispersed in Bitcoins (barter). Your taxes are lower the employee is richer and the government has less money to kill people with. It’s a triple win!

Plenty of people already do this when working for cash under the table.  It can bite you in the ass when you're trying to finance major purchases, but at least if you're receiving your under the table payments as cash in hand you can spend them immediately.  If your employee is receiving a portion of their pay in Bitcoins, they either need a convenient way to convert it to cash (and I sure as shit wouldn't be running my wages through any of the exchanges given the problems they have) or to be able to meet their regular expenses with Bitcoins.

Bitcoins leave a trail which cash does not.  Certain types of businesses are well suited to understating the business income and being able to pay employees cash in hand - there's simply no record of what cash actually went through the business.  There's nothing an employer can do to erase the permanent record which will exist of him having transferred Bitcoins to his employee.  You're naive if you think that tax evasion investigators aren't expert at finding hidden transactions (in fact tax auditors are extremely good at estimating your actual income with a high degree of accuracy).

[Dutch Merganser]

I had been waiting to see something like this for some time, not that I approve. The drug war is a huge failure/boondoggle, period.
However, Bitcoin pretty much stands on a three-legged stool: Contraband trade, money laundering, and speculation. Rut-roh!

People have no imagination anymore. Contraband trade, money laundering, and speculation - oh please! These are chump change when compared to Bitcoins most obvious usefulness. Tax avoidance!

Money laundering is a broad heading that subsumes tax avoidance as you describe it. Good luck with that, I can only take it you have the same accountant Wesley Snipes used

At least no one is pretending bitcoin is a serious contender as an above ground payment system any more 

[repentance]

Tax avoidance is legal Tax evasion is not. The employee signs an agreement to work for less fiat and do the same job. I can promise to give him an old rubber tire every two weeks if he accepts it. That old rubber tire or a wallet full of Bitcoins is not restricted or regulated by the IRS. Now, some day the law might change all that but for now it's not money laundering because legally Bitcoin isn't money!

Anything which seeks to hide the origin of income or assets is generally regarded as money laundering.  Many tax codes count things other than money as income.  You can legally structure your salary package so that some forms of renumeration attract less or no tax (I believe this is done in respect of employer contributions towards health insurance in the US and it's done in regard to superannuation contributions by an employer here), but many other forms of non-cash renumeration are regarded as "fringe benefits" under some tax codes and taxed accordingly. 

While your employer could theoretically agree to pay your salary entirely in bananas, you'd still be liable to pay tax on the value of those bananas (and here your employer would be required to deduct the tax from each payment and send it to the Tax Office in AUD).

According to AUSTRAC, one of the most common forms of money laundering now is through currency exchanges.  It's not surprising that Bitcoin exchanges are being used for low level money laundering (they're not big enough for large scale money laundering yet).  Taxation authorities are part and parcel of AML/CTF provisions in many countries and have been since long before the advent of digital currencies.  You don't need to "regulate Bitcoin" or define it as "money" to bring it under those provisions.