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Dark Web Drug Sellers Dodge Police Crackdowns

245 points by wp381640 7y ago

cowmoo728 7y ago
"Richard Downing, who oversees the computer crime section of the Justice Department, said he and his colleagues have focused on techniques that create distrust on the sites by encouraging users to believe that sellers and site administrators have already been compromised and are feeding information to law enforcement." This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. In addition, reputation and trust are everything in dark net markets, and reputation is the only thing preventing vendors from selling fake or adulterated drugs. I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. How? The whole point of the dark web is that you don't know who you're dealing with so who are you going to seek revenge against if you think you've been wronged? If you mean the second-order effect of people giving up on the dark net and buying drugs of questionable quality from a dealer on a street corner (with all the implicit violence of illegal street crime) that's likely true; but policing is an instrumentality and wishing they weren't is to say that the police should shape policy, which creates a whole new set of problems. Without endorsing the drug war, this is going to happen any time you have asymmetric conflict with incomplete information. So while I think all drugs should be legal and we should concentrate on education and harm reduction, the same techniques will be deployed against other things that everyone does agree are crimes, from the manufacture and distribution of child porn to disrupting violent organized crime networks. Wherever there is a demarcation of liability actors on both the supply and demand sides will operate independently to penetrate it and establish a bidirectional channel. So while I'd like to see the drug war ended right now and a full pardon for everyone who hasn't committed murder or extreme violence, the philosophical aspect of this is never going to go away because it's a fundamental strategy, arguably rooted in biology if not deeper.
- russdpale 7y ago
  Well I mean they gotta tell the brass they are doing something, right? So you create an atmosphere by where it looks like you are doing stuff, but really you know the things you are doing are ineffective and even counter productive to your goals. But you need a job, doesn't everyone? So the cycle of a bumbling war on drugs goes on.
- dewaine 7y ago
  it makes sense when the goal is not to protect people but to enforce the law for the law's sake
  - jMyles 7y ago
    Really? What law is being enforced by these actions? This is just a domestic PsyOps operation; I see no adherence to the rule of law here.
    - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
      Broadly speaking, the law in question is Title 21 Chapter 13 of the US Code. Buying and selling controlled substances without appropriate authorization is illegal. Disruption of illegal activities by law enforcement is generally legal, provided no other laws are broken in the process. Now, whether buying and selling these substances should be illegal is another question. But it's definitely not obvious that law enforcement is outside its typical role here.
      - jMyles 7y ago
        I didn't mean to suggest that law enforcement is outside its typical role, just that it is outside its legitimate role if it were behaving in a way, as dewaine suggests, of blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law, only to create acrimony and violence in communities where some people choose to violate it.
        ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
        > blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. I think this take is really uncharitable. I believe many/most people in the US believe that the laws controlling illegal drugs have at least some good purposes. Sure, most people want weed to be legal (not everyone, but most people). But heroin and fentanyl? I'm guessing support for legalizing those is well below the 50% mark. I bet in an unbiased poll, most people would support efforts to disrupt marketplaces that sell these goods. I agree that if law enforcement believed what, say, many HNers believe about the effectiveness of prohibition laws, this type of enforcement would represent a slavish devotion to the law over justice. But I'm guessing they generally believe the law is a good law and that the country is better off with it enforced. > This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law I already referenced the law that it enforces. I'm not sure what you mean by reasserting that it doesn't enforce any law, while in the previous paragraph you conceded that "[law enforcement were] enforcing a law for that law's sake." Are they or aren't they enforcing a law?
- jascii 7y ago
  If however, you have vested interests in the private prison industry and benefit from keeping the drug-trade illegal and on the streets it is a very good thing..
  - opo 7y ago
    Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons - getting rid of private prisons would have little impact on support for the drug war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison Which isn't to say that public sector unions and companies that supply material to prisons, or built prisons don't all support polices that incarcerate more and more people. (For example, the CA prison worker union spends more on political lobbying than all other labor unions in CA.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
    - onetimemanytime 7y ago
      Said it yourself in the second part. >>"The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations." https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-america...
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Alternatively you could have completely open interests in public correctional officers unions. Over 90% of prisons in the US are public and their employees are at least as highly motivated as any investor to lobby for more punitive laws and they can vote.
- RobertDeNiro 7y ago
  Seems like a good use of taxpayer money.
- PaulAJ 7y ago
  Rather puts me in mind of the deliberate poisoning of alcohol by the government during Prohibition. The attitude was that if someone died from drinking poisoned hooch, well it was their fault for drinking it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-americans/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-am...
  - refurb 7y ago
    The government did not poison supplies of alcohol meant for human consumption, nor did it intentionally aim to kill those who drank the tainted products. That's a big difference from a deliberate poisoning. And that still happens today - you can buy "denatured alcohol" that is unfit for human consumption.
    - dagenix 7y ago
      Quoting the referenced article, in turn quoting a Slate article: > To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly. They didn't put poison specifically in alcohol for human consumption, but they did put poison into chemicals that they knew would be consumed by humans. At the end of the day, I don't see the difference.
      - refurb 7y ago
        Fair point. But that still happens today. They add things like benzene, toluene or diesel to alcohol so it can’t be consumed. It’s similar to over the counter codeine in Canada. The dose is small and combined with a dose of acetaminophen. Seems kind of cruel for addicts to destroy their liver if they take too much.
        dagenix 7y ago
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  > I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level. Being undercover is spreading misinformation. It's the nature of the job.
  - maxheadroom 7y ago
    By that logic, the "birther" movement resulted merely from the "nature of politics", yeah? At some point, we have to concede that misinformation campaigns can be quite dangerous - like with yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
- Taek 7y ago
  This might also have the inverse effect. Some websites already do what they can to ensure that the web admins don't have access to communications between the seller and the buyer. Increased paranoia results in more safety guides and increased attention to detail by those who do not want to be prosecuted.
- decoyworker 7y ago
  Devil's advocate- just because the violence is not visible doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's just pushed out of sight. The increased ease of acquiring drugs is probably pretty strongly correlated to stronger cartels elsewhere. I think the real solution is legalization of most drugs but until then I see no issue with these tactics.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    Why most and not all? Also, given how many existing drugs are already legal, couldn't one say that most already are legal and that hasn't been enough to fix the problem?
- bduerst 7y ago
  The law enforcement are vastly overselling their capabilities and impact here. These dark-net markets are already rife with FUD from scammers, and the LE accounts spreading it are painfully obvious to the communities that they exist in.
- drawkbox 7y ago
  > This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. The drug war is the antithetical to harm reduction and safety in production and use. The only solution to the drug war is decriminalization, legalization and improved health systems for harm reduction. Most of the issue with the drug war and overdoses is in direct relation to drug illegality. Users get badly produced products, mixed with harsher drugs like fentanyl that are cheaper or people can't get them help due to the criminality of the policy. Drugs can be dangerous, the drug war and illegality makes them more dangerous and obliterates harm reduction. The hard line approach leads to more dangerous synthetics that only exist due to the illegality of the substances they are analogs to. Anyone taking drugs that is addicted and needs help, should get help, not felonies and put in a building with violent criminals, adding to problems problems doesn't solve anything. Not only that, the drug war has diverted funds to mafias/cartels that have built them to the size of nation states, making the whole thing extra violent when it is mostly just a non-violent end result. We learned nothing from alcohol prohibition. The drug war also makes respecting law and order a joke when drugs like marijuana, LSD, psilocybin and more are treated harshly, these are safe drugs with very low toxicity [1], lower than caffeine, aspirin and nicotine, and keep people from harsher substances. Ultimately the drug war is a war on people and plants, that is part of a drug dark age we are in, that will look quite silly in retrospect from the future, same way alcohol prohibition looks today. Alcohol is a drug, it is dangerous, but also fun, as long as there is harm reduction and information about it and it is produced safely. When alcohol was illegal, all of that, including production which led to explosions and production of deadly batches, was more dangerous being illegal than legal. It is also safer with the legal market running it rather than the mafia, the reverse is true in other illegal drugs. Harm reduction, decriminalization, legalization and bringing a regulated market in will make all substances safer, markets around them efficiently work safety into the system when is has enough market value as there is liability that pushes producers to make safe products and information about harm reduction. It is time to throw in the towel on the war on people and the human condition, then turn to a human/health/market focused solution rather than authoritarian enforcement solution. End the drug prohibition dark age. We need a Right to Body amendment that ends this prohibition and future attempts. [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN
  - 7y ago
- sandworm101 7y ago
  The police don't know what they are doing. Trying to break the trust of darkweb users is a fool's errand. The system is built on mistrust. The big selling point of these markets is that you don't have to know anything about your dealer, and they need to know almost nothing about you. So there is no trust system to break. The other big selling point is that these websites defeat all the violence. There are no turf wars online, at least not physical wars. No dealer can force users to buy from them exclusively. No low-level dealer in a neighborhood must pay homage to a local mob boss. All of that disappears. Any cop that thinks oldschool tactics like spreading distrust within the supply chain to instigate internal mole hunts has watched too many movies. Within Tor it is assumed that everyone is a mole. Each individual protects themselves with the tools available. Every dealer assumes at least some buyers are cops. Every buyer assumes the cops are running sting operations. The market functions nevertheless.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    So long as 'trust' is part of the factor for purchase, then by 'Supply and Demand' - the tactic will work. Consider that there's an incredible number of 'regular people' who might visit these sites, not super knowledgable. They might have regular jobs, regular lives. The thought that they could be caught up in something legal, lose their jobs etc. etc. is a very material risk. Without getting into other aspects of this issue ... the tactic they're using is actually reasonable. Also, I'll bet their not spending a huge amount of energy on it, it probably boils down to 'keeping an eye on it'. As far as your comments bout 'no violence' etc. - really, it'll just move elsewhere. Anything that starts making money will be exploited very quickly by nefarious entities for nefarious means.
  - velox_io 7y ago
    It's also safer than buying it off the streets (aside from dealing with gang members), there is no telling what you are buying (they probably don't know either). While it's true that everyone mistrusts each other. Sellers are also competing with each other to offer the best products with the best prices, putting a huge amount of effort to build the best feedback ratings. A world away from gangs using extreme violence to increase turnover (you would think that factors into the priorities). I'd feel safer buying from DreamMarket than I would Ebay.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. If you believe what they are doing is bad and must be stopped, then it makes such a choice seem like the relevant thing to do. When the violence does come, it provides more support for the laws in the first place. From the view point of someone who disagrees with those laws in general, I find it evil. But seemingly well thought out evil. Given their existing ideology, it makes sense.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    This is beyond the mere position on whether drugs should be legal. The question raised by op is: at what cost? OP says: this action directly causes violence. Therefore anyone defending the action must defend either one of the following positions: - that is wrong, it does not cause violence, or - it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. These are different positions from “drugs are bad and must be stopped.” Talking about this is valuable, because everyone has a limit on how far they’re willing to see countermeasures go. E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. But DUI is evil! Well, yes, but apparently not that evil. The question then is: ok, you think drugs are evil.. how evil? This evil? It’s more than just ideology.
    - UncleEntity 7y ago
      I would argue the violence has nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with the legality -- you, as an upstanding citizen, can't seek legal protection for your chosen trade so have to provide your own protection outside the legal frameworks.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      >it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. Generally once you want to make something illegal and use the threat of execution to force people into cages for engaging in it, then you have to accept that it is worth the violence to stop it. I do see a lot of people who want to make things illegal but don't consider what that actually means for the perspective of someone having the law enforced against them. For example, people who want to make abortion illegal, but when you ask them about what penalty it would be enforced with, they don't want one. Personally, I consider these people to be in a state of still deciding their views on the given issue. Once an individual has decided that someone in possession of the wrong plant should be locked in a cage for years and using physical, potentially lethal, violence used if they resist, then it seems quite reasonable they will feel the same about other uses of violence for the same reason. > E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. Based on the numbers of deaths from alcohol and compared to other movements to restrict rights based on deaths caused (restriction of privacy in the case of terrorism or gun rights in the case of mass shootings), I find it quite surprising there isn't an effort comparable to what you suggest. It makes me begin to question the honesty and sincerity of any held political position.
- llamataboot 7y ago
  It's an awful idea. Same thing happens when police departments run ads claiming that there is a bad batch of crystal meth in town and to please bring yours in and the police will dispose of it and then they arrest people that show up. Makes it super difficult for legitimate harm reduction organizations to get out actual information about possibly adulterated substances.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    Do they seriously do that? Seems so obviously counterproductive.
noarchy 7y ago
>This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. It seems the entire drug war has managed to spark almost incomprehensible levels of violence. There's some in the US and Canada, to be sure, but it has turned large swaths of Mexico, particularly, into war zones. There needs to be a change in thinking. Cracking down on dark net drug sales is nothing but the expansion of a failing war.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > but it has turned large swaths of Mexico, particularly, into war zones Yes, from time to time. At this point some Mexican states and areas have it institutionalized so much that there isn't a war anymore. There is only danger when two competing powers are in the same area. Mexico's southern border with Guatemala has an influx of migrants because of Guatemala's now organized drug violence.
  - threwawasy1228 7y ago
    This is an incredibly naive thing to say. I was on a beach resort area controlled by the Zetas a year or so back on a vacation. It was incredibly dirt cheap and everything seemed really nice and peaceful, the town was under control of only one group afterall. Then all of a sudden one evening there was a screaming man pulled out of a building into a street and brutally beaten in front of everyone that was out there. After this ended he was dragged off and everything went back to normal. It was an extremely shocking flash of violence. Just because it isn't a 'war' so much anymore doesn't mean that the violence that comes with areas being under control of gangs magically goes away.
    - thaeli 7y ago
      So the difference is that they weren't wearing government uniforms? That "flash of violence" doesn't sound out of line for any moderately authoritarian state.
      - nothrabannosir 7y ago
marpstar 7y ago
Never forget Ross. He was railroaded hard over Silk Road. https://freeross.org https://freeross.org
- drwl 7y ago
  just read through that, it's quite unfortunate really. Seems like another case of aaron schwartz where the justice system wanted to send a message.
  - justforyou 7y ago
    Doesn't make sense that you've been downvoted.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    It's Aaron Swartz, not Schwartz. If you're going to wave a bloody shirt, spell the name on it correctly. And I don't think he or his family would appreciate the comparison you're making. Swartz was ultimately prosecuted for actions which, right or wrong, were done selflessly, without remuneration, and in pursuit of a principle. Ulbricht made a fortune facilitating drug sales.
    - fxprq 7y ago
      Calm your tits, Jew.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - z3c0 7y ago
      To add, Swartz also didn't attempt any assassinations. While I see some overlap in the way that Ulbricht was made an example of, he ultimately shot himself in the foot by resorting to such nefarious means to protect himself.
spraak 7y ago
> The packages flowing from China are blamed for compounding the opioid crisis in the United States. I doubt they meant it, but it's a pretty good pharmacy related pun [1]. And more sincerely, this is a very superficial take on the opioid crisis and misplaced blame. The problem with opioids in the US starts in the US with overprescription of opioids, lack of other pain management options, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compounding
- adventured 7y ago
  It's not misplaced blame. It's an accurate statement: China's fentanyl has made the opioid crisis in the US far worse and far more deadly. China entirely deserves blame for the fentanyl coming from their country. They're blatantly allowing very large amounts of fentanyl to flood into the US, even while they know exactly what the end result is. They've hardly lifted a finger to stop it. They're an hyper-surveillence totalitarian dictatorship that can control every aspect of their system, including the ports. If fentanyl is pouring out of China, it's because the authorities there are knowingly allowing it.
  - 1024core 7y ago
    Some people say that it's payback for the Opium Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
    - chillacy 7y ago
      Shouldn't they be shipping the fent to the UK then?
      - dbuder 7y ago
        ? They are.
rolltiide 7y ago
This is a really good article on this topic: this is the first mainstream news article I've seen on this topic that wasn't fearmongering and instead showed how benign the services are and merely acknowledged their existence and the accurate complacency of the expanding user base. On the other side, the only other literature are the official releases from governments grandstanding about their takedown efforts, where they aren't even acknowledging that the markets have only grown and gotten more resilient because of their efforts. This article balances that all in reality very well. It doesn't mix up the terms Deep and Dark web. It doesn't feel the need to explain how bitcoin works, it acknowledges the prevalence of Monero. It mentions the current marketplaces and TOR news sites, it shows the perspective of the software engineers running the websites who realize that prior takedowns are largely a result of error and laziness. Lets do more journalism like that
- gwern 7y ago
  The benefits of experience: Popper has been on the cryptocurrency beat for a long time and has a good idea what he's talking about. (His Bitcoin book, _Digital Gold_, also won't make you want to throw it against the wall.)
- twrand92688 7y ago
  (couldn't agree more with what and how you said that!) One thing that the article did not mention is that parts of the world apparently now have semi private comunitys run inside sometimes proprietary commercially run walled gardens used to build semi reliable channels for exchanging goods locally. Delivering sometimes not via Standard Post but closer to real-time and possibly even with out the need of a "delivery name/address". This can and apparently even is sometimes done with a small RL "onion" fulfillment layers used for delivery in which each of three nodes never sees any of the peers. It will be interesting to see with what mechanisms the merchants and markets will come up with.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  Granted, you're basically right; but still reads as biased to me. What if they replaced terms like "narcotics traficking" with "drug purchases?" What if they changed "authorities" to "creeps with badges stalking ordinary people for buying drugs?" Remember when the Panama Papers were leaked... And nothing happened? Our taxpayer dollars are diverted to this crusade and so shouldn't we just call it what it is?
kache_ 7y ago
With ring scheme signatures [1], people are now able to prevent police enforcement from tracking cryptocurrency transactions. Many dark web sites are switching to use crypto that implements this protocol. This phenomenon is only going to become exacerbated as the population becomes more technologically copmetent. It's use is not only drugs, but also moving money in and out of countries, tax evasion and money laundering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature
- rolltiide 7y ago
  The article mentions that some sites use Monero and it is getting more prevalent, but it doesn't explain to readers the significance of that. That aside, when Monero gets an easier to use Multi-signature capability, people won't even have to deposit onto the marketplace websites anymore. So when the government spends millions to take them down it won't seize anything of value and won't disrupt commerce one bit. Before then, JP Morgan and Ernst & Young's open source private Ethereum transactions are a great new mixer for Bitcoin. JP Morgan's Zether and EY's Nightfall allow for erc20 transactions to be private. You can wrap Bitcoin into an Ethereum erc20 asset (WBTC) and clean it and unlink it for use back on the Bitcoin network. Dark Net Marketplaces can also just require private wrapped assets and inherit all of the multisig and contracting capabilities on the Ethereum network right now. Bitcoin's Lightning Network can also unlink transactions, but you have to trust that no intermediary nodes are recording transactions. You can just make a payment channel between two addresses you happen control, and then send them onchain from the new address, OR Dark Net Markets can just have payment channels for deposits. It would make the government have to spend even more resources to make their own nodes to track transactions, or would simply just remove their onchain blockchain sleuthing capability.
- powerset 7y ago
  > copmetent Thought this was a typo at first, but given the context maybe the spelling was intentional and humorous!
- pfundstein 7y ago
  This is the tech that Monero is built on which the article does mention markets are implementing.
rolltiide 7y ago
Great article! Aside from the pointing out expansion of the markets I would have liked for the author to show how the costs for taxpayers are rising with the returns for the government diminishing. With Silk Road 1.0 it was mostly a single government that had a lengthy expensive investigation that resulted in upwards of $50 million in Bitcoin seized and auctioned off. With the massive expansion of these market places, MULTIPLE governments are involved and barely seize or disrupt $1 million any more. A better use of their population's money is consumer protection. These market places have enough high quality but regular testing and alerts would protect their citizens. Governments have consequences by being seen to endorse drugs, I think this is a happy medium as the private sector has already picked up the slack here, and the government doesn't need to be seen as legalizing and regulating in stores just to keep people safe. Instead it can just review on these high quality marketplaces.
vernie 7y ago
Great.
buildbuildbuild 7y ago
Ironically this is best privately viewed in Tor Browser to avoid their “You’re in private mode” paywall. (or at the official nytimes3xbfgragh.onion) Also I am questioning my assumptions as to how HN works. I submitted this yesterday, how was a duplicate URL not detected? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20155909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20155909
- freedomben 7y ago
  This has happened to me before as well. I have no proof at all, but I suspect that certain users just get straight in and can get to the front page with only a few upvotes, while other users (like myself) can get 15 upvotes in an hour or two and never make it above 75. Would love a little more transparency from HN. I know it will enable manipulators but it would also help people like us not feel as shafted (which has really disincentivized me against submitting stories).
  - ufmace 7y ago
    The user that submitted this story has a pretty new account with modest karma and only 5 stories submitted. Odd that they would have some kind of special permission implemented by YC. On the other hand, all 5 of their submitted stories have pretty high number of upvotes. Maybe they know something about HN clickbait and the best time to submit stories? Maybe they're one of a batch of accounts of someone who does have some special top-level exceptions? Pretty strange.
    - robbintt 7y ago
      I've been lightly submitting personal work to reddit and hacker news for years and it's pretty obvious that post title, time of day, and day of week are the primary driving factors.
driverdan 7y ago
> Dark web markets are viewed as one of the crucial sources of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. [citation needed] I strongly doubt this claim. Dark net markets are a fraction of all drug sales.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  I think that’s possible for the case of fenatyl and similar synthetic opioids. They and other RC’s have been largely popularized through the internet. Because the amounts required are quite low it’s actually plausible.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    RC's have been a plague on the dark net markets for almost a year now. They're basically the new fentanyl of contaminates, but without easy detection methods and even more unknown side effects.
- bredren 7y ago
  “Crucial” != majority. I think dark web may allow people in suburbs and other “nice” places to attain opioids more easily. Deaths are higher profile and possibly a more important voting block.
Sargos 7y ago
These drug markets are open to the entire internet and the customers and suppliers are global. The fact that US officials consider this their jurisdiction is troubling to say the least. All of this, in my opinion, unsafe propagation of misinformation is harmful to all users of the service and not just those based in the US. Would we be okay if Russia decided that Facebook breaks its laws and then went and created fake profiles to cause enough disturbances to make people quit using the service? I would think not.
- vkou 7y ago
  > These drug markets are open to the entire internet and the customers and suppliers are global. The fact that US officials consider this their jurisdiction is troubling to say the least. If you're marketing securities to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the SEC. If you're selling food to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the FDA. If you're selling drugs to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the DEA. I don't understand what's troubling about it. Don't want to be under the jurisdiction of US agencies? Don't do business in the US.
  - nameismypw 7y ago
    > Don't want to be under the jurisdiction of US agencies? Don't do business in the US. The Internet is not "business in the US," hence GP's comment. Am I "doing business in the US" by posting this comment? This is really just digital hegemony from the USA.
    - lagg 7y ago
      Sorry for being mildly off-topic but the other comment with regards to police being complete morons and causing violence on purpose is pretty much my take on the situation. Definitely justifies my incredulity at the idea. Even the idea of getting weed in a legal state through the mail is strange to me. Let alone this. That said, good luck convincing a great portion of Americans that the US isn't the end-all be-all authority on the internet and that's where all the packets go like a big funnel. Like we never went beyond campuses, token rings and pre-OSI model hackery. The logic is: We engineered the prototype, therefore internet always murika #1. (Signed, an American happy that foreigners are finally calling us out on this behavior. Literally took you centuries)
anonymous5133 7y ago
So maybe perhaps going after the supply side of the drug trade is a waste of time? As long as there is a demand, there will be a supplier. I think we need to get tougher on drug treatment. Make it a mandatory punishment.
theturtletalks 7y ago
To see how drug sellers are using extensive tech to avoid detection, read this: https://opaque.link/post/dropgang/ https://opaque.link/post/dropgang/
pier25 7y ago
The war on drugs is such a waste of money. Not only alcohol and tobacco account for many more deaths than all the illegal drugs combined [1], but the effects of alcohol on society are worse than any other substance[2]. This is information from the UK but I very much doubt it will be much different from any other first world country. Plus people who want to consume drugs will find a way to do it, legal or not. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/alcohol-drinking-smoking-drugs-addictive-health-worst-bad-cannabis-cocaine-amphetamines-opioids-a8345741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/alcohol-drinking-s... [2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/206300.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/206300.php
- narag 7y ago
  I can't help wondering... is alcohol damage worse because more people use it because it's legal? I accept weed is somehow different, but what if opiates or amphetamine were legal and easy to get? You can convince me that testing mind-altering drugs as an experience is a human right or something like that. Really, no sarcasm here. But dealing with a sizable portion of a society getting hooked on artificial gratification is on a totally different level. Not liking war on drugs, still don't buy that 'alcohol is worse' is a valid point. On the contrary, it seems proof of how things can go astray when you normalize an addictive substance.
  - pier25 7y ago
    > is alcohol damage worse because more people use it because it's legal? It's certainly possible but if we look at countries like Portugal people actually consume less drugs now than before the decriminalization. https://beckleyfoundation.org/2018/04/23/lessons-from-portugal-the-case-for-drug-policy-reform/ https://beckleyfoundation.org/2018/04/23/lessons-from-portug...
    - narag 7y ago
      In Portugal they can't buy drugs legally. So they need to resort to black market, just like anywhere else, except countries where weed is legal from authorized vendors. If you're caught with heroin, I understand the government makes an intervention, confiscating the substance and forcing you into some rehab program. Of course better than jail, but still far from walking into a bar and, no joke, asking for a beer. As an aside, could somebody (specially someone with specific knowledge) enlighten me about the difference with Spain? Here possesion of weed was legalized in the eighties (though later re-punished in public with a fine and confiscation) and possesion in general was decriminalized while it's an amount small enough to assume it's for own use. Has the situation in Portugal really improved there because of legal status or because rehab programs receiving proper funding? Or even economic upturn?
throwaway100773 7y ago
Yet prescription opioids are still a thing.
braindead_in 7y ago
No mention of Dream Market. They just shut down. Didn't exit scam, didn't get seized. Probably the admins made enough money and retired.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wehack147 7y ago
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jason_slack 7y ago
"Shortly before that, American authorities took down a news website, known as DeepDotWeb, that lived on the traditional web, providing reviews and links to dark net sites. The absence of the site is likely to make it harder for newcomers to find their way to dark web markets." So, it is illegal to advertise dark web markets? DeepDotWeb must have done something else to get taken down?

245 points by wp381640 7y ago

"Richard Downing, who oversees the computer crime section of the Justice Department, said he and his colleagues have focused on techniques that create distrust on the sites by encouraging users to believe that sellers and site administrators have already been compromised and are feeding information to law enforcement." This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. In addition, reputation and trust are everything in dark net markets, and reputation is the only thing preventing vendors from selling fake or adulterated drugs. I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level.

anigbrowl 7y ago
This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. How? The whole point of the dark web is that you don't know who you're dealing with so who are you going to seek revenge against if you think you've been wronged? If you mean the second-order effect of people giving up on the dark net and buying drugs of questionable quality from a dealer on a street corner (with all the implicit violence of illegal street crime) that's likely true; but policing is an instrumentality and wishing they weren't is to say that the police should shape policy, which creates a whole new set of problems. Without endorsing the drug war, this is going to happen any time you have asymmetric conflict with incomplete information. So while I think all drugs should be legal and we should concentrate on education and harm reduction, the same techniques will be deployed against other things that everyone does agree are crimes, from the manufacture and distribution of child porn to disrupting violent organized crime networks. Wherever there is a demarcation of liability actors on both the supply and demand sides will operate independently to penetrate it and establish a bidirectional channel. So while I'd like to see the drug war ended right now and a full pardon for everyone who hasn't committed murder or extreme violence, the philosophical aspect of this is never going to go away because it's a fundamental strategy, arguably rooted in biology if not deeper.
russdpale 7y ago
Well I mean they gotta tell the brass they are doing something, right? So you create an atmosphere by where it looks like you are doing stuff, but really you know the things you are doing are ineffective and even counter productive to your goals. But you need a job, doesn't everyone? So the cycle of a bumbling war on drugs goes on.
dewaine 7y ago
it makes sense when the goal is not to protect people but to enforce the law for the law's sake
- jMyles 7y ago
  Really? What law is being enforced by these actions? This is just a domestic PsyOps operation; I see no adherence to the rule of law here.
  - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
    Broadly speaking, the law in question is Title 21 Chapter 13 of the US Code. Buying and selling controlled substances without appropriate authorization is illegal. Disruption of illegal activities by law enforcement is generally legal, provided no other laws are broken in the process. Now, whether buying and selling these substances should be illegal is another question. But it's definitely not obvious that law enforcement is outside its typical role here.
    - jMyles 7y ago
      I didn't mean to suggest that law enforcement is outside its typical role, just that it is outside its legitimate role if it were behaving in a way, as dewaine suggests, of blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law, only to create acrimony and violence in communities where some people choose to violate it.
      - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
        > blindly enforcing a law for that law's sake. I think this take is really uncharitable. I believe many/most people in the US believe that the laws controlling illegal drugs have at least some good purposes. Sure, most people want weed to be legal (not everyone, but most people). But heroin and fentanyl? I'm guessing support for legalizing those is well below the 50% mark. I bet in an unbiased poll, most people would support efforts to disrupt marketplaces that sell these goods. I agree that if law enforcement believed what, say, many HNers believe about the effectiveness of prohibition laws, this type of enforcement would represent a slavish devotion to the law over justice. But I'm guessing they generally believe the law is a good law and that the country is better off with it enforced. > This action doesn't appear to actually enforce any law I already referenced the law that it enforces. I'm not sure what you mean by reasserting that it doesn't enforce any law, while in the previous paragraph you conceded that "[law enforcement were] enforcing a law for that law's sake." Are they or aren't they enforcing a law?
jascii 7y ago
If however, you have vested interests in the private prison industry and benefit from keeping the drug-trade illegal and on the streets it is a very good thing..
- opo 7y ago
  Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons - getting rid of private prisons would have little impact on support for the drug war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison Which isn't to say that public sector unions and companies that supply material to prisons, or built prisons don't all support polices that incarcerate more and more people. (For example, the CA prison worker union spends more on political lobbying than all other labor unions in CA.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
  - onetimemanytime 7y ago
    Said it yourself in the second part. >>"The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations." https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-economics-of-the-america...
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Alternatively you could have completely open interests in public correctional officers unions. Over 90% of prisons in the US are public and their employees are at least as highly motivated as any investor to lobby for more punitive laws and they can vote.
RobertDeNiro 7y ago
Seems like a good use of taxpayer money.
PaulAJ 7y ago
Rather puts me in mind of the deliberate poisoning of alcohol by the government during Prohibition. The attitude was that if someone died from drinking poisoned hooch, well it was their fault for drinking it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-americans/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/government-poison-10000-am...
- refurb 7y ago
  The government did not poison supplies of alcohol meant for human consumption, nor did it intentionally aim to kill those who drank the tainted products. That's a big difference from a deliberate poisoning. And that still happens today - you can buy "denatured alcohol" that is unfit for human consumption.
  - dagenix 7y ago
    Quoting the referenced article, in turn quoting a Slate article: > To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly. They didn't put poison specifically in alcohol for human consumption, but they did put poison into chemicals that they knew would be consumed by humans. At the end of the day, I don't see the difference.
    - refurb 7y ago
      Fair point. But that still happens today. They add things like benzene, toluene or diesel to alcohol so it can’t be consumed. It’s similar to over the counter codeine in Canada. The dose is small and combined with a dose of acetaminophen. Seems kind of cruel for addicts to destroy their liver if they take too much.
      - dagenix 7y ago
pastor_elm 7y ago
> I can't see any way that the police intentionally spreading misinformation is a good thing, on a practical or philosophical level. Being undercover is spreading misinformation. It's the nature of the job.
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  By that logic, the "birther" movement resulted merely from the "nature of politics", yeah? At some point, we have to concede that misinformation campaigns can be quite dangerous - like with yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Taek 7y ago
This might also have the inverse effect. Some websites already do what they can to ensure that the web admins don't have access to communications between the seller and the buyer. Increased paranoia results in more safety guides and increased attention to detail by those who do not want to be prosecuted.
decoyworker 7y ago
Devil's advocate- just because the violence is not visible doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's just pushed out of sight. The increased ease of acquiring drugs is probably pretty strongly correlated to stronger cartels elsewhere. I think the real solution is legalization of most drugs but until then I see no issue with these tactics.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Why most and not all? Also, given how many existing drugs are already legal, couldn't one say that most already are legal and that hasn't been enough to fix the problem?
bduerst 7y ago
The law enforcement are vastly overselling their capabilities and impact here. These dark-net markets are already rife with FUD from scammers, and the LE accounts spreading it are painfully obvious to the communities that they exist in.
drawkbox 7y ago
> This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. The drug war is the antithetical to harm reduction and safety in production and use. The only solution to the drug war is decriminalization, legalization and improved health systems for harm reduction. Most of the issue with the drug war and overdoses is in direct relation to drug illegality. Users get badly produced products, mixed with harsher drugs like fentanyl that are cheaper or people can't get them help due to the criminality of the policy. Drugs can be dangerous, the drug war and illegality makes them more dangerous and obliterates harm reduction. The hard line approach leads to more dangerous synthetics that only exist due to the illegality of the substances they are analogs to. Anyone taking drugs that is addicted and needs help, should get help, not felonies and put in a building with violent criminals, adding to problems problems doesn't solve anything. Not only that, the drug war has diverted funds to mafias/cartels that have built them to the size of nation states, making the whole thing extra violent when it is mostly just a non-violent end result. We learned nothing from alcohol prohibition. The drug war also makes respecting law and order a joke when drugs like marijuana, LSD, psilocybin and more are treated harshly, these are safe drugs with very low toxicity [1], lower than caffeine, aspirin and nicotine, and keep people from harsher substances. Ultimately the drug war is a war on people and plants, that is part of a drug dark age we are in, that will look quite silly in retrospect from the future, same way alcohol prohibition looks today. Alcohol is a drug, it is dangerous, but also fun, as long as there is harm reduction and information about it and it is produced safely. When alcohol was illegal, all of that, including production which led to explosions and production of deadly batches, was more dangerous being illegal than legal. It is also safer with the legal market running it rather than the mafia, the reverse is true in other illegal drugs. Harm reduction, decriminalization, legalization and bringing a regulated market in will make all substances safer, markets around them efficiently work safety into the system when is has enough market value as there is liability that pushes producers to make safe products and information about harm reduction. It is time to throw in the towel on the war on people and the human condition, then turn to a human/health/market focused solution rather than authoritarian enforcement solution. End the drug prohibition dark age. We need a Right to Body amendment that ends this prohibition and future attempts. [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN https://imgur.com/gallery/Bkl9QeN
- 7y ago
sandworm101 7y ago
The police don't know what they are doing. Trying to break the trust of darkweb users is a fool's errand. The system is built on mistrust. The big selling point of these markets is that you don't have to know anything about your dealer, and they need to know almost nothing about you. So there is no trust system to break. The other big selling point is that these websites defeat all the violence. There are no turf wars online, at least not physical wars. No dealer can force users to buy from them exclusively. No low-level dealer in a neighborhood must pay homage to a local mob boss. All of that disappears. Any cop that thinks oldschool tactics like spreading distrust within the supply chain to instigate internal mole hunts has watched too many movies. Within Tor it is assumed that everyone is a mole. Each individual protects themselves with the tools available. Every dealer assumes at least some buyers are cops. Every buyer assumes the cops are running sting operations. The market functions nevertheless.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  So long as 'trust' is part of the factor for purchase, then by 'Supply and Demand' - the tactic will work. Consider that there's an incredible number of 'regular people' who might visit these sites, not super knowledgable. They might have regular jobs, regular lives. The thought that they could be caught up in something legal, lose their jobs etc. etc. is a very material risk. Without getting into other aspects of this issue ... the tactic they're using is actually reasonable. Also, I'll bet their not spending a huge amount of energy on it, it probably boils down to 'keeping an eye on it'. As far as your comments bout 'no violence' etc. - really, it'll just move elsewhere. Anything that starts making money will be exploited very quickly by nefarious entities for nefarious means.
- velox_io 7y ago
  It's also safer than buying it off the streets (aside from dealing with gang members), there is no telling what you are buying (they probably don't know either). While it's true that everyone mistrusts each other. Sellers are also competing with each other to offer the best products with the best prices, putting a huge amount of effort to build the best feedback ratings. A world away from gangs using extreme violence to increase turnover (you would think that factors into the priorities). I'd feel safer buying from DreamMarket than I would Ebay.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. If you believe what they are doing is bad and must be stopped, then it makes such a choice seem like the relevant thing to do. When the violence does come, it provides more support for the laws in the first place. From the view point of someone who disagrees with those laws in general, I find it evil. But seemingly well thought out evil. Given their existing ideology, it makes sense.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  This is beyond the mere position on whether drugs should be legal. The question raised by op is: at what cost? OP says: this action directly causes violence. Therefore anyone defending the action must defend either one of the following positions: - that is wrong, it does not cause violence, or - it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. These are different positions from “drugs are bad and must be stopped.” Talking about this is valuable, because everyone has a limit on how far they’re willing to see countermeasures go. E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. But DUI is evil! Well, yes, but apparently not that evil. The question then is: ok, you think drugs are evil.. how evil? This evil? It’s more than just ideology.
  - UncleEntity 7y ago
    I would argue the violence has nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with the legality -- you, as an upstanding citizen, can't seek legal protection for your chosen trade so have to provide your own protection outside the legal frameworks.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    >it does cause violence but drugs are so bad that this violence is worth it. Generally once you want to make something illegal and use the threat of execution to force people into cages for engaging in it, then you have to accept that it is worth the violence to stop it. I do see a lot of people who want to make things illegal but don't consider what that actually means for the perspective of someone having the law enforced against them. For example, people who want to make abortion illegal, but when you ask them about what penalty it would be enforced with, they don't want one. Personally, I consider these people to be in a state of still deciding their views on the given issue. Once an individual has decided that someone in possession of the wrong plant should be locked in a cage for years and using physical, potentially lethal, violence used if they resist, then it seems quite reasonable they will feel the same about other uses of violence for the same reason. > E.g. we think DUI is bad and must be stopped, but clearly not at the cost of making alcohol locks mandatory on every car in circulation. Based on the numbers of deaths from alcohol and compared to other movements to restrict rights based on deaths caused (restriction of privacy in the case of terrorism or gun rights in the case of mass shootings), I find it quite surprising there isn't an effort comparable to what you suggest. It makes me begin to question the honesty and sincerity of any held political position.
llamataboot 7y ago
It's an awful idea. Same thing happens when police departments run ads claiming that there is a bad batch of crystal meth in town and to please bring yours in and the police will dispose of it and then they arrest people that show up. Makes it super difficult for legitimate harm reduction organizations to get out actual information about possibly adulterated substances.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Do they seriously do that? Seems so obviously counterproductive.

noarchy 7y ago

>This looks like a good way to spark real-life violence in what is otherwise a remarkably safe way to exchange drugs. It seems the entire drug war has managed to spark almost incomprehensible levels of violence. There's some in the US and Canada, to be sure, but it has turned large swaths of Mexico, particularly, into war zones. There needs to be a change in thinking. Cracking down on dark net drug sales is nothing but the expansion of a failing war.

rolltiide 7y ago
> but it has turned large swaths of Mexico, particularly, into war zones Yes, from time to time. At this point some Mexican states and areas have it institutionalized so much that there isn't a war anymore. There is only danger when two competing powers are in the same area. Mexico's southern border with Guatemala has an influx of migrants because of Guatemala's now organized drug violence.
- threwawasy1228 7y ago
  This is an incredibly naive thing to say. I was on a beach resort area controlled by the Zetas a year or so back on a vacation. It was incredibly dirt cheap and everything seemed really nice and peaceful, the town was under control of only one group afterall. Then all of a sudden one evening there was a screaming man pulled out of a building into a street and brutally beaten in front of everyone that was out there. After this ended he was dragged off and everything went back to normal. It was an extremely shocking flash of violence. Just because it isn't a 'war' so much anymore doesn't mean that the violence that comes with areas being under control of gangs magically goes away.
  - thaeli 7y ago
    So the difference is that they weren't wearing government uniforms? That "flash of violence" doesn't sound out of line for any moderately authoritarian state.
    - nothrabannosir 7y ago

marpstar 7y ago

Never forget Ross. He was railroaded hard over Silk Road. https://freeross.org https://freeross.org

drwl 7y ago
just read through that, it's quite unfortunate really. Seems like another case of aaron schwartz where the justice system wanted to send a message.
- justforyou 7y ago
  Doesn't make sense that you've been downvoted.
- tptacek 7y ago
  It's Aaron Swartz, not Schwartz. If you're going to wave a bloody shirt, spell the name on it correctly. And I don't think he or his family would appreciate the comparison you're making. Swartz was ultimately prosecuted for actions which, right or wrong, were done selflessly, without remuneration, and in pursuit of a principle. Ulbricht made a fortune facilitating drug sales.
  - fxprq 7y ago
    Calm your tits, Jew.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - z3c0 7y ago
    To add, Swartz also didn't attempt any assassinations. While I see some overlap in the way that Ulbricht was made an example of, he ultimately shot himself in the foot by resorting to such nefarious means to protect himself.

spraak 7y ago

> The packages flowing from China are blamed for compounding the opioid crisis in the United States. I doubt they meant it, but it's a pretty good pharmacy related pun [1]. And more sincerely, this is a very superficial take on the opioid crisis and misplaced blame. The problem with opioids in the US starts in the US with overprescription of opioids, lack of other pain management options, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compounding

adventured 7y ago
It's not misplaced blame. It's an accurate statement: China's fentanyl has made the opioid crisis in the US far worse and far more deadly. China entirely deserves blame for the fentanyl coming from their country. They're blatantly allowing very large amounts of fentanyl to flood into the US, even while they know exactly what the end result is. They've hardly lifted a finger to stop it. They're an hyper-surveillence totalitarian dictatorship that can control every aspect of their system, including the ports. If fentanyl is pouring out of China, it's because the authorities there are knowingly allowing it.
- 1024core 7y ago
  Some people say that it's payback for the Opium Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Shouldn't they be shipping the fent to the UK then?
    - dbuder 7y ago
      ? They are.

rolltiide 7y ago

This is a really good article on this topic: this is the first mainstream news article I've seen on this topic that wasn't fearmongering and instead showed how benign the services are and merely acknowledged their existence and the accurate complacency of the expanding user base. On the other side, the only other literature are the official releases from governments grandstanding about their takedown efforts, where they aren't even acknowledging that the markets have only grown and gotten more resilient because of their efforts. This article balances that all in reality very well. It doesn't mix up the terms Deep and Dark web. It doesn't feel the need to explain how bitcoin works, it acknowledges the prevalence of Monero. It mentions the current marketplaces and TOR news sites, it shows the perspective of the software engineers running the websites who realize that prior takedowns are largely a result of error and laziness. Lets do more journalism like that

gwern 7y ago
The benefits of experience: Popper has been on the cryptocurrency beat for a long time and has a good idea what he's talking about. (His Bitcoin book, _Digital Gold_, also won't make you want to throw it against the wall.)
twrand92688 7y ago
(couldn't agree more with what and how you said that!) One thing that the article did not mention is that parts of the world apparently now have semi private comunitys run inside sometimes proprietary commercially run walled gardens used to build semi reliable channels for exchanging goods locally. Delivering sometimes not via Standard Post but closer to real-time and possibly even with out the need of a "delivery name/address". This can and apparently even is sometimes done with a small RL "onion" fulfillment layers used for delivery in which each of three nodes never sees any of the peers. It will be interesting to see with what mechanisms the merchants and markets will come up with.
wallace_f 7y ago
Granted, you're basically right; but still reads as biased to me. What if they replaced terms like "narcotics traficking" with "drug purchases?" What if they changed "authorities" to "creeps with badges stalking ordinary people for buying drugs?" Remember when the Panama Papers were leaked... And nothing happened? Our taxpayer dollars are diverted to this crusade and so shouldn't we just call it what it is?

kache_ 7y ago

With ring scheme signatures [1], people are now able to prevent police enforcement from tracking cryptocurrency transactions. Many dark web sites are switching to use crypto that implements this protocol. This phenomenon is only going to become exacerbated as the population becomes more technologically copmetent. It's use is not only drugs, but also moving money in and out of countries, tax evasion and money laundering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature

rolltiide 7y ago
The article mentions that some sites use Monero and it is getting more prevalent, but it doesn't explain to readers the significance of that. That aside, when Monero gets an easier to use Multi-signature capability, people won't even have to deposit onto the marketplace websites anymore. So when the government spends millions to take them down it won't seize anything of value and won't disrupt commerce one bit. Before then, JP Morgan and Ernst & Young's open source private Ethereum transactions are a great new mixer for Bitcoin. JP Morgan's Zether and EY's Nightfall allow for erc20 transactions to be private. You can wrap Bitcoin into an Ethereum erc20 asset (WBTC) and clean it and unlink it for use back on the Bitcoin network. Dark Net Marketplaces can also just require private wrapped assets and inherit all of the multisig and contracting capabilities on the Ethereum network right now. Bitcoin's Lightning Network can also unlink transactions, but you have to trust that no intermediary nodes are recording transactions. You can just make a payment channel between two addresses you happen control, and then send them onchain from the new address, OR Dark Net Markets can just have payment channels for deposits. It would make the government have to spend even more resources to make their own nodes to track transactions, or would simply just remove their onchain blockchain sleuthing capability.
powerset 7y ago
> copmetent Thought this was a typo at first, but given the context maybe the spelling was intentional and humorous!
pfundstein 7y ago
This is the tech that Monero is built on which the article does mention markets are implementing.

rolltiide 7y ago

Great article! Aside from the pointing out expansion of the markets I would have liked for the author to show how the costs for taxpayers are rising with the returns for the government diminishing. With Silk Road 1.0 it was mostly a single government that had a lengthy expensive investigation that resulted in upwards of $50 million in Bitcoin seized and auctioned off. With the massive expansion of these market places, MULTIPLE governments are involved and barely seize or disrupt $1 million any more. A better use of their population's money is consumer protection. These market places have enough high quality but regular testing and alerts would protect their citizens. Governments have consequences by being seen to endorse drugs, I think this is a happy medium as the private sector has already picked up the slack here, and the government doesn't need to be seen as legalizing and regulating in stores just to keep people safe. Instead it can just review on these high quality marketplaces.

vernie 7y ago

Great.

buildbuildbuild 7y ago

Ironically this is best privately viewed in Tor Browser to avoid their “You’re in private mode” paywall. (or at the official nytimes3xbfgragh.onion) Also I am questioning my assumptions as to how HN works. I submitted this yesterday, how was a duplicate URL not detected? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20155909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20155909

freedomben 7y ago
This has happened to me before as well. I have no proof at all, but I suspect that certain users just get straight in and can get to the front page with only a few upvotes, while other users (like myself) can get 15 upvotes in an hour or two and never make it above 75. Would love a little more transparency from HN. I know it will enable manipulators but it would also help people like us not feel as shafted (which has really disincentivized me against submitting stories).
- ufmace 7y ago
  The user that submitted this story has a pretty new account with modest karma and only 5 stories submitted. Odd that they would have some kind of special permission implemented by YC. On the other hand, all 5 of their submitted stories have pretty high number of upvotes. Maybe they know something about HN clickbait and the best time to submit stories? Maybe they're one of a batch of accounts of someone who does have some special top-level exceptions? Pretty strange.
  - robbintt 7y ago
    I've been lightly submitting personal work to reddit and hacker news for years and it's pretty obvious that post title, time of day, and day of week are the primary driving factors.

driverdan 7y ago

> Dark web markets are viewed as one of the crucial sources of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. [citation needed] I strongly doubt this claim. Dark net markets are a fraction of all drug sales.

Synaesthesia 7y ago
I think that’s possible for the case of fenatyl and similar synthetic opioids. They and other RC’s have been largely popularized through the internet. Because the amounts required are quite low it’s actually plausible.
- bduerst 7y ago
  RC's have been a plague on the dark net markets for almost a year now. They're basically the new fentanyl of contaminates, but without easy detection methods and even more unknown side effects.
bredren 7y ago
“Crucial” != majority. I think dark web may allow people in suburbs and other “nice” places to attain opioids more easily. Deaths are higher profile and possibly a more important voting block.

Sargos 7y ago

These drug markets are open to the entire internet and the customers and suppliers are global. The fact that US officials consider this their jurisdiction is troubling to say the least. All of this, in my opinion, unsafe propagation of misinformation is harmful to all users of the service and not just those based in the US. Would we be okay if Russia decided that Facebook breaks its laws and then went and created fake profiles to cause enough disturbances to make people quit using the service? I would think not.

vkou 7y ago
> These drug markets are open to the entire internet and the customers and suppliers are global. The fact that US officials consider this their jurisdiction is troubling to say the least. If you're marketing securities to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the SEC. If you're selling food to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the FDA. If you're selling drugs to US citizens, that part of your operations is under the jurisdiction of the DEA. I don't understand what's troubling about it. Don't want to be under the jurisdiction of US agencies? Don't do business in the US.
- nameismypw 7y ago
  > Don't want to be under the jurisdiction of US agencies? Don't do business in the US. The Internet is not "business in the US," hence GP's comment. Am I "doing business in the US" by posting this comment? This is really just digital hegemony from the USA.
  - lagg 7y ago
    Sorry for being mildly off-topic but the other comment with regards to police being complete morons and causing violence on purpose is pretty much my take on the situation. Definitely justifies my incredulity at the idea. Even the idea of getting weed in a legal state through the mail is strange to me. Let alone this. That said, good luck convincing a great portion of Americans that the US isn't the end-all be-all authority on the internet and that's where all the packets go like a big funnel. Like we never went beyond campuses, token rings and pre-OSI model hackery. The logic is: We engineered the prototype, therefore internet always murika #1. (Signed, an American happy that foreigners are finally calling us out on this behavior. Literally took you centuries)

anonymous5133 7y ago

So maybe perhaps going after the supply side of the drug trade is a waste of time? As long as there is a demand, there will be a supplier. I think we need to get tougher on drug treatment. Make it a mandatory punishment.

theturtletalks 7y ago

To see how drug sellers are using extensive tech to avoid detection, read this: https://opaque.link/post/dropgang/ https://opaque.link/post/dropgang/

pier25 7y ago

The war on drugs is such a waste of money. Not only alcohol and tobacco account for many more deaths than all the illegal drugs combined [1], but the effects of alcohol on society are worse than any other substance[2]. This is information from the UK but I very much doubt it will be much different from any other first world country. Plus people who want to consume drugs will find a way to do it, legal or not. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/alcohol-drinking-smoking-drugs-addictive-health-worst-bad-cannabis-cocaine-amphetamines-opioids-a8345741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/alcohol-drinking-s... [2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/206300.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/206300.php

narag 7y ago
I can't help wondering... is alcohol damage worse because more people use it because it's legal? I accept weed is somehow different, but what if opiates or amphetamine were legal and easy to get? You can convince me that testing mind-altering drugs as an experience is a human right or something like that. Really, no sarcasm here. But dealing with a sizable portion of a society getting hooked on artificial gratification is on a totally different level. Not liking war on drugs, still don't buy that 'alcohol is worse' is a valid point. On the contrary, it seems proof of how things can go astray when you normalize an addictive substance.
- pier25 7y ago
  > is alcohol damage worse because more people use it because it's legal? It's certainly possible but if we look at countries like Portugal people actually consume less drugs now than before the decriminalization. https://beckleyfoundation.org/2018/04/23/lessons-from-portugal-the-case-for-drug-policy-reform/ https://beckleyfoundation.org/2018/04/23/lessons-from-portug...
  - narag 7y ago
    In Portugal they can't buy drugs legally. So they need to resort to black market, just like anywhere else, except countries where weed is legal from authorized vendors. If you're caught with heroin, I understand the government makes an intervention, confiscating the substance and forcing you into some rehab program. Of course better than jail, but still far from walking into a bar and, no joke, asking for a beer. As an aside, could somebody (specially someone with specific knowledge) enlighten me about the difference with Spain? Here possesion of weed was legalized in the eighties (though later re-punished in public with a fine and confiscation) and possesion in general was decriminalized while it's an amount small enough to assume it's for own use. Has the situation in Portugal really improved there because of legal status or because rehab programs receiving proper funding? Or even economic upturn?

throwaway100773 7y ago

Yet prescription opioids are still a thing.

braindead_in 7y ago

No mention of Dream Market. They just shut down. Didn't exit scam, didn't get seized. Probably the admins made enough money and retired.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

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jason_slack 7y ago

"Shortly before that, American authorities took down a news website, known as DeepDotWeb, that lived on the traditional web, providing reviews and links to dark net sites. The absence of the site is likely to make it harder for newcomers to find their way to dark web markets." So, it is illegal to advertise dark web markets? DeepDotWeb must have done something else to get taken down?