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If you need to ask these questions you are not qualified to run such a site, or at least not to ask anyone else to trust that you are not going to screw up when

by evgen 13y ago

If you need to ask these questions you are not qualified to run such a site, or at least not to ask anyone else to trust that you are not going to screw up when setting it up or at some point in the future and break anonymity. The more you move away from "free speech" to avoiding regulation and toward criminal activity the greater the chance that someone out there will actually try to see how good you really are, and then your whole house of cards will fall down. Seriously, don't.

yoha 13y ago
From the way the question was phrased, I think this is precisely for learning how to do such things. You still need to start somewhere, and as long as you know you should not take inconsiderate risks, you can screw up sometimes and learn from your errors.
- patio11 13y ago
  Importantly, you don't get to learn from your mistakes in "opsec." Dread Pirate Roberts asked a question about connecting to a tor site using curl on StackOverflow under his own name. Seconds later he realized "D'oh, that is in hindsight a bad move." and changed his name to a pseudonym. Choose your own adventure: a) He got to learn from his mistake. b) That incident was recounted years later in the criminal indictment.
  - girvo 13y ago
    Eh, I still think they used the NSA + parallel construction to bring him down. I've read the court docs, and I still think that's the case. Of course, your point is still valid. Perhaps even more so.
  - refurb 13y ago
    That was pretty shocking to read in the indictment. He obviously didn't think it was a serious issue at the time, but jesus, could you imagine how it felt to read about that one mistake years later? Makes you wonder what you have left online that might bit you in the ass years from now. I know i certainly couldn't run for office now!
  - gwern 13y ago
    It's not clear that was a mistake. The indictment merely lays out relevant evidence in chronological order, not in investigative order: we don't actually know how the FBI cracked DPR and found Ross Ulbricht. My own favored theory is that they only learned DPR==Ross Ulbricht in early 2013 when DPR paid for the first hit (of Curtis Green) by wiring 2 bank payments from an Australian bank account (Ulbricht lived in Australia with his sister for a year or two while running SR) to the undercover FBI agent. Yes, bank wires, not bitcoins. Since banks offer essentially zero security, it's very plausible his true name was on it and everything after that was just filling in the details as they investigated 'so who is this Ulbricht guy anyway?' (These sort of leaks are always much easier to find in hindsight: no one ever noted the Shroomery or Bitcointalk or Stackoverflow leaks before the indictment was released, yet once you knew what you were looking for, you could find the posts in minutes.)
deleted 13y ago
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by evgen 13y ago

yoha 13y ago

From the way the question was phrased, I think this is precisely for learning how to do such things. You still need to start somewhere, and as long as you know you should not take inconsiderate risks, you can screw up sometimes and learn from your errors.

patio11 13y ago
Importantly, you don't get to learn from your mistakes in "opsec." Dread Pirate Roberts asked a question about connecting to a tor site using curl on StackOverflow under his own name. Seconds later he realized "D'oh, that is in hindsight a bad move." and changed his name to a pseudonym. Choose your own adventure: a) He got to learn from his mistake. b) That incident was recounted years later in the criminal indictment.
- girvo 13y ago
  Eh, I still think they used the NSA + parallel construction to bring him down. I've read the court docs, and I still think that's the case. Of course, your point is still valid. Perhaps even more so.
- refurb 13y ago
  That was pretty shocking to read in the indictment. He obviously didn't think it was a serious issue at the time, but jesus, could you imagine how it felt to read about that one mistake years later? Makes you wonder what you have left online that might bit you in the ass years from now. I know i certainly couldn't run for office now!
- gwern 13y ago
  It's not clear that was a mistake. The indictment merely lays out relevant evidence in chronological order, not in investigative order: we don't actually know how the FBI cracked DPR and found Ross Ulbricht. My own favored theory is that they only learned DPR==Ross Ulbricht in early 2013 when DPR paid for the first hit (of Curtis Green) by wiring 2 bank payments from an Australian bank account (Ulbricht lived in Australia with his sister for a year or two while running SR) to the undercover FBI agent. Yes, bank wires, not bitcoins. Since banks offer essentially zero security, it's very plausible his true name was on it and everything after that was just filling in the details as they investigated 'so who is this Ulbricht guy anyway?' (These sort of leaks are always much easier to find in hindsight: no one ever noted the Shroomery or Bitcointalk or Stackoverflow leaks before the indictment was released, yet once you knew what you were looking for, you could find the posts in minutes.)

deleted 13y ago

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