Drugs e-souk Silk Road back from the dead with new Dread Pirate Roberts Barely a month after the FBI shuttered the first Silk Road online black market, the secretive souk is back with another "Dread Pirate Roberts" (DPR) at the helm – and the operator has added PGP encryption for good measure. "Over the last four weeks, we have implemented a complete security overhaul. This overhaul marks the dawn …
Remember when Freedom Hosting was taken down and it's owner was arrested? The law enforcement officials involved added a JavaScript exploit to unmask the anonymity of Tor users.
Never used Silk Road, but I seriously doubt that the FBI wouldn't take advantage of the vacuum created by the loss of Silk Road to start collecting intelligence on users of the service.
I would hope that previous Silk Road users would see through this possible ruse and avoid it like the plague if they want to avoid compromise.
The reason for Silk Roads popularity was that not every 'buddy down the street' sells pure stuff.
For example, the feedback system of Silk Road helped geeks to buy safe(er), pure MDMA disco biscuts, and not potentially dangerous PMA.
Anybody who joined the Fellowship Of The Weed could find a nice mellow smoke (a variety of sativas and indicas with varying THC & CBD levels) rather than the "two-tokes-and-you're-wasted" stuff sold for maximum proffit by many street dealers.
FBI Agent#1: Hey i heard we're all gonna get assigned back to anti-terrorizm duties now that we fitted up Mr Pirate-Roberts with conspiracy murder and taken down the silk road.
FBI Agent#2: More airport duties, searching smelly fat travellers and pissing off anyone that looks even slightly middle-eastern? Fuck that, lets set up 'silk road #2' and bait some more internet users into buying drugs. I'll get the boss pissed tonight after work and get him on-board with this...
Yes, but without the mask.
The FBI would be negligent if they didn't set up a replacement silk road to capitalise on their recent successes. And if you want taxpayer value from their work, this is a good and efficient way to gather intelligence and to frighten people out of the market once they're unsure if successive gangs of criminals are trustworthy.
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