Post: #1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2...-arrested/

Post: #2

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

Post: #3

(10-02-2013 05:06 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

possibly, I like the use of the word 'routinely'. Like police killed the suspect in custody as part of a routine beating.

Post: #4

Very interesting. Wonder if any more people related to the Silk Road or more generally the Deep Web will be arrested.

I've always been skeptical about Tor and the claimed anonymity it provides. Could work in theory, but in practice there are so few relays (a few thousand across the world) that an organization like the NSA could compensate/control the majority of them easily defeating the anonymity network. And, though I'm no conspiracy theorist, in light of the recent NSA disclosures about inserting government backdoors into commonly used cryptographic schemes, Tor seems like a perfect honeytrap since basically every single user is using it to do something illegal.

Post: #5

His Linkedin: Ross Ulbricht

Quote:I love learning and using theoretical constructs to better understand the world around me. Naturally therefore, I studied physics in college and worked as a research scientist for five years. I published my findings in peer reviewed journals five times over that period, first on organic solar cells and then on EuO thin-film crystals. My goal during this period of my life was simply to expand the frontier of human knowledge.

Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.

Post: #6

(10-02-2013 05:06 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

Before the NSA leaks, I'd hit you with a but not anymore. In case anyone doesn't know what parallel construction is: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/0...9R20130805

Post: #7

^ Cops call them "whisper searches."

It works like this: They'll get a call from up high telling them to be on the lookout for a certain car. No reason will be given.

The cop will be instructed to follow the car and wait for the driver to speed, fail to use a turn signal, etc.

From there, the cop makes the stop. The cop will search the car, regardless if consent is given.

Think about it. If you're a professional drug dealer or you're driving drugs from the cartel, would you consent to a search? Hell no. You have a lawyer on call and know your rights.

But who is a judge going to believe - a cop who said the driver consented to the search or a "scum bag" drug dealer who said he never consented to the search?

Whisper searches have been going on for years. No one quite knew where they came from. It was assumed that there were confidential informants or narcs.

Now we know that all of those stops were courtesy of the NSA.

Post: #8

In all my life, I've had one package show up in my post office box that was stamped "opened for inspection". It was a book I ordered from amazon by John Lilly, describing his experiments with LSD. This happened at least ten years ago. I asked for an explanation, but didn't get one. I did have to pay additional postage because the invoice that came with the book was determined by the postal service to be a letter.

Could this have been a random inspection? Sure. Do I believe that it was? Hell no. Even no-name nobodys get flagged, not just drug dealers and cartel associates.

Post: #9

Deleted

Post: #10

(10-02-2013 05:53 PM)Soma Wrote:  Very interesting. Wonder if any more people related to the Silk Road or more generally the Deep Web will be arrested.

I've always been skeptical about Tor and the claimed anonymity it provides. Could work in theory, but in practice there are so few relays (a few thousand across the world) that an organization like the NSA could compensate/control the majority of them easily defeating the anonymity network. And, though I'm no conspiracy theorist, in light of the recent NSA disclosures about inserting government backdoors into commonly used cryptographic schemes, Tor seems like a perfect honeytrap since basically every single user is using it to do something illegal.

Ulbright wasn't caught due to some flaw in the SR/Tor encryption system.

He was caught by careless errors in the public realm, most notably, using a fake email address in his Stack Overflow account that exactly matches the terminating string of text of SR's SSH public key AND tying his freaking real name to said account.

Here's the warrant if anyone is interested in the details:
http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/U...plaint.pdf

If the proper precautions were taken, no other arrests should be made, but eh - those were some stupid moves from Ulbright's part, so I don't know if he was strict in encrypting all sensitive information.

Post: #11

(10-02-2013 06:21 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

(10-02-2013 05:06 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

Before the NSA leaks, I'd hit you with a but not anymore. In case anyone doesn't know what parallel construction is: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/0...9R20130805

It's amazing to me that this is the reality we're living in. This is not science fiction or some dystopian projection of the future. This is the United States of America in the year 2013.

We woke up one day and found ourselves living in a police state.

Post: #12

(10-02-2013 10:04 PM)theArbiter Wrote:  

(10-02-2013 05:53 PM)Soma Wrote:  Very interesting. Wonder if any more people related to the Silk Road or more generally the Deep Web will be arrested.

I've always been skeptical about Tor and the claimed anonymity it provides. Could work in theory, but in practice there are so few relays (a few thousand across the world) that an organization like the NSA could compensate/control the majority of them easily defeating the anonymity network. And, though I'm no conspiracy theorist, in light of the recent NSA disclosures about inserting government backdoors into commonly used cryptographic schemes, Tor seems like a perfect honeytrap since basically every single user is using it to do something illegal.

Ulbright wasn't caught due to some flaw in the SR/Tor encryption system.

He was caught by careless errors in the public realm, most notably, using a fake email address in his Stack Overflow account that exactly matches the terminating string of text of SR's SSH public key AND tying his freaking real name to said account.

Here's the warrant if anyone is interested in the details:
http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/U...plaint.pdf

If the proper precautions were taken, no other arrests should be made, but eh - those were some stupid moves from Ulbright's part, so I don't know if he was strict in encrypting all sensitive information.

1) I never claimed he was caught by flaws in Tor.
2) Why should we believe how the FBI said that they caught him? It's certainly not in their best interests to give away their methods.
2) See parallel construction above.
3) My criticism of Tor still stands.

Post: #13

(10-02-2013 06:21 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

(10-02-2013 05:06 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

Before the NSA leaks, I'd hit you with a but not anymore. In case anyone doesn't know what parallel construction is: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/0...9R20130805

THIS HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO SOMEONE I KNOW!!!!!!!!

I FUCKING TOLD HIM....THAT IT IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO KNOW ANYTHING WITHOUT ILLEGALLY WIRETAPPING....IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!

A fucking DEA AGENT told his lawyer information about a conversation that happened BEFORE the investigation even started!!!!

My friend is now serving 20 years

ZRTP Phone, ZRTP Text, TOR (I still believe in it), and Fuck the police

Post: #14

No, we are not "living in a police state". The words "police state" have an actual and quite grim meaning and it is an insult to people who have experienced that meaning on their own flesh to say that of the US right now.

There are some very bad things in current US society -- most of them not really related to this NSA stuff but things like False Rape Accusations and other consequences of feminism, like that Duke rape case and worse -- but they do not remotely rise to the level of this being a police state.

For anyone who would like to learn a bit about what those words really mean, Armando Valladares' noble memoir Against All Hope is as good a place to start as any.

Enjoy reading it in the comfort and safety provided courtesy of the US of A.

Post: #15

(10-02-2013 10:52 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  No, we are not "living in a police state". The words "police state" have an actual and quite grim meaning and it is an insult to people who have experienced that meaning on their own flesh to say that of the US right now.

There are some very bad things in current US society -- most of them not really related to this NSA stuff but things like False Rape Accusations and other consequences of feminism, like that Duke rape case and worse -- but they do not remotely rise to the level of this being a police state.

For anyone who would like to learn a bit about what those words really mean, Armando Valladares' noble memoir Against All Hope is as good a place to start as any.

Enjoy reading it in the comfort and safety provided courtesy of the US of A.

Sorry man, but people here recognize we're sliding into a police state. We have an intelligence apparatus who already gathers more intelligence about law-abiding citizens than most dictatorships could only dream of.

The American intelligence apparatus doesn't need to rely upon neighbors informing upon neighbors like the East German Stasi - it can do all the work by itself, thank you very much, along with the help of Google and the telecom companies.

Comfort and safety? The executive branch has already established under Bush and Obama that it can lawfully:

arrest and detain without charge American citizens indefinitely
violate the 4th amendment and conduct unreasonable search and seizure without legal recourse
assassinate American citizens at will in the name of the war on terror

Post: #16

Against All Hope

Post: #17

I'm shocked.
Guarantee they will make a movie about this guy.

Fortunately there's about half a dozen other marketplaces exactly like SR.

Whack-a-mole, anyone?

Post: #18

(10-02-2013 06:21 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

(10-02-2013 05:06 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Quote:Agents found Ulbricht after Canadian border authorities routinely checked a package intended for his San Francisco home and discovered nine fake identification cards within, which Ulbricht allegedly was seeking to obtain to rent more servers to power Silk Road as it massively expanded.

This reeks of parallel construction.

Before the NSA leaks, I'd hit you with a but not anymore. In case anyone doesn't know what parallel construction is: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/0...9R20130805

From the article:

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.


Of course she' s never heard of it, they obviously aren't dumb enough to test illegal case fabrication techniques on Harvard Law professors-- where all the Congresskids go. LOL.

Post: #19

(10-02-2013 10:23 PM)Soma Wrote:  1) I never claimed he was caught by flaws in Tor.
2) Why should we believe how the FBI said that they caught him? It's certainly not in their best interests to give away their methods.
2) See parallel construction above.
3) My criticism of Tor still stands.

Fair enough for the first point.

I just wanted to clarify a bit of cryptography here. If your encryption system is virtually sound, then any data you sent can't be decrypted except by the person who possesses the private key.

No one can get around that. Not me, not the FBI, not Aliens.

It's just that your post gave me the impression that it is potentially impossible that Tor protect your anonymity. I'm not saying that it does, but it's not impossible: if things are done right (which is not at all a trivial task), then you could end up with a secure system. It's mathematics. I've studied cryptography before, so I'm not talking out of my ass.

Also, if you don't believe the FBI, then that's cool since this doesn't contradict anything I said.

The key here is that the warrant itself does contain sufficient information to implicate DPH. Not saying that the FBI didn't use other tools. However, the "public methods" were good enough, showing the lack of care from SR's owner.

As for the parallel construction, sure maybe. Again, it just doesn't contradict the science of cryptography or the point I'm trying to make.

Post: #20

Why Tor cannot be trusted:

It was created by the US Navy.

The US gov't provides a lot of backing for relays since it supposed to be used by political dissenters in other countries such as China, Burma, Russia, North Korea, Iran.

So guess who can read all that info and has backdoor accessibility? NSA

Post: #21

(10-03-2013 12:18 AM)theArbiter Wrote:  I just wanted to clarify a bit of cryptography here. If your encryption system is virtually sound, then any data you sent can't be decrypted except by the person who possesses the private key.

Agreed in theory, however the big point is if in practice. Of course, the NSA can't crack RSA or Diffie-Hellman in general. However, its not inconceivable that with their processing power they are able to factor, say, 2048-bit RSA keys. More importantly, the Snowden revelations showed us that the NSA has placed backdoors in adopted cryptographic standards. From the NYT article:

NYT Wrote:Cryptographers have long suspected that the agency planted vulnerabilities in a standard adopted in 2006 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and later by the International Organization for Standardization, which has 163 countries as members.

Classified N.S.A. memos appear to confirm that the fatal weakness, discovered by two Microsoft cryptographers in 2007, was engineered by the agency. The N.S.A. wrote the standard and aggressively pushed it on the international group, privately calling the effort "a challenge in finesse."

theArbiter Wrote:No one can get around that. Not me, not the FBI, not Aliens.

Well, if P=NP...

theArbiter Wrote:It's just that your post gave me the impression that it is potentially impossible that Tor protect your anonymity. I'm not saying that it does, but it's not impossible: if things are done right (which is not at all a trivial task), then you could end up with a secure system. It's mathematics. I've studied cryptography before, so I'm not talking out of my ass.

Tor has a well-known susceptibility to man-in-the-middle attacks. Further, as mentioned above, the Tor network only has a few thousand relays in the world and, since anyone can set one up, and further, since the most well-known service to use the network was just shut down, it is conceivable that many of them are compromised.

And I've also studied cryptography.

Post: #22

Cool. I'm aware of what you have written here. I'm of agreement.

As for the relays, you can secure that by using end-to-end encryption. This is where most casual users fall short.

In the worst case scenario that the NSA is able to gain access to all the nodes that you pass your data through, the most they'll know is that you've exchanged information between you and the site you went to. Not exactly optimal, but I can't imagine this alone as enough evidence for most cases. I still don't find this likely in any case.

Indeed, if you use an encryption system tampered with a back door, then things are compromised. It is a significant concern, but the NSA isn't the only entity working on cryptography, so I do believe there are relatively sound options out there. Just trying to pose as a foil to the apocalypse viewpoints out there.

Post: #23

It's not like I'm waiting for an order or anything

Post: #24

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/...e-roberts/

It appears that his take down was due to carlessness not because they broke down encryption...but i agree about parallel construction and how it reeks of it....how is it that he is so smart to do all these other things but so stupid to do that one thing?

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/
They are standing behind the privacy of TOR....

Post: #25

(10-02-2013 10:04 PM)theArbiter Wrote:  

(10-02-2013 05:53 PM)Soma Wrote:  Very interesting. Wonder if any more people related to the Silk Road or more generally the Deep Web will be arrested.

I've always been skeptical about Tor and the claimed anonymity it provides. Could work in theory, but in practice there are so few relays (a few thousand across the world) that an organization like the NSA could compensate/control the majority of them easily defeating the anonymity network. And, though I'm no conspiracy theorist, in light of the recent NSA disclosures about inserting government backdoors into commonly used cryptographic schemes, Tor seems like a perfect honeytrap since basically every single user is using it to do something illegal.

Ulbright wasn't caught due to some flaw in the SR/Tor encryption system.

He was caught by careless errors in the public realm, most notably, using a fake email address in his Stack Overflow account that exactly matches the terminating string of text of SR's SSH public key AND tying his freaking real name to said account.

Here's the warrant if anyone is interested in the details:
http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/U...plaint.pdf

If the proper precautions were taken, no other arrests should be made, but eh - those were some stupid moves from Ulbright's part, so I don't know if he was strict in encrypting all sensitive information.

He also posted his email address with his full legal name on bitcointalk using the same nickname as on a drug message board. Both of those message boards are fully public and googleable. As the indictment states, those nicknames/accounts were registered days apart. You can verify all of this for yourself.

This guy was smart enough to have the technical skills to set all this up and run it, but not particularly bright.

The only surprise is that it took them this long to find him given how hard he was trolling the media for years.