Behind That Curtain 5
The Guardian’s Chips with Everything podcast explores the darknet.
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June 25, 2016 at 5:29 pm
I guess it didn’t occur to them that the FBI, as well as Brit law enforcement, know how to use the TOR and have infiltrated the dark web on both sides, as buyers and sellers in sting operations, rather successfully. The only limiting factor has been manpower.
June 25, 2016 at 9:54 pm
Have you listened to the podcast?
They were guided by a security expert and had lawyers with them the whole time. They took care to violate no laws, spy on no innocents, and download/purchase no malware. They just pointed and looked.
The podcast itself is a little on the gee-whiz-look-at-that side of things, but still a nice intro for persons who don’t know how this stuff works.
June 26, 2016 at 1:03 am
Yes. I listened to all of it. I have been an expert for a public defenders office in a federal case involving materials bought and sold on the dark web.
June 26, 2016 at 10:20 pm
I know that you know quite a bit about security enough and that, from time to time, you have skewered the myth-makers at your site. Given my interests, I always found those posts quite interesting.
But, in reflecting about it, I must say that you make a good point. Even in a cursory intro like that podcast, they should have mentioned how the FBI brought down the Silk Road. They did sort of leave an impression that the Darknet is impregnable. It ain’t.
It’s a dark alley, but that’s all it is. Like any conversations in a dark alley, the conversations there can be overheard.
Thanks.
June 27, 2016 at 1:01 pm
They brought down BMR, which was Black Market Reloaded, too, more or less. The case I mentioned was on actions conducted through BMR and it loosely linked other cases, from England to NYC and Florida to CA,
There’s not enough manpower to cover absolutely everything but it’s also not surprising that law enforcement has been tenaciously and successfully into it. In many ways the darknet is no more special or unique than the FIDO-net/phone line linked pirate/malware/hacker bulletin boards systems of the early Nineties. Same idea, more bent on money-making because now the web allows for fast cash ecchange when then, it didn’t.
I recall when I was running a BBS, for a long while it was Opus, and for about a month or two a small commercial business had come up with away to take credit card payments through their network from BBS services, from which they would take a small piece, like PayPal before PayPal.. There appeared to be an opportunity for a boom, then someone whispered in their ear and it was killed. Teleflora, I believe it was called. Could be wrong, but that’s my memory of it.
Now it’s BitCoin, which even the criminals don’t want to hang onto.