
Australian police prosecute man for buying drugs via Tor and Silk Road - jval
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/secret-website-harboured-drugs-smorgasbord-court-hears-20130131-2dlw3.html
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hexonexxon
They didn't circumvent anything.

(1) over 10,700 clear text msgs about drug dealing (2) announced to a forum
probably watched by every police outfit in the world he was in Australia and
about to start importing a lot of product and selling locally, basically
inviting Aus feds to contact him and set up stings (3) imported drugs directly
from a known drug exporting country (netherlands) through probably the
toughest customs on earth who scan every package, who no doubt flag everything
including envelopes from there for investigation.

I do like his defence of being the village idiot though. Seems to have worked
since he's only getting 2-3yrs, which means 1yr and parole.

"Mr Jassar told Judge Murphy that Ms Ormsby was in court and that her piece –
Silk Road: The eBay of Illegal Drugs – was the first views on the website by a
journalist." lol Adrien Chen, your thunder stolen.

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kapnobatairza
I do agree with all of your advice, but there is something more to this.

If it was a simple package intercept alone, there would be no way for them to
link the suspect to SR, let alone link him to a certain SR profile, let alone
getting access to private information on that profile (his transaction
history, which I assume was given as evidence of the 11 alleged importations).

Either he gave up that information somehow (as the TOR browser doesn't save
credentials), used a username he is "known" to use on the clearnet, or the
more nefarious possibility:

It could be likely that Aussie feds set up a fake NL vendor account in order
to set up a "deal" with that target. This would give them his real name and
address (thus linking him to the SR profile) and ultimately establish PC for
the raid. By sending him small amounts to establish trust (giving the feds
evidence of the 11 "importations") they probably got him with a much larger
importation charge then he otherwise would have gotten.

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leoedin
It seems more likely that they seized his computers. The guy clearly wasn't
very good at covering his tracks (lots of text messages show that) and he
plead guilty - an indication that he was to some extent cooperating with the
police.

~~~
kapnobatairza
If they seized his computer they wouldn't know his SR name unless he left SR
logged in and the TOR browser open. The TOR browser doesn't save credentials
otherwise.

~~~
leoedin
You're giving the guy a lot more credit than he deserves. Beyond the fact you
don't have to use the TOR browser to access TOR, it's fairly easy to change
the settings to remember passwords. Maybe he was forgetful? Maybe along with
his guilty plea he gave them his credentials? Maybe he used the same username
and password for everything?

If they'd set up a sting involving a fake seller, it would be in their
interest to publicise it. Our drug enforcement process is built around
throwing the book at a few people to attempt to discourage many. If people
thought that the seller they were buying off was likely to be a cop, that
would significantly discourage SR buying.

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jacques_chester
Most of the time, when a stern announcement is made about how We Will Catch
You, they try to hint that they have magical cryptography-busting powers.

All BS, of course. Most such people are charged because Customs open a
percentage of all packages entering the country and have a look inside. And
it's not necessarily at random; the method for reliably fooling a good sniffer
dog has yet to be devised.

Until someone solves the problem that you can't easily do dual key encryption
on molecules, people are going to keep getting busted by old fashioned customs
and police work.

If he made a mistake, it wasn't some Tor-related misconfiguration. It's that
he didn't bribe the right Customs officials.

~~~
dekz
But to install Tor and then leave such evidence behind on your PC screams of
gross negligence. They obviously confiscated his electronic devices and were
easily able to identify his SR account and various postings.

Had they not found that, would they have a case if they could only prove
someone was sending him drugs in the mail?

~~~
jacques_chester
I don't think having Tor installed would prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that
you did anything.

Having thousands of SMSes discussing what drugs you have for sale might be a
bit harder to explain.

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damian2000
I don't think they circumvented Tor. The police tracked him via mail
deliveries, then just seized all his computers and mobile phones to get
evidence.

~~~
jval
Thanks for that, I'll change the article title.

I was going off this Ars article which made it seem as though the Australian
cops were quite suggestive, but you're probably right.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-
cops-t...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/australian-cops-tout-
arrest-of-man-for-bitcoin-drug-deal/)

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antihero
I really wish governments would stop policing the substances we put into our
bodies. It really is none of their business.

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drivebyacct2
It's amazing the stupid things people do to compromise their own identity on
Tor. You could take all of my computers and you'd never know that I've used
Tor (unless you installed a hardware key logger and then replanted the device)

~~~
hexonexxon
Or looked at your ISP logs. Did you use Obfsproxy every single time or tunnel
Tor through a VPN to your bridge node? probably not

~~~
Tuna-Fish
No-one sane does anything seriously criminal trough their own link. I built a
simple directional wlan antenna. In my small city, within range of my balcony,
there are some 300 open or WEP-protected networks. Not that I'd ever steal
someone else's internet...

~~~
nwh
Breaking into someone's network is quite a nasty offence in itself. In
Australia (where the story is from), that's hundreds of thousands in fines and
jail time.

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LatvjuAvs
What a great news for our free civilization.

Drug free society ruled by iron fist!

