
Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum - killnine
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dhs-reddit-dark-web-drug-forum/
======
nickysielicki
We (speaking as a netizen) need Usenet 2.0; eg: something that can fulfill the
role of reddit that is decentralized/distributed. Perhaps reddit can even
transition into being a reader (a la google reader) for people that don't want
to set up their own node.

I'm not saying that drug discussion is the quintessential act that deserves to
be protected, but I am worried that the government has such an easy avenue to
get this information. What happens when it's something far more political?
What happens when they serve a gag order alongside their subpoena? What
happens when the people talking aren't technically inclined, and don't use
Tor? (By the way, I would bet these people were using Tor and this subpoena is
useless.)

~~~
pjc50
Well, Usenet 1.0 was decentralised, and people need to think about the
disadvantages. In the early 2000s well over 50% of the traffic was spam
cancels. An forum without an "owner" who can delete posts and effectively ban
spammers and "abuse" will promptly be filled with spam and abuse.

The issue of "abuse" which is harmful to people other than users of the forum
should also be considered carefully.

~~~
im2w1l
Web of trust-based spam filtering takes some effort to use, but is a workable
solution.

~~~
technofiend
WoT is pointless when people can manufacture identities that trust each other
and build a fake trust score for an id used to spam or whatever.

~~~
dublinben
WoT can't be effectively spammed, unless those spam accounts are trusted by
people _you_ trust. The spam accounts can vouch for each other all they want
(a la Twitter), but you control whose trust you value.

~~~
grrowl
It only takes one break in the chain to compromise the entire web of trust.
With such wide-spread connections across the planet these days, the chance of
someone you trust three times removed accidentally breaking that chain is
quite real.

~~~
FreeFull
Let's say you see some spam. You could have the software tell you which part
of the web has made the spam trusted, and then you could manually mark that
part of the web as untrusted. If there are only a few breaks in the chain like
that, it'd be a workable solution.

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ianstallings
Warning: this opinion probably won't fit into the HN zeitgeist.

If you commit a crime online don't be surprised when they seek to gain
evidence against you. This isn't a liberty issue. This is a _you 're probably
a criminal_ issue and law enforcement is coming after you. I don't protect
drug dealers in my neighborhood because of their _right to free speech and
personal liberty_ so why would I protect these guys?

It just always makes me chuckle when criminals won't face the fact that they
are criminals. They'll deflect, ignore, and basically try anything to escape
the reality - they broke the rules of society and now society wants to punish
them.

And just to give you a little background - I've done some time in a few bids
for violence and drugs. I know what it means to be a criminal because I grew
up as one. I have _no_ pity. None. You should've made better decisions. I made
a choice to leave that behind a long time ago, and you should too.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _It just always makes me chuckle when criminals won 't face the fact that
> they are criminals._

"I know, right? Why don't all those damn sodomites just take their chemical
castration and shut up and accept the fact they're criminals?"

~~~
sliverstorm
My favorite legal defense, moral relativism.

 _" One day, this heinous crime I have committed might not be illegal. Knowing
that, how can you possibly convict me!?"_

~~~
pyre
The general stance that "you broke the law, now you're a criminal" may be
technically correct, but most people issuing such statements group "criminals"
into a singular group and feel that the serial murderer and the child rapist
are no different than the guy that forgot he had an orange in his car when
crossing the border. "You've broken the rules of society, you are no better
than a vagabond!"

In light of this, how can one not lose faith in the law when so many laws that
punish people for stupid things are on the books just because a bunch of
religious people want to _force_ everyone to "follow their religion" to a
minor extent or how the system is setup in a way that encourages government
prosecutors to view the people in the cases that are put on their desk as
little more than pawns in a game to "make a name" for themselves?

[There's also the fact that judges/lawyers try to hide the idea of jury
nullification from juries too...]

~~~
tedunangst
Welcome to life in a democracy. Stupid people voting for stupid laws. Why
can't we just put the smart people in charge?

~~~
Dirlewanger
Because all the smart people are smart enough to see how much of a soul-
sucking cluster-fuck politics is. That, and one could argue that if they're
put on this earth to live a life of happiness, how could one ever possibly
achieve this through a life in politics, knowing what they are getting
themselves into?

~~~
FireBeyond
Ehhh, that's a hand-wringing, self-serving generalization.

"We have the answers. We're just not soulless enough to want to go through
(and perhaps change, in the process) the effort to supply them and make them
help."

Platitudes rarely change things.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Whether you think so or not, personal incentives motivate people in their
careers, salary being one of the biggest and weightiest. I'm not saying there
aren't that many personal incentives to a life of politics, but at face value
isn't exactly the most attractive career path.

~~~
FireBeyond
Politics isn't just about being smart, though. It's about being 'charming'
(sometimes for better, sometimes for worse), charismatic, a good communicator
(notwithstanding the teams of people behind the scenes to help with this).

I get that it's not everyone's desired path (it's certainly not mine), I just
think that saying "many of us are smart enough to have the answers, we just
choose not to get involved in politics" is perhaps an... underestimation... of
the complexity of some of society's problems.

------
dmschulman
Wow, Gwern from gwern.net is implicated in this. No idea he moderates that
subreddit.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out considering Gwern has a few
essays on self-experimentation with drugs and discloses they were purchased
from Darknet vendors. Despite the articles pertaining to illicit substances
the experiments in question were exceedingly academic (like much of Gwern's
writings).

~~~
jrockway
The feds don't have that good of a case against Gwern, if they even wanted to
prosecute him for simple possession. He could be writing fiction, for all they
know; to convict him in court, they'd have to prove that he possesses illegal
substances, which he has presumably consumed by now.

I'm not a lawyer but I don't foresee much prison time in Gwern's future. There
are bigger fish to fry.

~~~
rudolf0
I suspect they were just interested in interrogating Gwern for what he knew
about some of the market operators and various schemes related to them.

It's possible they might've planned to use some of his drug purchases and
position in the community as leverage to get him to talk, but I strongly doubt
they're interested in prosecuting him.

------
nthitz
More details from gwerm here
[http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/30tudk/psa_5...](http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/30tudk/psa_5_reddit_accounts_subpoenaed_by_ice/)

~~~
NhanH
Is that the same gwern with the blogs that showed up on HN from time to time?

~~~
gwern
Yes.

~~~
nickysielicki
gwern, you're the man.

------
paganel
From NSWGreat's AMA linked in the article:

> The Darknet is amazing, its changing the drug scene for the better. Its
> taking away the violence and the dangers that are inherit with buying drugs.

Never thought about it this way, but as everyone is talking and writing
endlessly about how taxi rides will be revolutionized by billion-dollar
Silicon Valley start-ups I found this insight about the drug-market
fascinating. Online selling of drugs probably means less deaths of young
(mostly black) people fighting for "street corners" and also less people
killed by the Mexican cartels.

~~~
mattdotc
>Never thought about it this way

I'm trying to be better about reading too much into a single comment, but I
think this means that you either have a long-held belief on the 'war on drugs'
(one way or the other) or that you've simply never given it any thought as it
may be a matter which you may feel does not concern you (it actually affects
almost everybody).

In either case, here are a few materials that you might find interesting.

Milton Friedman on the 'War on Drugs' (1 of 3):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyystXOfDqo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyystXOfDqo)

Noam Chomsky on the 'War on Drugs':
[http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199804--.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199804--.htm)

To be honest, it's been a while since I've read/watched either of the above,
and there might be a good amount of overlap between them.

------
downandout
I actually predicted that this would happen [1]. That particular Evolution
thread had a ton of very incriminating statements in it. This shouldn't be
surprising; don't post in public forums talking about your highly illegal
activities.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9229342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9229342)

~~~
NegatioN
I concede. :)

I'm surprised so few are being targeted, now that they actually do something
about it.

~~~
downandout
I was actually surprised by the low number as well.

~~~
gwern
This is just what we know of, because I'm involved. As far as I know, none of
the other 4 accounts have talked publicly about the subpoena, so that suggests
most people keep quiet about such things.

------
jamisteven
Not sure how willing they will be to hand this over given the recent events
surrounding A/Swartz' suicide.

~~~
gwern
They don't have any choice in the matter.

------
jjulius
One would assume that the users of deep web-related subreddits would take just
as many precautions to protect their privacy when using Reddit as they do when
on the deep web. Just because you don't actually conduct illegal activity via
Reddit doesn't mean that it's impossible for someone to connect the dots to
your deep web forum account(s) with enough effort.

If people turned out to truly be that foolish then I will have little, if any,
sympathy for them.

~~~
dublinben
>One would assume

One would be quite foolish to assume strong OpSec from drug seekers and their
enablers. We've seen case after case resulting from these busts with
absolutely trivial investigations necessary to locate the defendants.

~~~
cwkoss
Not a /r/DarkNetMarket customer, but I read it to keep the pulse on that
section of the Bitcoin economy. You're very right. Every few months someone
posts a "tails is overkill, here's my (misconfigured insecure) mobile TOR
setup that is just as good". I'd wager many darknetmarkets customers aren't
keeping tor properly up to date either.

~~~
dublinben
Security is hard and not fun. Especially when you're high.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
And you need only slip up once. If you were sloppy at the start and
straightened up later, too bad, the feds know who you are now.

------
siddboots
Off topic, but is there a name for the fad of having side-pane elements
perpetually zoom and fade in and out as I read a blog post? Is there a reason
for it?

------
jacquesm
Any idea on Conde Nast's response to all this? If they were looking for an
excuse to shutdown DNM then this would be it.

~~~
NegativeK
Reddit is a part of the parent company of Conde Nast; they've been siblings
for a while.

------
lurkinggrue
I hope they were going though two vpn's running in a virual machine.

------
anonbanker
if you don't assume that Reddit is under pervasive surveillance, you are
making a huge mistake.

you should probably assume the same of HN, or most things that don't live on
I2P or Freenet.

------
stefantalpalaru
If you're having problems using Reddit through Tor, use HTTPS. Better yet,
force the HTTPS redirections in the Reddit settings.

This info is, of course, redundant or too late for the people talking about
illegal activities on that particular subreddit, but it might come in handy
for when they come searching for you.

~~~
nl
Not sure why you are giving this advice.

HTTPS won't do anything to stop a subpoena for IP information(?)

~~~
MichaelGG
I believe he's saying that accessing Reddit using Tor with HTTP is sometimes
problematic but using HTTPS can fix the problems. (It's been a while but I
think that might mirror my own experience.)

~~~
stefantalpalaru
That's correct. Last time I tried it, Reddit was borking HTTP POST requests
made through Tor. Now they seem to redirect everybody to HTTPS after login and
the problem is solved.

------
robbyoconnor
ugh.

