
The Untold Story of Silk Road (2015) - miki123211
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/
======
dmix
The Silk Road was written in PHP wasn’t it? Did Ross write it himself or did
he hire someone or use some 3rd party e-commerce platform and customized it?

The story mentions him writing an Amazon web scraping script then managing the
bookstores e-commerce website but not much else prior.

He just doesn’t sound like a full blown programmer by 2011. Not to mention
running a Tor hidden service, managing the servers, managing his anonymity,
Bitcoin tumbling, security, etc. He must have had to learn a ton on the fly,
yet he figured it all out pretty fast it seems.

I haven’t read the whole story yet though, so maybe he was more technically
inclined initially than it appears.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Ross certainly seems precocious but there is also an established theory that
he had help from at least one heavily involved mentor who may have even shared
the DPR handle and access.

~~~
companyhen
Check these articles out, he had at least one mentor

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgajmv/these-
are-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgajmv/these-are-the-two-
forgotten-architects-of-the-silk-road)

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43e7y/fbi-
says-s...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43e7y/fbi-says-
suspected-silk-road-architect-variety-jones-has-been-arrested)

~~~
zipwitch
So, he really wasn't the original Dread Pirate Roberts?

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Unless the parallel reconstructionism is really that good, the evidence that
he was the "original" DPR in the Silk Road context is pretty strong. Whether
he was the DPR that ordered the hits or someone else had taken over by/for
that point is what is more fuzzy. The 2013 Wired DPR interview was officially
with DPR the Second, according to DPR the Second. [1]

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-
int...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-
with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/)

------
teh_infallible
Actually, I think this is the real “untold story of Silk Road”:

[https://freeross.org/railroaded/](https://freeross.org/railroaded/)

~~~
digianarchist
I honestly don’t know how people can hand-waive away the murder for hire
charges like this site does.

~~~
teh_infallible
Maybe because the whole thing was fabricated by corrupt law enforcement
agents?

~~~
geezerjay
> Maybe because the whole thing was fabricated by corrupt law enforcement
> agents?

That conspiracy theory isn't compatible with the arrest of one of the alledged
hitmen that was posted a few comments bellow.

~~~
A2017U1
> That conspiracy theory

Aren't two agents heavily involved in the case now in jail as a result of it?

Hardly a stretch to make, not to mention the case got thrown out and never
even made it to trial. It's certainly in the realm of plausibility.

------
randycupertino
Anyone who enjoys this article should check out American Kingpin written by
Nick Bilton. I finished the audiobook recently and loved it! Very well
researched, great story, nonfiction that reads like a fiction thriller, and
great narration. Loved it.

~~~
shkkmo
This article is poorly reported drivel that serves only to promote the
prosecutor's narrative without asking any of the difficult questions involved
in this case.

~~~
geezerjay
You are referring to which questions?

~~~
shkkmo
Questions about parallel reconstruction and warrants.

Questions about how much responsibility platform providers bear for the
content they facilitate and who gets to call themselves a platform provider.

Questions about provenance and chain of custody of digital evidence and
question about the admissibility of digital evidence when investigators make
major forensic mistakes.

Questions about unequal ability to call experts and prosecutorial tricks to
suppress evidence and disadvantage the defense.

Questions about jurisdiction overlap, competition between agencies and
localities as they relate to political pressure in high profile
investigations.

There are so many interesting and highly relevant questions brought up by this
case and this article pretty much ignores them.

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derekp7
Just out of curiosity, is it actually legal for the FBI to send someone a
package, then use that package as pretense to arrest them? I thought there
were all sorts of rules against that.

~~~
wmf
One way to look at it is that law enforcement people are trained in what
evidence is admissible and what isn't, so they understand and have an
incentive to follow proper procedures. But this can become self-fulfilling if
people give law enforcement unlimited benefit of the doubt, allowing abuses to
happen unchecked.

------
mindslight
So much conflict and waste caused by the desire to restrict how other people
may alter their own consciousness.

------
mito88
murderous kingpin?

:)

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n00bdude
I remember reading this back around when it was written - and haven't read a
WIRED article I've enjoyed since.

Know this is slightly off-topic, but does anyone have another WIRED article
they enjoyed reading?

Maybe of this Longform Style?

~~~
ahartman00
Here is a very long article by Neal Stephenson about how the internet is
connected around the world. He travels along the actual wire.
[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

~~~
n00bdude
This article is great! Thanks for sharing

