
Silk Road 2.0 Launches - teawithcarl
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/06/silk-road-2-0-launches-promising-a-resurrected-black-market-for-the-dark-web/
======
andrewljohnson
I'd never buy heroin from a website, but I see the Silk Road as cyber-civil-
disobedience, and I hope the persona of DPR and the site itself are as
unsinkable as they claim.

The drug war is a ghastly thing, and the number of people we lock up in the US
is more shameful than our foreign policy. You can begrudge the first DPR his
lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the
product of our system, and his shame is our shame.

~~~
subpixel
I don't see the Silk Roads of the world making much difference with regard to
the drug war.

Right now Silk Road is the eBay of drugs, where convenience is it's
competitive advantage. I can get some drug without visiting a shady person in
some shady place, but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the
bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. A huge part of the US
war on drugs takes place among and between those parties, with the US not
always supporting the side you might expect.

I'd be more excited about an Etsy of drugs, where people could buy whatever
they want straight from the source, bypassing the blood trail. Good luck
getting packages delivered from Afghanistan or Colombia though.

~~~
jbackus
You can use digital black markets like the silk road as an analogue for
legalization though. Forget how the vendors obtain the drugs for a second and
just analyze the differences in distribution and consumption between offline
and online drug trade.

Offline there is: \- competition via violence \- political narcoterrorism \-
profit maximization by product dilution \- profit maximization by product
deception (most street MDMA is amphetamine+nBOME mixture)

Online there is: \- competition via quality, price (violence impossible in
anonymous marketplace) \- political separation via anonymity \- drastically
reduced product dilution (people do reviews with sources like ecstasydata.org)
\- drastically reduced product deception (see "The LSD Avengers" for example)

When you contrast these aspects you see that the online marketplaces do
operate like a free market with the biggest difference being the incentives
associated with deceptive vending. I think thats valuable just because it
provides a real world simulation for what variables of legalization would look
like without forcing any one country to take the initial plunge by themselves.

~~~
OvidNaso
Violence amongst end user drug dealers is very rare and confined to specific,
very poor, areas. Wholesale is the only place where you start to see
significant amounts of cash, and hence most of the problems, and that has zero
differences between offline and on. There is no 'political narcoterrorism'
between the guys selling 8ths of coke in the neighborhood. You're also
mischaracterizing the drug trade with regards to consumer habits. Drug users
communicate about dealers and products the same way people communicate about
every other local business. The internet has greatly expanded and enhanced
this ability, but prior to the Internet, local businesses, just like local
drug dealers, operated by word of mouth and competed in many facets of
service. We know this as drug quality has gone up and up over the years.

Remember, the vast majority of offline drug deals do not consist of driving to
the hood to pick up something from a gangster. I think this mis-perception
clouds a lot of the analysis of operations like the Silk Road.

~~~
ledge
The majority of personal use sales are not conducted with a "gangster", true,
but the small-time college ecstasy or coke dealer conducting those personal
use sales IS making regular trips to the hood, purchasing from people who are
hardened criminals. They expose themselves to a lot of risk in doing this.

You don't have to move far up the chain before you see some serious violence.
Personal use weed dealer? Probably not going to get killed. But robbed? Yes,
definitely, seen it happen many times. Personal use coke, ecstasy, heroin
dealer? Much more likely to experience violence. The dealer one level above,
supplying the personal use dealers? They get killed all the time, despite not
being drug kingpins in any sense. It only costs 1000$-2000$ to have someone
killed in many parts of the US, so that should say something about the chance
of violence that small-time dealers face.

Silk Road was more than personal use sales, I'd bet the majority of its
revenue came from pounds and half pounds of weed, sheets of LSD, and orders of
500+ ecstasy pills. Heroin and coke haven't caught on as much yet in the
online scene, with prices still a little above what well-connected users can
get on the streets, but give it time. Also keep in mind that the online drug
scene is more than just SR/BMR/Sheep and that there are private forums that
deal strictly in wholesale.

------
swalsh
Yesterday my cousin was found dead. He had committed suicide. It was the end
of a long battle he had been waging against himself. Drugs have destroyed this
small part of my family, but i'm really glad to see something like the silk
road revitalized.

I think the sooner we realize how fleeting a battle it is to fight them, the
sooner we can place the money where it belongs.

My cousin is dead now, but I think my tax money would be better spent helping
him kick his habit, than locking him up.

~~~
rhgraysonii
I've been an active Libertarian for several years now, and just looking at the
countless stories I've heard like this leads me to hold the same belief as you
do. It truly is tragic the way many people are simply thrown in a cell rather
than helped with what is clearly an illness. Addiction itself is not a choice.
Using a drug is, but the consequences that follow oftentimes cannot be
overcome. I'm sorry for your loss.

~~~
darkarmani
> this leads me to hold the same belief as you do

His belief was that tax money should be spent on rehabilitation instead of the
drug war. Shouldn't you be against using tax money for this and instead
supporting private charities?

~~~
lettergram
Being Libertarian doesn't necessary mean you have to be against all tax. For
example (in the Libertarian point of view), taxes should only be used to
maintain order, that being said the government should run prisons. However, in
the case of drugs a rehabilitation program likely would be cheaper than a drug
war and still under the classification of "maintaining order." Since drug
users can often be violent, unable to drive, etc. and could cause harm.

Therefore, it's actually better and fair to use a small tax for rehabilitation
than it is to use prisons to keep drug users locked up. This is according to
the Libertarian point of view.. Strictly Libertarians are against tax, however
in this case a more middle road can be argued for and be within the
Libertarian's view.

------
oscilloscope
Senator Tom Carper's statement on the launch:

“This new website – launched barely a month after Federal agents shut down the
original Silk Road -- underscores the inescapable reality that technology is
dynamic and ever-evolving and that government policy needs to adapt
accordingly. Rather than play ‘whack-a-mole’ with the latest website,
currency, or other method criminals are using in an effort to evade the law,
we need to develop thoughtful, nimble and sensible federal policies that
protect the public without stifling innovation and economic growth. Our
committee intends to have that conversation – among others - at our hearing
this month on virtual currency.”

[http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/chairman-
ca...](http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/chairman-carper-
statement-on-the-unveiling-of-the-so-called-silk-road-20-website)

~~~
natural219
This scares me more than reassures me. Given the US government's history of
response to questions like these, I suspect this message will get through,
minus the "without stifling innovation" part.

------
ChuckMcM
Not unexpected of course, the demand for narcotics and other services is still
out there. I can't help but wonder if this isn't a bit like becoming the new
head of some terrorist organization, the target is now painted day-glo orange
and we know that it is not only on the 'radar' of law enforcement, its a
priority target. The clock starts, and a number of resources are now tasked
with taking you out.

Of course the genius of the Princess Bride with respect to the DPR character
is that _the character_ cannot be killed or captured or prosecuted, because it
isn't really a person, it is an idea. And that was wonderfully illustrated in
the book, film, and now in world around us.

~~~
celticninja
I think it will be interesting to watch, no doubt this time round the creators
have been anonymous from the get go. Avoiding all the errors that DPR/Ulbricht
made would be quite simple given the knowledge we have from court documents of
how he was caught.

If these guys get caught then I think we can more safely assume that it was a
case of parallel construction after the targets were initially identified by
the NSA/GCHQ tracking them via Tor. Only the biggest dealers and the operators
would be worthy of the resources required to undertake that task.

------
ihsw
I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Could be, but would they really dare to mock themselves in the honeypot? If it
is a honeypot, it's very convincing and elaborate.

~~~
loginx
I would say, that's exactly what you want from your honeypot.

What I don't really know, I guess, are the legal implications of entraping
people on such a mass scale.

I'm also not sure about the usefulness of such a honeypot, since you can't
actually track the buyers. Just because someone pays you to send drugs to some
address, doesn't mean it's their own address

~~~
corin_
IANAL, but my understanding of entrapment is that law enforcement has to
persuade you to break a law that you wouldn't otherwise have broken - for
example if you walk up to a cop and say "sell me some weed" that isn't
entrapment, unless he initiated it and persuaded you to try to buy some weed -
so if this site _was_ a honeypot, it wouldn't be entrapment, as buyers and
sellers are both going there without any persuasion, because they already want
to do something illegal.

That said, I agree with other comments here as to why it's unlikely to be a
honeypot.

------
the_watcher
This is just an example of the massive waste of resources used up by the drug
war (assuming this is what it claims to be, point stands regardless). So the
Silk Road was shut down, but all that did was reduce the available supply of
the drugs. It did nothing to address the demand side of drugs, which is really
what drives everything. All attacking the supply does is make it more
lucrative for those who are able to evade law enforcement.

There is some role for law enforcement to play in discouraging the supply of
drugs (if the society we live in remains one where drug use is considered
negative). However, the vast majority of resources should go towards
addressing the demand (making people want them less, treatment, etc., I don't
mean just arrest all the buyers).

------
spang
My favorite bit is Forbes' publishing software automatically linking the
handle "Steve Jobs" to their profile of the real Steve Jobs. Classy!

------
lelf
There is cool interesting feature — two factor auth. But not your usual one.
It ask you to decrypt random string encrypted with your public GPG key (you
provide it in prefs).

------
thex86
A serious question: while I have nothing against Silk Road (the drug war is a
waste of money anyways), aren't people afraid of putting stuff in their body
that they had an anonymous person send to them? I mean, unless the seller has
a reputation, isn't there is a substantial risk of using that drug?

Are my fears unfound? On one hand, the idea of buying drugs online is probably
more safe than doing it on the streets, but the anonymity this offers has a
potential downside like the one I mentioned above.

~~~
njharman
Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you put
in your body?

There is risk in everything. Generally people aren't sociopaths and aren't out
to harm others. Risk is minimal but exists.

Sellers on Silkroad do have reputation? Anonymous does not mean "unknown".

~~~
scott_karana
> Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you
> put in your body?

Not really a fair comparison. If a grocery store assaults or defrauds you, you
have legal recourse.

There is nothing you can do if an illicit transaction fails.

The rest of what you say is true, of course.

~~~
gwern
You can leave bad feedback, and take it to the dispute center to force the
seller to defend themselves to the SR admins.

This is more recourse than you have in practice against a grocery store if
they refuse to give you a refund - what are you going to do, sue them?

~~~
nerfhammer
If a grocery store harms you in an illegal way you they can be punished by the
force of the state in a variety of ways. The same is not true of a anonymous
person on an inbound tor site.

~~~
gwern
> If a grocery store harms you in an illegal way you they can be punished by
> the force of the state in a variety of ways.

Hypothetically. If you have enough money. And enough evidence. Good luck with
that. I'd rather take my chances in SR's dispute resolution center...

~~~
nerfhammer
You act like the health department is some kind of ivory tower

------
hack_edu
Never, ever, _ever_ trust anyone or anything that suddenly reappears after a
major bust by the authorities. _NEVER_.

Move on.

~~~
malandrew
One would think that they'd start moving to technologies that are
decentralized using technologies such as distributed hash tables. This puts
the onus on the users to have a client app that helps host the transaction
system for everyone else.

The clients would openly share the buy and sell orders and then communication
would moved to an encrypted channel that supports perfect forward secrecy.

The only part that ostensibly needs to be centralized is a ledger maintaining
the reputation tied to some pseudonym.

i.e. the identity of DPR is passed along to all the users of the site
collectively.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
You don't need the ledger to be centralized either. A bitcoin style blockchain
stores transaction histories tied to a specific set of keys/wallets. In the
future I imagine some sort of reputation system will be maintained using this.

~~~
Jonovono
Ya. Wouldn't it just have to be something like they are doing with Namecoin
(decentralised DNS)

------
kseistrup
[http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/](http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/)

------
Spittie
Hopefully it won't be another "Project: Black Flag",
[http://buttcoin.org/silk-road-replacement-project-black-
flag...](http://buttcoin.org/silk-road-replacement-project-black-flag-closes-
shop-owner-thanks-everyone-free-coins)

------
girvo
The sudden rise of terribly programmed, horribly insecure marketplaces as
hidden services since SR went down has been absolutely fascinating.

~~~
tsigo
Any particular reason you're assuming this one is terribly programmed and
horribly insecure? Other than past experience, I guess.

~~~
girvo
The litany of hidden service marketplace failures in the past month alone is
enough to make me have little faith in this endeavour. I'm just glad im
watching on as am outsider: quite a few people in desperate situations are
losing lots of money.

------
shocks
Well, that was inevitable.

~~~
nly
I think the word you're after is INCONCEIVABLE

~~~
mikeryan
You keep using that word.

------
conductr
Is there a place he could run this from and be safe? Like a country without
extradition where it would be difficult for US gov to come in and arrest you
anyway.

The single dumbest thing the last DPR did was continue living in the US

~~~
veemjeem
I don't remember the exact details, but I don't think that was DPR's mistake.
I thought he had ordered some fake passports that were intercepted.

~~~
computer
He also promoted the site from a forum account with his real name and real
name gmail account in another post.

~~~
conductr
True, that was very stupid. But, if he were in a place where the US gov
couldn't operate, that wouldn't have really mattered

------
siphor
As I've never heard of the site before it was seized, the DEA gave it some
good advertising. They probably will have grown the site much quicker by
trying to stop it.

------
SteveDeFacto
So how do we know that this is not the FBI waiting for people to place
orders/post listings so they can arrest them?

------
lettergram
They claimed to have caught the Dread Pirate Roberts... but then again who's
to say?

------
yeukhon
I am serious here too: I don't support the website's initiative. I endorse the
technical aspect of it as a way to test whether the design is optimal and
achievable, but in no way would I ever support drug dealers.

~~~
nekopa
An honest question: Why not?

~~~
yeukhon
1\. I am against illegal drugs. It is up to the society to have a consent
whether x drug should be legal or not. For example, marijuana.

2\. Liability and safety. It's safer to assume your pharmacist is giving the
right drug and the right amount and the right quality. I am all for reducing
the cost and I think we should lower the cost whenever possible, but getting
through silk road because it's cheaper/easier to get doesn't meet my standard.

~~~
oofabz
I, too am against illegal drugs like heroin, but I believe legalizing all
drugs would help everyone, both the addicts and normal people. Taking away the
black market would reduce crime and stop the flow of money into powerful crime
organizations. The addict would benefit from cleaner drugs and would not have
to break the law to get their fix.

I have seen heroin ruin people's lives and I wish with all my heart that it
could be eradicated. However, this is just not possible, and we have to figure
out how to live in a world that includes such terrible things. The only people
who benefit from criminalization are law enforcement and prison owners.

~~~
alexkus
> I have seen heroin ruin people's lives and I wish with all my heart that it
> could be eradicated.

Not disagreeing with you, but I (personally) have seen far more people's lives
ruined by legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and various painkillers than
I've seen from hard/illegal drugs (heroin/crack/cannabis/etc).

------
xacaxulu
Honeypot

------
mkramlich
The interesting thing to me is that, in theory, the same kinds of extreme
privacy-protecting, anonymity-maximizing measures which can be used to host
any kind of Silk Road, or to visit it and use it, can ALSO be used by... wait
for it... wait for it... yes the law enforcement folks. In other words, how
can you be sure that this new Silk Road 2.0 is not a sting honey pot setup by
the FBI itself?

I don't buy stuff like that and never will. But if I did, I wouldn't go near
anything using the Silk Road name after a seizure/arrest has been publicly
documented.

Remember, on the Internet, nobody knows if you're a dog. Or a teenager living
in your mom's basement in Russia. Or an FBI agent munching on donuts in
Washington DC. Etc.

~~~
GhotiFish
to be honest. When I first read it, I assumed that it was just a rouge
organization looking to defraud the ex customers of the old Silk Road.

As a black hat, that would of being my first play. The presence of ex Silk
Road moderators does a little bit to assuage those fears, but they could be
fooled just as any other person. Truly, I would never trust this Silk Road.
Then again, I wouldn't of trusted the old Silk Road either.

------
khax
pretty sure its a honeypot.

------
bkurtz13
Domain registered by FBI

