
Two Forgotten Architects of Silk Road - msh
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/these-are-the-two-forgotten-architects-of-the-silk-road
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junto
Variety Jones is one of those "fogotten architects", who alleges that a
corrupt FBI officer is blackmailing him / feeding him inside information in
order to gain access a password protected BitCoin wallet worth $70 million
that the FBI agent stole from Ross Ulbricht:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/variety-jones-a-corrupt-
fbi...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/variety-jones-a-corrupt-fbi-agent-is-
hunting-me-so-im-turning-myself-in)

~~~
phpnode
Forum post with a lot more info:
[http://www.myplanetganja.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11022&star...](http://www.myplanetganja.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11022&start=120#p144158)

(Variety Jones == Plural of Mongoose)

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smcl
Care to summarise any of the interesting parts, or is it worth holding on and
checking this at home? I'm at work and I suspect clicking on
"myplanetganja.com" will not go down well with our infra team. Also what does
"Variety Jones == Plural of Mongoose" mean?

~~~
GhostHardware
This url leads to forum posts that is written by guy named "Plural of
Mongoose". I skimmed it over and it reads like memoirs of main (bad?)
character from Noir book. Definitely worth a read if you're into that.

~~~
smcl
Agree, I just checked it out there's a lot going on. Sort of reminds me of
McAfee's ramblings

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CPLX
This seems much worse than mere "doxxing".

It's not just the "connect a bunch of disparate dots in someone's public
online presence" sense of that term. They're basically admitting to hacking
into people's private email accounts, frequent flier accounts, and the like.
It's beyond illegal and doesn't seem ethical as journalism.

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kragen
I wonder why the reporter ("Joseph Cox") decided to publish the (presumed)
truenames of these hackers. That decision seems to undermine the political
statement "he" makes when he refers to "the failed War on Drugs" — "he" has
done the investigative work that the DEA and FBI needed done in order to deter
hackers who might consider working on future sites like SR.

(Is there a difference between doxing and journalism?)

Or perhaps it's misdirection?

~~~
vidarh
It does seem quite nasty, and at odds with what I'd consider journalism.
Regardless of whether or not the DEA and FBI knew.

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vfdfv
The people who wrote and compiled information for this article are engaged in
speculative vigilantism and snitching. Maybe this info is already known to the
feds, or maybe not, and maybe it is factual, or maybe not. Regardless,
releasing it does nothing but harm people who don't deserve to be harmed. Stop
snitching!

~~~
numbsafari
That is my initial reaction, as well. (well, not the "stop snitching" part).

They have basically hacked into these persons private accounts repeatedly.

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probablyfiction
It makes sense that Ulbricht had more experienced ccoders supporting his
efforts. I've always wondered how he built a multimillion dollar empire one
StackOverlow question at a time.

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jmkni
This does feel a little like doxxing/vigilantism, which makes me generally
uneasy.

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jzwinck
> A hard-working coder, Smed, or “Smedley” as he was otherwise known, had
> completely reworked key elements of the Silk Road infrastructure, and was
> being paid $2,500 a week for his services, more than any other employee.

Well that's depressing: he could have made more at a vanilla programming job
in California. You know, one that would have zero chance of jail time. Did he
fail to price his risk in, or did he just love this project that much?

~~~
halviti
You assume that this person is of legal age to work, a US resident, not a
felon, has a decent enough resume to warrant a 6 figure salary, actually wants
to live in California, and then conclude that he is an idiot.

That's an awful lot of assumptions.

