

Show HN: my weekend project, understanding the Silk Road anonymous marketplace - archivator
http://burntbrunch.github.com/Silk-Rabbit-Hole/html/
This was more of a sandbox to play with Raphael and Flot than anything else but I think there are some interesting statistics in there. It'd be awesome to do this over time but I really don't have the spare time required.
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toyg
Note that the data is heavily skewed -- 77% of all SR listings apparently are
for one UK seller, who probably just had the misfortune to pick that day to
flog his wares. You'd need to automate data retrieval and average it over a
few months to get a better picture.

(edit: listings, not transactions; thanks archivator for the correction)

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archivator
You mean the listings are heavily skewed - this is not about transactions but
listed items on the marketplace.

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jerguismi
Interesting data to scrape would be the reviews. Since the reviews are tied to
the actual sales, it could give some kind of estimate what kind of sales
volume we are talking about.

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mmaunder
How is payment received and goods delivered? Since you can't ship goods and
take delivery via Tor it seems absurd to use strong encryption for
communication when you're so vulnerable taking delivery. I haven't used silk
road so I might be missing something, but I'd love to learn how they get
around that.

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wcoenen
Payment is done with bitcoin. For the delivery, I think the idea is that even
if the package is intercepted and your address is on it, it cannot be proven
that you actually ordered it.

I don't know if such a defense would hold up. It might depend on local laws.
But it does make sense because otherwise you could get your enemies into
trouble just by sending them unwanted illegal goods.

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stfu
So there is a total of just about ~50-80 sellers? I guess most bigger cities
have far more drug sellers than Silk Road. But I would love to see more
timeline based developments, i.e. if the market is shrinking or expanding etc.
Otherwise great weekend project!

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adgar
Bigger cities? Hell, there were more than 50 dealers at my college alone. It
had 4,000 students and was several hours from any metropolitan area to speak
of.

Then again, the selection probably doesn't compare to the Silk Road or other
services.

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yuvipanda
Interesting. I didn't know India was well represented there...

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rickyconnolly
Nice bar charts. How were they made?

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xeno56
Looks like jquery.flot was used from glancing at the source
<http://code.google.com/p/flot/>

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feydr
it's a total shame people have to resort to markets like this -- let's have a
bar chart comparing the number of murders in a war sponsored by the US to the
number of overdoses from drugs

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adgar
Are you serious? Extremely few people "resort to this." The Silk Road is
absolutely miniscule compared to the overall drug market.

I'm willing to bet that if I asked every person in my 5-floor walkup, I'd come
out with a list of dealers comparable in size to the silk road.

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leeHS
Wow, this is pretty interesting. Perhaps you should approach Interpol and see
if they would be interested in funding further development?
<http://www.interpol.int/en>

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leeHS
To the down-voters. I had not considered that my suggestion could negatively
impact your drug sales. My sincerest sarcastic apologies

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archivator
The reason you're getting downvoted may be related to the fact that this is
not data Interpol would be in the least interested in. What they need are
actual transactions/shipments/links to people, not some rather shallow stats
extracted from a month-old copy of listings.

I'd be really impressed if someone actually runs a Bitcoin client that
correlates transactions with prices from SR. Since most sellers select prices
in USD, the values in BC are usually not nice and round. Then, you could start
creating a profile of Bitcoin users and link them with given certainty to SR
accounts. Now, _that_ might be of interest to Interpol/local agencies.

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omouse
That's a stupid idea; helping law enforcement do their jobs. THey have large
budgets, they can figure this shit out on their own and there's no need to
help them oppress your fellow human. Drug laws in most countries are insanely
stupid where non-violent drug offenders are locked up for a long time with
violent offenders.

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eli
You should consider that not everyone agrees with your opinion. That doesn't
make them stupid.

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leeHS
They do not always have large budgets. But for those agencies that do, why
can't they invest in projects such as this?

I'm still trying to figure out why people are against practical applications
of this project. It's datamining illegal online activities. Isn't law
enforcement a no brainer here?

Please let me know what I'm missing.

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omouse
I apologize if I seem harsh in my comments regarding this subject.

The practical applications will be abused. There are already projects by the
CIA and NSA to massively monitor various communications platforms. The
datamining isn't of only illegal activities, it's datamining of _everything_.

It's just not as simple as "datamine illegal online activities". You're
basically going to have to monitor everyone using bitcoin, and then monitor
all of silkroad, but once the users catch wind of surveillance they'll abandon
it and move elsewhere and now you might as well monitor freaking everything to
catch them.

You should check out the idea of a panopticon and Michael Foucalt's writing on
it. Helping to create this project furthers the idea of a panopticon and
that's a scary thing. The panopticon is a building that forces people in it to
behave by having complete transparency. If you're watched all the time, you're
less likely to do something illegal or morally wrong. Maybe that's a bit too
philosophical for this discussion... <http://cartome.org/foucault.htm>

