
Did Shutting Down Silk Road Make the World a More Dangerous Place? - dchs
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/did-shutting-down-the-silk-road-make-the-world-a-more-dangerous-place/280270/
======
pak
Here's a question for the techno-libertarians stepping up to say the
government has no right to shut down sites like Silk Road. Where do you derive
this supposed natural right for anonymity on the internet? Life, liberty,
freedom from discrimination, due process--these things I understand, and there
are well supported philosophical frameworks (rule utilitarian, Kantian,
libertarian etc.) for deriving them from first principles. I can also
understand a society guaranteeing a right to privacy in limited circumstances:
crimes affecting children are one obvious example, records of education and
medical treatment are another. In each such situation, the benefits, harms and
impact on the rights of the public and the individual have been weighed.

But an anonymous free-for-all exchange being a natural right? We aren't born
anonymous. In the "state of nature," without government, we are in no way
anonymous. The fact that the internet sometimes allows us to be is in fact a
very artificial circumstance that society has allowed to happen. Whether we
like it or not, governments are ultimately the overseers that permit
networking infrastructure comprising the internet to be built. That isn't some
natural right any more than building a nuclear weapon in my backyard is a
natural right. Society has weighed the pros and cons and decided that this
particular set of technologies is on the whole good. That it might in fact
want to limit the level of anonymity on the network seems reasonable, in the
same way that making people put license plates on their cars is reasonable.

I'm not supporting the idea of a government ID to access the internet
(although some first-world countries already require some level of this), or
nationwide surveillance a la China or the NSA. Anonymity no doubt has societal
benefit, in that it has fostered great works of creativity (from Mark Twain
down through Anonymous). Unfortunately, society depends on accountability, and
accountability and anonymity are competing principles in the construction of a
just society. Neither of them are natural rights on their own.

~~~
revelation
People seem to forget this is just the internet. It's a _communications
medium_. Anonymity in communications are certainly not a unique feature of the
internet, you can hide your caller id, and a letter will still arrive without
a return address. The basic idea being that you can't shoot someone in the
face by merely communicating, and I'm pretty sure you can still not commit a
violent crime over the internet alone. Communication mediums are the safest
thing in the whole wide world.

Your whole intellectual stance from which you approach this topic is off.
History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been
governments and state sponsored entities, every single time. The concept of
"natural rights" is motivated by protection against the government.

~~~
jellicle
> History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been
> governments and state sponsored entities, every single time.

If that were true, which it isn't, why did humanity create governments?

~~~
smokeyj
> why did humanity create governments?

The same reason "humanity" created mafias and gangs -- which is to use
violence as a means of economic control.

~~~
quadrangle
It's as or more reasonable to say that governments evolved out of the need to
mediate conflicts between people living in groups.

~~~
manicbovine
This is also a more reasonable explanation for organized crime, seeing as how
criminals cannot rely on the government to mediate criminal disputes.

~~~
quadrangle
Organized crime has its own internal governance, hence "organized". So that's
no different.

------
MattyRad
> _Extra-legal violence is often a part of black markets._

Curious turn of phrase. Extra-legal violence meaning "violence outside of the
government," which implies that there is intra-legal violence, "violence
within the government," which may be referring to how the government coerces
its citizens to not transact drugs, by means of violence (that is, the
government will arrest/hurt you if you do not comply), and that somehow that
is more appropriate or noble.

Also it may be somewhat jokingly implying that the government's violence is
"extra legal," meaning "more appropriate with respect to law." I wonder if the
author had this is mind when they wrote the article. I don't mean to start a
huge libertarian rant about government violence/coercion, only to point out
that the sentence could have a clever hidden meaning.

~~~
hvs
While I'm a libertarian, it doesn't require a big political discussion to
debate whether the government generally has a monopoly on the legal use of
violence. That also doesn't require that "legal" somehow implies "noble" or
"appropriate". I guess my point is that the author almost certainly has a
libertarian leaning, so I'm not sure that the phrase's meaning was all that
hidden.

------
cottonseed
Better to ask, has the war on drugs made the world a more dangerous place?

~~~
venus
I wonder if there is anyone who believes - really believes - it has not.

The war on drugs is kind of this diorama encapsulation of everything that is
wrong with our politics, media, and society.

~~~
GhotiFish
Well. I'm not convinced it did, myself.

If prohibition didn't happen 1920s for the americans, would Al Capone never of
being born?

Really these prohibition laws give lowlifes something to fight over, and the
fightings dangerous, but who says they wouldn't be fighting anyway?

Does it make life more dangerous. Maybe not.

Does it make it more dangerous for me? Maybe.

edit: Ouch. Looking forward to that rebuttal.

~~~
aeturnum
> but who says they wouldn't be fighting anyway?

This is a totally fair question. So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that
Al Capone's level of violence had nothing to do with his criminal syndicate.
He just liked shooting people.

However, shooting people is expensive, especially given that they employed
reasonably advanced weapons (sub-machine guns). So, he's not going to get as
many bullets when liquor is legal. Also, though Capone is believed to have
killed people, far more people were killed on his orders[0]. Without an
unregulated and lucrative source of income, it's hard to see him having the
money to hire people to kill others.

No one is saying that, absent the drug war, the cartel's enforcers would be in
the peace corps. However, the extremely high street price of drugs finances a
level of violence that would not exist otherwise. If you want an example, look
at the history of Mexico in the last 20 years and compare it to any other
nearby country.

[0][http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/Al-
Capone.htm](http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/Al-Capone.htm)

~~~
jlgreco
Furthermore, while Al Capone could have found other crimes to orchestrate to
make himself rich, he wouldn't have been able to perform those crimes _as well
as_ liquor smuggling, limiting his supply of cash (lets face it, he was
probably doing those things in our history timeline as well as smuggling).

Alternatively, if we suppose some crime that he really did neglect in favor of
smuggling, why did he neglect it in favor of smuggling? Because it was not as
profitable or carried greater risk (in our history timeline, he was able to
manage his risk effectively. He wasn't killed in the act and was only
eventually caught for tax evasion. Had he been, say, robbing banks instead, he
undoubtedly would not have lasted as long.)

Any way you slice it, prohibition made dealing with Capone worse than it
otherwise would have been.

------
llamataboot
One doesn't need to assert any natural rights. Once can make a completely
utilitarian case for the decriminalization of controlled substances. In fact,
nearly all available evidence points in that direction -- it is increasingly
hard in w a world full of data to make the case that criminalizing substance
use offers any utilitarian benefits at all. It makes the drug market a more
dangerous place, controlled by violence. It destroys the lives and the
communities of substance users by incarcerating them for long lengths of time.
Etc etc etc. I don't need to lay out all the facts here, they are plain to see
for anyone who looks into them.

~~~
dllthomas
Decriminalization of drugs does not answer the entire question - other illegal
commerce was taking place there.

------
BashiBazouk
Did Silk Road even put a slight dent in street drug sellers in the first
place? I would be surprised if street level sellers and buyers are internet
savvy enough to use a service like this. SR looks more like the ideal system
for savvy college students and young techs to specifically avoid the street
level market.

~~~
jtbigwoo
Right. Just requiring the use of tor prevented 95% of the population from
using SR.

~~~
epi8
I'm not doubting, but why?

~~~
princess3000
There were several obstacles to using SR, each of which would have been
difficult or frightening to overcome when the alternative is doing
transactions in person with cash. You needed to understand TOR (which, while
not especially difficult to use in general, is harder than opening Chrome and
going to Amazon), you needed to understand and obtain BTC (either mining them
or purchasing them, which was generally somewhat difficult given that you
couldn't use credit cards or paypal or other simple payment methods), and then
you had to figure out PGP for sending your information to the vendor.

It's all definitely doable and none of it really requires much technical
knowledge but there's definitely some friction that I assume would intimidate
a fair amount of people.

------
vezzy-fnord
As the article itself said, successor sites are inevitable (and there are at
least two that are thriving right now in SR's fallout).

Those who prefer online black markets over physical transactions will simply
migrate to the new marketplaces and consequently turn them into the "new Silk
Road".

The only true effect, perhaps, will be people taking security even more
seriously. I read a statistic at some point that approx. 80% of SR users
didn't use PGP (The Daily Dot sources this claim, otherwise I cannot validate
it).

~~~
pyre
> 80% of SR users didn't use PGP

I find this to be dubious. How does PGP relate to SR usage? When people
communicated with SR vendors, did they use email (where PGP might matter) or
did they use the SR software? Did their forum software allow people to sign
their posts? How was this information sourced? Was there just an informal poll
on their forums?

~~~
gwern
> I find this to be dubious.

I don't. People are lazy and don't want to use PGP because it's confusing and
hard. PGP-related questions were some of the most common help problems, on
/r/SilkRoad, people would regularly mention not encrypting their address
(ranked up there with early finalization for being incredibly frustrating for
those of us who knew what we were doing), and the Atlantis CEO stated that
like 90% of Atlantis users relied on the Atlantis-provided PGP encryption
rather than encrypting it themselves.

> When people communicated with SR vendors, did they use email (where PGP
> might matter) or did they use the SR software?

SR had an internal message system, much like Reddit's PMs. You would copy the
public key off the vendor's profile page on SR (or possibly from a thread on
the forums), you'd ASCII-armored encrypt your address to the public key, and
paste it into an address form field during the order process. You'd do the
same thing for a regular PM.

> Did their forum software allow people to sign their posts?

Sure: ASCII armor, remember. Any forum which allows you to type in text,
allows PGP signing of messages. Few people bothered, except for important
statements like from DPR about new rules or .onion addresses or stuff like
that.

------
twrkit
The whole Drug War is a colossal waste of time and resources. Those who choose
to indulge in narcotics will continue to do so, despite the legality or
accessibility of their preferred substances. Of course, the fact of the matter
is that an entire industrial complex has sprung up to wage this "war;" the
DEA, weapons and surveillance equipment manufacturers, and many local and
national LEO, among countless others. In short, it's a very Big and profitable
business. So despite any logic or rationale for maintaining a "safe" venue to
conduct narcotics trade, there will always be resistance from the entrenched
lobbyists and business interests.

------
mentos
If we supplant all street markets for drugs with online ones, will we be
trading drug/gang/gun related death with a higher incidence of drug related
deaths from overdose/drug abuse?

I'd imagine there would be net less deaths in a world where Silk Roads were
allowed to exist. Thats not to say that drugs should be made legal, but we
shouldn't wage a 'war' on them. I know drugs aren't safe but the last time I
checked, wars aren't either?

And theres no way sites like Silk Road aren't inevitable. Its a more
attractive approach to being a street dealer and how many street dealers are
there in the world?

I'd imagine in another decade one of the thousands of SR copy cats will have
(likely accidentally) made all of the right decisions with respect to
anonymity and be the defacto online drug hub.

Reminds of the opening scene of Layer Cake:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5tzSks5lTI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5tzSks5lTI)

~~~
DanBC
> I know drugs aren't safe

...and keeping them illegal adds to the danger.

Heroin is an unsafe drug, but impure heroin, injected with a needle that has
been used and "cleaned" multiple times increases the dangers.

Making sure that heroin is hard to get makes people turn to other drugs.
(Because addicts are addicted, and drug addicts take drugs.) One alternative
to heroin is the Russian drug krokodil - desomorphine - often made using a
variety of weird things.

CAUTION: GRAPHIC IMAGES

([http://www.krokodildrug.com/what-is-krokodil-drug-how-to-
sto...](http://www.krokodildrug.com/what-is-krokodil-drug-how-to-stop-abuse/))

EDIT: MORE HORRIFIC IMAGES

([http://www.democracyindistress.com/2011/09/warning-
graphic-p...](http://www.democracyindistress.com/2011/09/warning-graphic-
photos-krokodil-drug.html)) (apologies for partisan source)

------
HPLovecraft
Do News Story Headlines Always Have To Ask A Huge Rhetorical Question?

~~~
Coincoin
I like article titles with rhetorical questions because I don't need to read
the article.

~~~
bigdubs
The answer is always "no", and you can keep doing what you were doing.

------
swamp40
I think one of the unintended consequences of shutting down Silk Road so
publicly will be that the _existence_ of the Tor network is now being
advertised to _lots_ of people for the first time.

A _lot_ of regular people are probably now saying, "Wait, I can actually buy
drugs online without getting caught or ripped off?"

We'll see if there is another spike in the Tor users after this news cycle:
[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html)

------
ufmace
Maybe in some rhetorical sense, but not in any measurable way. Silk Road was
enormous for what it was, but it's nowhere near even a tiny fraction of the
global drug market. It's probably still tiny compared to the drug market in
any large city.

~~~
tsax
Worldwide global drug market is estimated to be around $350B/year. SR did
around 1.2B over 2.5 years. So yeah a tiny amount, but a huge amount
considering it just started couple years back and needed technical
sophistication of bitcoin + tor + pgp to use.

------
PaulHoule
Well, I'm sure you're going to be able to buy weed no matter what.

~~~
ianstallings
Amen to that. Mind if I do a J?

------
malandrew
The author raises an interesting point, you could easily write a headline that
says "Online Black Market The Silk Road Helps Keep More Than One Billion
Dollars of Drugs Off Our Streets"

------
acomjean
Shutting it down certainly didn't help the US Post Office.

Not a silk road user but being able to anonymously contract hitmen (and
hitwomen) doesn't seem to make the world safer..

~~~
nickpinkston
Yea, but to honest the Silk Road hitman business is probably like 10,000x
smaller than the drug business - maybe more.

~~~
GhotiFish
My understanding is that Silk Road did not have a hitman business. I remember
the site laying out explicit rules such that "nothing may be sold that could
be used to hurt another human being." I believe that was the phrasing anyway.

I that made sense to me, as it was inline with DPR's philosophies. However, my
peers have said he had another site for stuff like that. Maybe they're
mistaken? Anyway, I know that stuff wasn't on SR.

~~~
LukeShu
From Wikipedia:

 _The site 's terms of service had said that they prohibited the sale of
"anything who's [sic] purpose is to harm or defraud."[15] This included child
pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations and weapons of mass
destruction.[22][25]_

And:

 _A sister site called 'The Armory' sold weapons (primarily guns) during 2012,
but was shut down due to a lack of demand.[26][27]_

~~~
GhotiFish
thanks for pointing that out. It seems for a time, the members took it upon
themselves to buy and sell guns on the silk road. until it was moved to The
Armory, then later shut down.

------
bsullivan01
Stupid question and a stupid argument. Buying /selling drugs is illegal, so is
buying /selling fake docs etc so why would anyone expect FBI to let such a
service operate? Especially when sales numbers reach $1+ Billion and when the
owner gives Forbes interviews saying FBI can't catch him?

Let's get back to basics: FBI is supposed to enforce the laws. They do have
some leeway in prioritizing, but a $1.2 Billion market is way too big not to
attract enforcement.

Now about the war on drugs...

~~~
ralish
I think you've possibly misinterpreted the argument the author is making. My
interpretation wasn't that he was being critical of the FBI for shutting it
down; of course they had to shut it down. Rather, the criticism is of the laws
and policies that are in place which dictate that the FBI had to shut it down
in the first place.

As the article notes, law enforcement has been given a "hopeless task", where
if you subscribe to the view that Silk Road actually made buying and selling
drugs safer (as I do), shutting it down has made the whole business less safe
at direct risks to citizens of many countries. As you note, the FBI had to do
this, but it's a huge indictment of our drug policy that this is the action
they are compelled to take given the result.

Which brings us back to the war on drugs...

~~~
bsullivan01
_Silk Road actually made buying and selling drugs safer (as I do), shutting it
down has made the whole business less safe at direct risks to citizens of many
countries_

I got his point correctly, that's why I said it isn't up to the FBI to choose
a safer way for people to buy/sell drugs. That it's not their mission.
Congress of course can change the laws

~~~
epi8
I think you, GP, and the author are in violent agreement. All three of you, in
my understanding, have made the same point.

