
The Amazons of the dark net - boh
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21629417-business-thriving-anonymous-internet-despite-efforts-law-enforcers
======
flatline
Perhaps the most interesting point is in the last paragraph:

> Moreover, the deep web’s denizens will continue to adapt. Jamie Bartlett,
> author of “The Dark Net”, predicts: “The future of these markets is not
> centralised sites like Silk Road 2.0, but sites where…listings, messaging,
> payment and feedback are all separated, controlled by no central party”—and
> thus impossible to close.

I know some work along these lines has been started with e.g. OpenBazaar, but
it may be a while before they are seen in any large scale activities - maybe
another five years still until they are at all commonplace, or even available
to the general public.

~~~
participle
The Tor version of Openbazaar is available as of a few days ago. You can
download it here.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_nee...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2ko33b/help_needed_please_test_new_tor_support/)

At this point it is stable and can be used to run a store via Tor. The last of
the core system (arbitration and notary) will be completed by the end of the
year.

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barking
I'm amazed that buyers will trust anonymous online drug dealers with their
address.

Isn't that what happens?

~~~
Estragon
I've been following the dark net markets subreddit for a while because I'm
fascinated by that question too. The consensus there seems to be,
surprisingly, that having the authorities connect your address to illicit
activity isn't that big a deal. When I've suggested that such association
would constitute probable cause for a search warrant and hence anyone who's
clearly exposed their address by communicating it unencrypted to a drug dealer
should consult a criminal lawyer and henceforth keep their house clean of
evidence, I've been downvoted. It really surprises me that people are risking
their liberty this way.

~~~
nmjohn
You've likely been downvoted because you misunderstand how it works.

Only idiots are communicating their addresses unencrypted - PGP encryption for
addresses is standard. So the only way for your address to be matched to your
dark net activity is if a.) the person you are buying from gets busted and b.)
the person you're buying from doesn't destroy the address after they ship the
package.

~~~
hristov
c.) the person you are buying from is an actual police agency.

The police use undercover drug dealers on the streets. Why wouldn't they use
them online, where it is much cheaper and safer.

~~~
tokenizerrr
There are reputation systems on most sites. Unless the site operator was in on
it or they were actually providing product, they would not get a lot of
addresses.

~~~
scott_karana
Who says they have to bust you _immediately_? How long-term can a sting run?
Why not collect addresses for six months, and then wrangle up hundreds of
purchasers?

~~~
tokenizerrr
That's what I meant with having to provide product. If they don't deliver they
will receive bad reviews. I do not know if it is legal for American law
enforcement to sell drugs, though.

------
101914
"THE first ever e-commerce transaction..."

Is there a missing footnote?

~~~
jsaxton86
According to The Guardian[1]:

In John Markoff 's 2005 book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties
Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (even the book's title is
from a hoary old Jefferson Airplane track) he reveals that the world's first
online transaction was a drug deal:

In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford
University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial
transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology.
Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The
students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined
amount of marijuana.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-
high-n...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/19/online-high-net-
drugs-deal)

------
Hermel
This is about Silk Road et al. What about the AWS of the dark net? Does that
exist?

~~~
pquerna
Well, I don't know about the 'dark' side, but I know @kordless has been
hacking on StackMonkey:

[https://www.stackmonkey.com/](https://www.stackmonkey.com/)

Which lets you buy compute instances anonymously using BitCoin.

~~~
dublinben
>anonymously using BitCoin

and a Google account. I don't think anyone would consider using this provider
for a hidden service on Tor.

~~~
Sambdala
You don't appear to need an account to launch instances.

~~~
kordless
That is correct. The pool simply aggregates things for searching. That'll go
away eventually when we get a blockchain up for it.

------
hristov
It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews
will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe
that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews when even yelp, which is
supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has
obviously manipulated reviews. Of course people will eventually start padding
their ratings, and the websites themselves will start manipulating ratings.

So this is not some panacea for getting higher quality drugs. It is not even
something that will ensure your safety from the police. As I have mentioned
before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by
having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller. In fact it would
be much cheaper and more effective for the police to collect addresses from an
illegal drugs site than the dangerous and tricky business of using undercover
agents on the street.

I think the economist is being very disingenuous by cheerleading for these
online sites. These are not safer from police or drug purity standpoint.

~~~
gwern
> It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews
> will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe
> that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews

It is rather naive to call that 'rather naive' given that the black-markets
have functioned well since January 2011 (so, coming up on 4 years soon). I
don't think it would take scammers 4 years to realize that reviews can be
faked.

> when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews
> completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews.

Yelp doesn't control purchases of services and take commissions and only let
buyers review, so it's in a different position from the operators of a black-
market.

> As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they
> usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the
> seller.

So why don't they? Why are they ignoring the infallible wisdom of the great
hristov?

~~~
hawkice
Also worth noting the reason Yelp's reviews are obviously manipulated is that
a lot of Yelp's money comes from people paying to be able to manipulate the
reviews. Not hard to get better review accuracy than that.

------
theicon
Willful blindness, I must say.

