I read articles like this that describe the “dark web” as site a person in need of drugs, weapons or stolen credit cards #'s etc. can visit. What I don’t understand is how a publically advertised illegal transaction can take place with both the buyer and seller confident that they are not dealing with the police on one end or the other. It would seem to be trivially easy for the police or other authorities to pretend to be buyers or sellers and arrest the buying or selling party.
If a journalist can access these sites so can (I assume) the authorities. What protects buyers and sellers in this transactions? Do sellers on these sites have feedback results like ebay sellers?
Astro - the buyers and sellers for these things use drop mail and escrow accounts.
For instance if someone is buying LSD it is fairly undetectable in the mail. The seller receives money from the buyer via bitcoins (untraceable if purchased correctly) and in return sends the product. The money is held in escrow until the product is received. Both buyer and seller establish a reputation based on ratings. Make sense?
So, say you’re a police officer, and you want to conduct a sting using one of these sites. You pose as a buyer. You transfer some bitcoin to an anonymous wallet address. You can watch it get transferred around for a while if you want, and maybe someday you find out that it now belongs to a known individual (after a few hundred or thousand transfers). Unfortunately, you can’t prove that individual did anything illegal (and in fact it’s pretty likely they didn’t, and only received the money fifth or sixth hand in a legitimate transaction). Meanwhile, the seller mails you some drugs disguised as a DVD or something. They took precautions against leaving fingerprints or DNA on the goods or the packaging. The Post Office can maybe tell you that the package came from a street postbox somewhere in downtown Chicago.
Aside from giving money to a drug dealer, what have you accomplished?
The more effective police strategy would then be to pose as a drug dealer, send fake drugs and arrest whoever picks them up? That wouldn’t defeat the drug dealers directly but could reduce demand.
Are there ways that drug buyers could reduce their own risks of being caught in stings?
The fake drug seller account would get burnt out after a few arrests but fake positive feedback could be used to make them look more trustworthy before that happens.
The big problem is you have to have a pool of investigators who understand how stuff like bitcoin and onion routers work.
There are these people, but they are in high demand. They certainly aren’t going to spend much time (other than maybe a couple of PR stunts) in getting drug users busted. They might do some, but my guess is usually it will be in the greater investigation of shutting down the sites.
Could P2P work for these kinds of transactions? Instead of having a website, you download software and it’s all done in a distributed way.
That’s how the money/goods are bought and sold, that’s how Tor works, that’s how Bitcoin works, it’s what Internet was designed to do. So why even require websites?
If a dedicated server is required, can they not shift from server to server?
Not only are they in high demand, but it some cases they are the ones who initially developed the software. The software was created by the government for coded communication. Supposedly. Also, it is airtight enough that even skilled investigators cannot usually get through it in a reasonable time.
As I understand it they sort of do move through different servers. They use the TOR service.
As for officers busting them? They usually pose as the seller and grab the buyer. Fortunately this is grey also; if I open a package addressed to me am I committing a crime? Can you prove I knew it was drugs? Etc etc
The police are highly selective in terms of which crimes they conceren themselves with. For a good laugh, call 911 sometime and tell them your Do Not Call listing is being criminally violated. Enjoy the runaround.
There are absolutely methods that can be used to reduce or nearly eliminate risk as a buyer. I won’t get into them here, because its against the rules to discuss breaking the law, but let’s just say there are things that can be done. And of course, a buyer can always just deny that they purchased the drugs. Anyone can order anything to anyone’s residence, so even if the police know someone is getting drugs in the mail isn’t a guarantee of a conviction.
One thing that Silkroad (the preeminent Tor marketplace) did before they got shut down was cease creation of new seller accounts, so that by the time law enforcement and the news media were on their case it was much harder to do what you suggest (seller accounts were privately sold, but then the police would have to send money to a drug dealer just to get in, and they would eventually run out of accounts to buy).
My ex spent $900 one month on ties and cufflinks that he bought over the web. When they arrived they were nylon crap and “Austrian Crystals.”
Not to brag or anything, but my information gathering skills are fairly advanced; I never could find out what he had actually purchased though. I have an idea what the general category of merchandise was, but the cops had no interest at all in helping me nail him.
All that showed on the records was an idiot vastly over-paying for crappy merchandise. All perfectly legal.
A, uh, friend has ordered pot edibles via the Darkweb, using Bitcoin.
The product was delivered to my friend’s PO Box, via USPS. The return address was also a PO Box, in Colorado.
My friend has learned via others who use the Darkweb that it’s best to do drug transactions via USPS because USPS needs a warrant to do anything with a package beyond normal handling (viz, have a dog sniff it), but that the DEA could show up at a UPS depot with drug dogs and demand to sniff every package, and there’s nothing UPS could do about it. My friend can’t vouch for the accuracy of this information (maybe a Doper (heh) can), but nevertheless my friend has received two or three shipments of pot edibles via USPS with no problems.
I’m fairly familiar with criminal law (or was a decade ago) - and am unaware of any reason that the Feds wouldn’t be allowed to use stuff on USPS shipments, but they could (or someone else could) on UPS shipments.
Keep in mind that the USPS has something else that UPS & FedEx does not - Postal Inspectors. While the UPS & FedEd have security - they aren’t law enforcement officers like Postal Inspectors. Plus you might get extra charges for sending stuff through the mail. Plus they take pictures of every piece of mail sent (which you could argue is similar to UPS & FedEx tracking). This little nugget came to light not too long ago during a ricin (or something similar) investigation.
Note that some of the stuff in the article doesn’t seem like great detective work - they look for unusual smells and green/brown stuff coming out of the package. Perhaps they also look for a label that says “Marijuana Enclosed”.
I do wonder why our cops don’t seem to care about the very open dealing and prostitution on the local craigslist platform but know plenty of folks who use it to both buy and sell and never hear of any arrests - a few people have been stupid and wound up with rock salt or a wad of foil or sent money overseas and had no one show up at the meeting but that happens in the drug world anyway without the internet in between.
I have never quite understood the need for the darkweb but I gather police officers in other jurisdictions are a tad more proactive than our Australian versions.
I am pretty sure even cops can figure out what ads for OXYgen, 420, cold puff, eXcellent dancing are shifting - the codes aren’t even subtle.