The Westeros Wing

Short post today due to a million trillion other things to do.

Things like: heroin, coke, and hiring hit men off of the new Silk Road website.

Only four weeks after the FBI were congratulated for their “high tech” takedown of the online black market, a new version of the site is here to take its place. The new kingpin of the Silk Road has even adopted the moniker of his predecessor (currently in custody on multiple charges): the Dread Pirate Roberts. The crowning of the new Dread Pirate Roberts seems oddly kismet. Ulbricht, the first Dread Pirate Roberts on the Silk Road took the name from a set of characters in the movie “The Princess Bride” who build up the image of one single horrible pirate, then secretly pass the name on when they retire.

Dread Pirate Roberts seems like an apt metaphor for the entire criminal online. As I stated in my previous post on The Silk Road, anyone who thinks that the FBI takedown of The Silk Road on marked a beginning of the end for the online black market is seriously mistaken. The FBI’s takedown of the first Silk Road, the largest online black market in the world, only resulted in four arrests. The remaining illegal merchants migrated to other markets on the deep web, the popular Black Market Reloaded, and now the new Silk Road, a mere four weeks after the first’s demise.

The law is supposed to act as both a deterrent as well as an punishment for crimes. Currently the online black markets see little of either. Law enforcement seriously need to step up their game. Crime is paying on the deep web, and traditional policing strategies have proved a poor response.

EDIT:

After discussing the Silk Road takedown with a friend, I realize that I have missed an important question: Is law enforcement even trying? There are two potential explanations that suggest the U.S. government is not putting its full effort into shutting down online marketplaces.

First, while the US Government has not historically been known for a progressive attitude towards drug use, this attitude seems to be shifting slightly in recent year. The decriminalization of marijuana in Oregon and Colorado was not challenged by the federal government. Despite this, marijuana is actually the most sold product on the online marketplace. Together, cocaine and marijuana make up more than half of all Silk Road transactions. In short, demands for the takedown of the Silk Road have largely stemmed from an assumption that the most extreme transactions, like hiring hit men, are the norm.  IN reality, the majority of transactions aren’t major targets for the FBI.

The RCMP specialists on cybercrime in Canada admitted that their resources were limited, and their priority was individuals in danger, not minor drug busts. For their part, the FBI has only 200 agents working in cybercrime. As I argued earlier, the FBI’s shutdown of the original Silk Road happened largely by chance. But it is worth considering whether it happened the way it did because resources were not heavily directed towards finding the site’s owner and taking it down.

My second theory as to why the FBI’s takedown of the Silk Road may require a small tinfoil hat, but it is an interesting idea. Far from being in over their heads, the FBI may be using the Silk Road to root out criminals. It is well known that Tor was originally developed by the U.S. Navy, and in certain parts of the web, it is theorized that the U.S. purposefully keeps Tor around, running exit nodes to track criminals. Running an exit node (unlike a relay node) is an extremely risky move, as any illegal data passed through appears to have originated at that server. Exit nodes can also be manipulated so that the node can read the information passing through . In other words, if the United States isn’t  running Tor exit nodes, then they’re missing out on a great strategy for tracking cybercrime. So, the theory goes, the Silk Road and other online black markets are allowed to run so that the FBI can use their data to go after major criminals.

The one question that remains if this theory is true, is why the first Silk Road was taken down in the first place. My only answer to this is that perhaps the original Dread Pirate Roberts qualified as a major criminal on The Silk Road. After all, he did not only run the site, but he was also a major drug seller, and allegedly tried to hire a hit man on the deep web. After his arrest, the FBI could not legally run the Silk Road themselves, so they shut it down knowing full well that online criminals would only migrate elsewhere to be caught by their exit nodes. 

Of course, this is all speculation. But it is interesting speculation, and perhaps more comforting speculation than the idea that the U.S. government have entirely lost control of their own invention.

Thanks and credit to J.C. for discussing this with me!