Looks awfully hot, based solely on the amount of traffic, the sheer number of reported "deals", etc. I'd have to see some proof that this isn't an elaborate sting before I even considered it. Buying shit on the internet is very similar to buying shit in person, if you don't trust the person you are dealing with, you really shouldn't be there. It ain't fucking rocket surgery.
What really does concern me is that the sheer volume of cocky "script kiddies", that think they are "anonymous" and untouchable, have fucked with some extremely heavy-duty operations (The kind that employ serious script artistes, people who can hand code the programs they utilize "pre-made"). Put very, very simply, they have trodden on toes that ought never be trod upon, at the urging of god knows who, or for what purpose. There is a very old saying,
Cui bono? (to whose benefit?), where the inverse is also true,
Cui malo? (to whose detriment). Well I suspect we are about to find a bunch of people who are going to be stung, hard as a result of ongoing operations to put a dampener on the current shitfight.
There are, right now, an awful lot of government employees who will be spending their time looking awfully hard at the tor network (many more than usual) and the people using it. It has gained a certain amount of fame/infamy due to its being a high-profile user-agent for the whole wannabee a rebel crap that is going on at present. These people want to strike a blow at the Government, well fairs fair, so do we (albeit differently, the majority here disagree with one aspect of our nations laws, not every fucking thing that our nation does). What they also do, which is a major point of difference, is believe they are above the law and can destroy whatever they want, whenever they want (or that is the public perception).
I honestly do not believe that the tor network is any where near as secure as it is touted as being, there is still a connection between a gateway and the original IP, as well as a connection between an visited site and a gateway. The combinations of connections necessary to connect point A with point B is random, changing extremely rapidly and is analogous to a fingerprint. It is also stored in your ISP's cache with your IP, with a date/time stamp, etc. That is, when it comes down to it, evidence of a particularly damning nature when the tree is cut down. How do we get to the point where a warrant is issued to take your PC/Laptop? Simple, some apparently "anonymous individual", posing as a trusted seller, simply fills an order for X,Y,Z using anonymous browsers, using "untraceable" money (big hint - this will immediately bring the attention of the ATO/IRS/etc. and ire thereof onto whomever is using this).
At several points in there, there is the opportunity to coerce overly trusting dickheads into giving up their anonymity. One that bothers me for starters is actually receiving goods, someone is going to be handed something at some point (kinda fucks with anonymity), purchasing the credit (it has to be paid for somehow, it also has to be trackable & back-trackable or the site selling it would be ripped blind - lots of information there). At some point we have to hand over potentially damning information to a vendor, to get goods delivered to point A from them.
Someone please tell me that I'm imagining this... That the "Research Drugs" sites were not taken down (comparatively recently), that it is quite legitimate if I see someone on ebay selling safrole, etc. Something stinks, and the best part if it is this is that the anonymity of the vendor means that they need never be examined by the seller. Entrapment is kinda hard to establish when (a) the purchaser willingly agreed to purchase a dangerous drug; (b) for valuable consideration; (c) from someone who represented to them that they had the same for sale. That is not inducing a person to commit a crime they would otherwise not have committed. It is simply taking advantage of stupidity to cause them to purchase off police/???, there is both
actus reus and
mens rea, the crime is established by proving the purchase and the fact it was deliberate.
PS this is quite apart from the possibility that people are being drawn to "honeypot" sites, where unknown to them, tor doesn't protect their anonymity (check out the warning on the tor site ffs) due to the way they are coded.
PPS Even if this isn't a sting, the money has to go somewhere, there has to be an end to the trail. That means the end to the trail will be tracked down and quite probably come to the same end as anyone else who tried to make a quick buck out of selling illegal material openly on the internet (ie. a bad one). What almost inevitably happens is that such people have, whether they mean to or not, records of whoever they have dealt with. I've seen several articles where people took no special precautions (or reportedly didn't) when getting stuff delivered... What can I say?
