Silk Road - Glen Coleman

Feds Nab Alleged Leader of ‘Silk Road’ Online Drug Market

Article from The Wall Street Journal, Tech section, October 2, 13.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/10/02/feds-nab-alleged-leader-of-silk-road-online-drug-market

By: Glen Coleman



People will now likely be going to other sources to buy their illegal prescriptions, narcotics,

explosives and other forms of contraband online, or what I’m dubbing as the “E-underground”

(it’s not in Urban Dictionary), or more specifically what is known as the online underground

market place the ‘Silk Road.’ In this article despite encryption techniques the Feds have finally

tracked down and arrested the alleged ringleader of The Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, on Tuesday

10/2 in a San Francisco coffee shop. It is unclear in the article how the Feds tracked Ulbricht

down, however, it is clear that the government now has the ability to unmask the anonymity of

hidden proxy servers like Tor.



According to Suler, I believe Ulbricht exhibited a form of unrestrained toxic disinhibition (the

crime of running the site), amplified by Invisibility (or anonymity), which gave Ulbricht the

courage to commit the act, which was exacerbated by the Minimized Status of Authority (or the

relative lawlessness and enforcement of virtual space). Unlike most cyber crime there was no

scamming or fraud involved. In fact the site operated quite the opposite, through fair exchanges

(goods for e-currency in escrow), albeit the types of goods being sold were unlawful. Any

assessment signals by the purchaser would have to be probed through a seller’s avatar, feedback,

and or rating.



The Feds were also able to confiscate around $3.6M in electronic currency. This challenges and

undermines the security and anonymity of the now famous electronic currency Bitcoin. Bitcoin

has been under much pressure lately for regulation from authorities. One could even drag

Friedman slash Hayek logic into this whole argument, that spontaneous markets should be

allowed to flourish with little government intervention, thus the sites owner, and its patrons

individual liberties have both been mitigated by the US Federal Government.