Silk Road forums

It's a reminder to never access a clearnet site linked from here over a regular internet connection (only over Tor), and be careful about running JavaScript.

I could set up a web site and link to it, then check the server logs for IP addresses. Now if LE did that, they could get user info from the ISPs.

Are you trying to access the Silk Road chat?

Click the onion icon -> Settings -> Advanced, and uncheck "Configure ControlPort automatically", then restart the browser bundle. That will force the SocksPort to be 9050, otherwise a random one is selected.

In mIRC, create a new entry for an IRC network. Call it "Silk Road" I guess.

Enter this as the server: silcroadg3c3mtu6.onion
Enter this as the port: 6667

Select SOCKS5 proxy
Enter this as the proxy address: 127.0.0.1

If you are using the standalone Tor client
Enter this as the proxy port: 9050

If you are using the browser bundle
Enter this as the proxy port: 9150

Fill out the info for username and all that.

Connect.

Edit: Changed info about SocksPort

Breif history of crypto wars

About as brief as it gets

http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

@libertarian

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

hQEMAx5D158PIKmpAQf+O6dYkuLk2xHHyo8+M54G9ovuTwGEbIK9O9K9gbm5+HlX
pHeN4BbZDEBYrAulltga5yL+LwydG58Bi0cTlPcxCtU0EL1CuuEqiv/Q/owcF6+N
C7YEN4of40L6jo+dHNx1sazOeB5fuRk3pNNM/67cMTokOssYq1ofuvRCCr0/Bj5D
8F9jKGCXoCmPMlkPbDVxS7ZPDeF3zFKQJBWjeOHueg3YNc04dBmADIlowFYhUKMC
MpYDxKTBUcZ8eVyW4V6ZJhk4BAyH1uozI2wFpGjLM9VWR9y9zJ4NoLJP48pk40yV
QaExxbigQhVe+q5YyTZ3gW1dQGXoCGZIATfvhdSjxYUCDAP/p+UDzJJa1wEP/3Wb
ctIetbUKA1nJdeNwNs9aC6c/qFc+X19suVJht+gq1OVarfuI8fI16nVNN6pt2AJQ
yaNJj/4E3lyUiqH7+jxY2+2xEM2u1PPXCPFL8GVIRS517O9xeuj3TsPYz3DbRUTF
Jx3ZsVEjvJcvmKfjsZEDUDMezm5OjRdF1bjOthmrEu2qAHlmKr99AjoMvv2/HNzZ
Ge8jj9u8goq1SeiF9okHlipAdSZyZpmr4sklXx/PQlA2S6ejkbC8WRvOvqKpCIXM
WOXyYTGYSs0hvJhTD753cUYdMDz4MoohTFxHs3/Ucwt8YmRnlQ0dAxNdN6+U57Cv
1do7O/PvB2KKJDCPRbbzsKs0V1AvXswmb9Bi+zzjdtZWME2meTx4Mw2ZGd+Tphpf
Ec3oTQ96cywJeSmLg75Dv3gLCVnf9+QyIEEoaJqU+EOKW6vU+H5R8ENP3XPksYY5
tlX4G6kjLYCEgsMmfXyKEVMPDemo7nIR+DKhUVglOP3ZCFu00351WralxNlS/+yy
ANboclQUtUblw47aAWVysCPZiS0SXs6G2SuIhhFqdrhDhahAC0ByJsNLIytY1f0A
t0n6sZ7SQ23tpN25gSsAl1N7C76TgRt+bDXspTfrtGuPaUF8yNGYBxowq6plTkqg
ifCv5BukMaALVXc0cmhySgYzORMnED2QycjqQGun0sCeAfoxY7CJs+CTRZLJSqXY
F/JTEz54dcHaz8NkCfqPfYdgi3Nmwgo7FKKoxhQ9+vwoNTOg6oGhhqlafQ60tVhr
a3l1Mxxyj2bfvmekxl/jJkV7mrLUOV0LZTJD2+SD9hXVmQ6FMf3C/iXRbp4XfUv5
tkq+byZ7xZpOochKsGPyQa7c9CiTP4hTr/JZGLXGXfh+fQhwXys/L9kycibyGJgT
H3MwnshHzBLpPGOMGCB7+Ije3+07EKiZgQiYPPIpMbvWZvN8cNZty8FVc5pqviWG
3PucG+a4QlifFoUh9CvSQB9GJNK9mlp7qAuhbhoFQm6RkIg/NuI+TCyOAzPcqTpl
U+FJmyd2eO4VAdhvH+2ZxDt1OA2PiJpHdYnUYnhWGAbox2iocjIoTtdgBnKAulA/
uM0zr+ayyXBDO4889jwmP528MleLBh+fQCLULiJrArvhMpx072euugcfrN2OYwk=
=PG0j
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

I am a newb to this site, and with all the precautions and warnings, people seem a bit hypersensitive when it comes to security, for the amount of people that are actually getting caught. 

Have you ever heard of a policy wonk? It's a person who likes studying the minutiae of legislation because it's fun for them. Some of us are, for lack of a better term, security wonks. We like exploring the theoretical details of security attacks, even though we recognize that they are not a part of our threat model.

Please don't let us scare you. A lot of this is mental masturbation.

BUT,  My question is, how far will "the government" (I'm referring to the US) go to bust someone buying a trivial amount of nearly legalized drugs, say under an ounce of weed, mushrooms or lsd, or some other low level drug?

I guess the real question I ask is:  How often, and for what, does the government actually intervene? 

It depends on time, geography, funding, and legislative will.

The best guideline is to read your local paper and see what kinds of drugs and amounts are getting busted. That's what they care about.

I use tails, how safe is it when talking about being totally anonymus?

If by totally anonymous you mean that your Tor circuits are indistinguishable from all the others, at a technical level, that is true of all Tor clients, not just the one that runs on Tails. Of course, you can fuck that up at a level above the technical infrastructure. If you log into your Facebook or Gmail account, linked to your real identity, there's nothing Tor can do for you. If you post 600+ messages on a forum, like me , you're not technically anonymous, just pseudonymous, since all my previous posts can be linked to one identity, you just don't know who I am.

What I suspect you mean is, can a local observer identify what I'm doing on the other end?  I think that's what most people worry about, because they view the network backwards. The sites you visit can only see the exit node, they have no idea whether you're in America, England, Germany, or Pakistan. Your language might give you away, but that's another threat above the technical infrastructure.

No, a local observer has no idea what you're viewing, and the site you're visiting has no idea who you are. That's the point of selecting 3 random nodes in the network. Tails doesn't make you more anonymous on the Tor network. It only prevents you from writing stuff to your hard drive. Full disk encryption offers a similar level of security, but that has nothing to do with anonymity.

The honest answer to your question is that nobody knows for sure. Academic researchers (notably Adi Shamir, the S in RSA) have performed statistical analyses of the block chain and found various links, but nobody has been prosecuted by being linked to a crime through bitcoin transactions. It's almost certain that will happen eventually, but we don't know what LE capabilities are now or will be in the future, and how willing they will be to deploy those capabilities on criminals of varying stature. A terrorist or cartel boss has more reason to be worried than an SR vendor, who has more reason to be worried than a buyer.

One thing to remember is that all transactions are saved in the block chain forever. 20 years from now, when LE has 10^20 greater computing power, those transactions will be available for analysis. I think it's worth paying a 3% fee for added security.