Silk Road forums

what about encrypted phones? im not talking about an app but a phone that was built to be encrypted.

Last I looked into it, phones that are built for the 'encrypted voice' niche market cost several thousand dollars per unit (a quick google search shows this one which is selling for $3,000: NOKIA E71 ENCRYPTED) and they usually only work if you use them with someone else who has the same phone. Android phones are imo the clear winners when it comes to secured communications with cell phones, they have apps that encrypt text voice and instant messages (and the entire phones storage), and they are compatible with any other Android phone, and they cost a fraction of what a purpose specific encrypted phone costs (not to mention the encryption apps are free). 

Using bitcoin mixes is money laundering. Using bitcoin to pay for drugs may be money laundering in itself. Bitcoin is somewhat of a legal gray area right now afaik, but they could probably try and say it is money laundering depending on how you go about using it.

Actually being a bitcoin exchanger is almost certainly illegal in the USA unless you have licenses and follow some sort of know your customer regulations.

Quote from: Mister Dank on April 12, 2012, 02:23 pm

Quote from: slk2004 on April 12, 2012, 02:12 pm

Quote from: BE HERE NOW on April 11, 2012, 06:14 am

agents do whatever they deem fit to fuck with people as they feel.

Uh, no. They're not above the law. If anything, detectives/investigators follow the law closer than most cops because they know that if they fucked up one thing then the judge can throw out the case.

ROFLMAO!!! You've been watching too many cop shows..lol...how old are you? LMAO....yes, I'm really laughing this hard!

  No shit right! Those were the "good ol days"  These are post 911 times  were in now.....and yes they can pretty much do whatever they want and "fix things" how they want. And do you really think judges give a shit? We put the police and feds and judges on this pedestal as if there all honest or something? some are! some are not. But the rules have changed. Now there trying to push drones for LE and they will. Because no one will stand up and resist..........Occupy! that's all we have! take to the streets if you want change. Or just sit back and let them have there way with us....peace!

LE have had drones for ages

Some good points! As per its allegory towards terrorism this would really be more akin to a lynch mob, as instead of random acts of violence towards innocent civilians designed to cause fear in the masses for the purpose of ideological fulfillment, it would be targeted acts of violence towards guilty persons designed to cause fear amongst their category (politicians, lenders, organizations) for the purpose of the reinforcement of natural law. So it actually carries the inverse of terrorism, as opposed to a small group causing fear in a large group, a large group would be causing fear in a small group.

Quote from: RunningLion on March 31, 2012, 09:51 pm

Why does this need to be a hidden service?  It seems like an idea you could use on a clearnet site as long as you don't say your purpose is to provide incentive for someones death.  It would need to be framed in the right light.  You would need a dam good lawyer.  It seems like I'm missing something.  What could they charge you with?

Read up on Jim Bells wikipedia entry, all he did was write a paper explaining the idea and the government has ruined his life ever since. I think we're all well aware that nowadays the government doesn't need to charge you with anything to make you disappear. A hidden service would be a first precaution, and a freenet freesite as a last resort given its completely untraceable (though extremely slow) nature.

Quote

I think there would be some massive issues with this. First of all, the people running it would have to be incredibly trustworthy. They could just up ship and steal the cash. And also, who nominates who gets put on there? It could easily just turn into attacking any random rich person.

It would be wholly up to the operator to not only prove he has a trustworthy platform but to moderate who gets posted and make sure that no one who has a healthy presumption of innocence gets nominated, as well as provide rules for no win scenario's and so forth. It's really no different from the silk road, just look at how many sketchy drug services there are and they all have come and gone, yet this one has remained because its operator has remained trustworthy. No doubt there would be a shaky start, but eventually a reliable service would come along and become the standard.

Freenet is not completely untraceable, it's just really hard to tell who originally published a file to it (but not so hard to tell who republishes files, although it is hard to prove if they intended to republish or not), and really hard to prove someone requested something from it (although trivial for their neighboring nodes to tell that they got something from it, proof that they requested to get it is the more difficult part to prove). There are attacks on Freenet though. It is also much less studied than Tor is. I think it is probably a lot better in some ways and a lot worse in others, but it has a ton more 'unknowns' than Tor does, at this point. It still aims to achieve anonymity, but it does so in an almost entirely different way than Tor does. Freenet aims to make it impossible to prove who originally published a file, and attempts to make it impossible to prove who intentionally republishes files and who intentionally requests to download files (ie: Freenet aims primarily to maintain plausible deniability, 'yes I downloaded that, but can you prove that I requested it?' 'Yes, I sent that from my computer and stored it on my computer, but can you prove that I did so intentionally?', 'Yes, I sent that file, but can you prove I was the one who originally added it to the network?' ). Freenet also aims to be highly censorship resistant by storing content distributed over many servers through out the network (ie: 'you can't censor this site because even though you can identify the nodes that store it easily enough, there are hundreds of them around the world, and you can't determine if the people running the nodes are aware of what they are storing, and even after you take a few of them down the content just shifts to others)

where as with Tor it is more like 'You don't know what I downloaded because it is layer encrypted on the path back to me' (but if you follow it back to me with a timing attack, or identify it with a traffic classifier at my entry node, you can essentially prove that I intended to download it) ... 'You don't know if I uploaded this file or not because you can't trace me back through the network' (but if you manage to trace me back you can essentially prove that I uploaded the file) .... 'You can't determine who I communicate with because our layer encrypted communications are routed through lots of nodes' (but if you do manage to get in a position to do a linking attack you can confirm who is talking with who) .... 'You can't censor this website because you (allegedly) can't easily find the server to take it down' (but if you do trace the server you can take it down)

Attacks against Tor tend to try to observe a packet at multiple points as it travels through the network, in an attempt to link the sender of the packet to the receiver or vice versa (or to identify the content of the sent / received packet). Attacks against Freenet tend to use statistical formulas to come to an estimate regarding the probability of  a certain node requesting or inserting a certain file or type of content (after all, it is trivial for all neighboring Freenet nodes to determine the content that they relay on to and from their neighbors, it is just hard for them to determine if the neighbor inserted/requested the content in the first place....)

The only place Freenet is a clear winner over Tor is in censorship resistance....good luck removing popular content from Freenet.

for customers cash in mail is more anonymous than bitcoin in most cases (unless you get your bitcoins with cash in mail) but for vendors its pretty much a guaranteed trip to prison.

You don't edit the ISO to dual boot. Generally you will want to install Windows first if that is what you plan to dual boot with.  Make sure to leave space for your Linux distro. Then when you want to install the linux distro you specify that you want to dual boot during the installation, or during the partition configuration.  I have never dual booted Windows with Linux so not sure how much help I can be, but it seems easy enough. You could always just follow this tutorial if you are using Ubuntu in addition to Windows

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

to remove stuff from ubuntu you generally can just do sudo apt-get remove name-of-package

just post any other questions here or if you need more help on the other things , do you get stuck on something ?

I think they are independently run actually. I don't trust Xerobank at all, their owner (who also was in agorist community long before SR) is a master of marketing and a dumbass when it comes to actually knowing anything. He is largely seen as a troll. That said, I can say cryptohippie in particular has smart people working for them, who actually know technical security to great detail, but I am unwavering in my suggestion of Tor over any VPN provider, and strongly suggest using a private VPS to exit if you need to hide that you use Tor.

I hate to see xerobank and cryptohippie seen as the same thing, Xerobank is a joke and steve is a troll who actually doesn't know shit about security, cryptohippie at least has people who know what they are talking about working for them, but it is no replacement for Tor anymore than Jondonym is.

The primary difference between the three can be summed up like this:

Xerobank: "We have ultra secret attacks that make Tor shit! Pay us to keep you safe with our secret system! We can not say anything more omfg blackhelicopters1111!!!!"
Metropipe: "Use Tor if you need strong anonymity"
Cryptohippie: "None of our clients have been compromised so far!" (probably because most of their clients are businesses and trying to protect from corporate espionage, not from feds with warrants)