Quote from: Joosy on September 12, 2012, 04:31 amQuote from: pine on September 11, 2012, 10:23 pmQuote from: maniacsxc on September 03, 2012, 09:54 amCmd-Shallies said he did not believe websites offering drugs online were based out of WA or Australia.``The sites identified to date are offshore,'' he said.``This is consistent with most cyber related offences.''This is what I cannot understand. I quite literally cannot comprehend how he arrives at these conclusions.Again and again, the AFP and other Aussie LE have implied that SR is somewhere else, over the rainbow maybe.Maybe I missed it but they didn't refer to SR once?What other online website sells those drugs? Of course, he may be referring to internet online pharmacies in the case of acquiring steroids, but he mentions illegal drugs only in this report. We don't need him to say SR in order to read between the lines, in fact it'd be somewhat of a shock if a LE agency mentioned SR explicitly externally because they don't want to give free advertising. I know a number of sites in the public scene that sell those drugs, but it's hard to think of any that do so on clearnet unless you are talking about certain mediums that don't exactly support the activity e.g. Topix.Actually it blows my mind that Topix still exists after all these years. All those transactions can't be all LEO surely, yet there is zero moderation. If LE try to take down SR but leave Topix up it would be the height of hypocrisy.Anyway as per LE propaganda, they don't lie in their reports, they just use selective reporting, dramatics, hyper inflated numbers, nothing that can directly come back and bite them in the ass. From a certain narrow point of view, the report is true.But the impression is misleading, as was intended. Emphasizing how ZOMG black helicopters important their role is in society in general, is something all LE agencies do to obtain more funding, because more funding implies another wave of troop hiring, which implies promotions and thus higher pay for somebody (s) else in the org. Which is why the authors of these information-free reports never get rapped on the knuckles from on high. This is not how a corporation works, but this is how a government department works. Another good example (but much worse on the ethical scale), is the conflation of SR and child pornography just because they are both on the Tor network. Actually there's more child porn on the clearnet than the darknet, but that's an issue for another day. I don't see Amazon.com or Ebay.com being hounded over this in the media either, but it'd be just as logical. In any case, when you examine these reports, few of them lie about it outright e.g. the BBC report on SR, but some of them do e.g. The OZ guy, the herald or something, who is clearly a LE shill or some civilian who thinks he's helping. The point is that when 9/10 people read these reports, they unconsciously infer, incorrectly, that SR supports child pornography, which is something it does not, and never has done. This is the kind of thing they teach you to "catch" in journalism school or even English classes in high school.I don't think LE sometimes imagine how badly such a campaign could backfire. Contrary to what kmfkewm said on the topic once or twice, the creation and distribution of illegal pornography is actually a highly lucrative business, the phrase 'obscene profits' could hardly be more apt. What if we become so tarred and feathered by the propaganda that we just throw in the towel and start doing exactly what they were implying we were doing? We ain't going to do that, but some other sites might.Back on topic, I am pretty darn sure that he is referring to SR, as I said he's being deliberately vague.