Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: pine on February 25, 2012, 10:16 pm
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Some of you have been reading The Forensic Examiner's article series on "Drug Smuggling Behavior: A Developmental Smuggling Model".
For those of you who haven't, it's practically a How-To to setup your own smuggling enterprise. Thank-you academia. kmfkewm and QTC have posted some links to it on here.
Anyway, a particular paragraph caught my attention:
"Studying the packaging of contraband will assist in the classification of the smuggling organization. An example is that a smuggling organization transporting explosives or illegal drugs may use a vender who "heat treats" or moves the oxygen from the package. Thus, the package tells the observer how far away, in hours, the smuggling organization is, as the package vender must take into account the amount of time necessary for the molecules of the contraband to permeate the plastic in which it is wrapped."
Now, I think we all knew that eventually drug residues will get through the plastic, but who knew that it was possible to measure this degradation in hours? That isolates your time zone rather neatly, which is unpleasant. I think we all prefer a global footprint to a local one.
Thoughts? Ideas?
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You are already revealing far more specific geolocational intelligence through your postmarks and return address so I don't think it's really a big deal. I am going out for now but will post some more specific intel on interception technology like the GE Itemiser system (a toy that can pwn even vacuum sealed packages) soon.
(For anybody that wants to read the mentioned articles see http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=11863)
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Some of you have been reading The Forensic Examiner's article series on "Drug Smuggling Behavior: A Developmental Smuggling Model".
For those of you who haven't, it's practically a How-To to setup your own smuggling enterprise. Thank-you academia. kmfkewm and QTC have posted some links to it on here.
Anyway, a particular paragraph caught my attention:
"Studying the packaging of contraband will assist in the classification of the smuggling organization. An example is that a smuggling organization transporting explosives or illegal drugs may use a vender who "heat treats" or moves the oxygen from the package. Thus, the package tells the observer how far away, in hours, the smuggling organization is, as the package vender must take into account the amount of time necessary for the molecules of the contraband to permeate the plastic in which it is wrapped."
Now, I think we all knew that eventually drug residues will get through the plastic, but who knew that it was possible to measure this degradation in hours? That isolates your time zone rather neatly, which is unpleasant. I think we all prefer a global footprint to a local one.
Thoughts? Ideas?
You already have your rough geolocation leaked simply by using the mail system. This is more important for smugglers who use long series of runners, or multi-vehicle transportation. I have tried in the past to look for a formula to determine how fast given substances will permeate through various sorts of vac bags but I can't find anything, any physics people here want to help? It would really come in handy, if it only takes a day for the scent of MDMA to permeate through the vac bag a certain vendor is using it might not be such a hot idea to try importing through customs from them. I have asked people with physics backgrounds for help on this before but the best answer I could get out of them was "use vacuum sealed glass containers". Not sure if that is the best option for smuggling though :P.
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this is very interesting stuff.....glass containers...?? fuck....what about types of plexiglass...?? could it be possible to get containers made from them some how...??? and how would u vacuum seal it without special equipment..??? hmmmm this is really interesting....
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I am not sure how practical it can be made to vacuum seal glass, but the people I talked with suggested it is the best way to not have any of the scent permeate through the material.
Here is a way to do it with glass ampules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampoule):
http://www.ilpi.com/glassblowing/tutorial_ampule.html
I really would rather get a formula for determining how long a normal vac bag will hold scent in though :P.
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Re: QTC
That's true, but it throws out the idea of using anonymous remailers, which is highly inconvenient if you live in a red flag country like the Netherlands. I mean, you could theoretically repack the product, but it's making life a hell of a lot more complicated. Trust issues etc.
I'm curious about how precise this process can be. Because if it can be highly specific down to the minute/second...
I imagine there's a lot of caveats that make it unlikely for that to be the case though.
Re: kmfkewm
It may be worth paying a materials scientist to work out the statistics for different drug/plastic combinations. There should already be some literature out there somewhere on the subject, I'll have a root around. Ampoules look interesting for bulk quantities (relatively speaking to my 7-10g rule).
Also, there is an approximate formula here you might be interested in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeation
The mass flow qm through a barrier layer can within certain pressure limits be linearized and approximated by:
qm = Perm A Δp / delta
with qm the mass flow, Perm the specific material permeability, A the surface area, Δp the pressure difference, and delta the material thickness. In Europe the permeability unit is mostly cm3.mm/(m2.Bar.day), so that the gas flow in cm3/day results when the area is given in m2, the thickness in mm, and the pressure difference in Bar.
In American units, the permeability is often given in cm3.mil/(100 inch2.Bar.day) which can be converted to the European unit by dividing by 2.54.
In SI units, it is given in s-1.
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This is where a PolySci Engineer or Chem Engineer would come in handy. A formula for permeability, I think that it would be very difficult to determine a rate theoretically; from compound mass/structure... I think specific constants would have to be created from raw data, and those constants are then used in a master formula for PVT. If you take a helium balloon for example, you'd think it would be very easy to determine the permeability rate.
Also, you'll need a formula and constant, or an already determined rate, for how volatile each substance is. I'm don't think "volatile" is the correct term, because it mostly concerns liquids. I'm kind of lost when it comes to solid substances, but liquid-gas volatility/equilibrium is determined by Henry's constant. I don't remember how to use it... but I'd be surprised if you found the constants for the particular substances you were looking for.
With all that said, I think it would be best to just find a solution with non-vaporous materials instead of finding a safe time frame for the substance to be in the vac-bag. I'm not a seller and I'm no packing expert but what about those glass chem bottles that are lined with plastic in and out, so if it breaks the liquid and glass is still contained or like a toilet goose neck use water to stop the odor; vac sealed substance in vac sealed in a bag of water. Just some thoughts...
Personally I think the the location tidbit is bullsh!t. That vac bag could be sitting there for hours before mailing, and the hours sitting relative to hours it takes to arrive could easily yield a wrong location. Maybe they mean down to the continent or country.
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"Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"
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I would be surprised by how much can be determined at this time by what has diffused out of the bag as far as the distance. I agree with Fyodor, it strikes me as unlikely that you will find the diffusivity of MDMA, but it may be out there in the forensic literature somewhere. More complicating: most substance is not standardized and the date of origin is not that well established.
Wait, strike that. I <3 the interwebs. Sorry for this long damn link, but it is worth it (this is the fulltext link that does not require you to go through ProQuest) - this is fantastic.
http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1158&context=etd&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dthe%2520development%2520of%2520an%2520optimized%2520system%2520of%2520narcotic%2520and%2520explosive%2520contraband%2520mimics%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CCAQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigitalcommons.fiu.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1158%2526context%253Detd%26ei%3DZtVKT_iMEIWtiQLA-_TaDQ%26usg%3DAFQjCNE1naS2VUbitBJSfI3k_qp6XH8zYg#search=%22development%20an%20optimized%20system%20narcotic%20explosive%20contraband%20mimics%22
Too long to copy all of here, but this certainly looks simple enough to replicate at home:
Solid compounds were weighed to various amounts and heat sealed within a polymer bags. Liquid compounds were spiked onto 2in x 2in sterile gauze pads and heat sealed within LDPE bags. The solid amounts varied from 5mg to 2g and liquid amounts varied from 1mL to 5mL. The polymer bags that were used included 3in x 3in 1.5mil, 2mil, 3mil, 4mil LDPE and 2mil HDPP. The COMPS device was then heat sealed and stored within an aluminized Kapak bag. Negative controls were created by with blank media (i.e. blank gauze, empty polymer bags, and blank tea candles).
3.4.2. Permeation of Odor Compounds
Once the COMPS were prepared, they were monitored (weighed) over the course of twenty-one days to determine the mass loss per time, i.e. the permeation rate through the polymer bags. At the conclusion of the weighing process, the data was plotted as mass vs. time. Each sample was made-up in triplicate for statistical purposes. The plotted results of average mass loss vs. time in days allowed for a calculation of permeation rate and half-life for each odor compounds through the polymer bags. Empty bags were also heat sealed and kept in the same environment to use as control samples.
Interesting MDMA analysis in here by the way.
This is not nearly as helpful without the graphs. Bolding mine.: As expected, the permeation rate is affected by the thickness of the LDPE bags (Table 15). The thinner the polymer bag, the faster the permeation rate (250ng/sec for 1.5mil bag); conversely, the thicker the polymer bag, the slower the permeation rate (142ng/sec for 4mil bag). The low density form means that there is less organization to the polyethylene structure because of branching (see section 2.5). This branching creates gaps, and the larger gaps, the easier it is for the compounds to pass through the polymer. Thicker polyethylene does not necessarily equate to a more structured form, but it does provide a thicker weave of polyethylene branches through which the compound must pass. The increased time the compound spends passing though the polymer matrix reduces the permeation rate of the compound. Permeation through the HDPP bag was substantially lower than the thickest LDPE bags (19ng/sec vs. 142ng/s). The reduction in permeation rate can be explained though the nature of a high density polymer and the polypropylene structure. The rigidity of the isotactic blocks found in polypropylene coupled with the high linearity characteristic of the high density form greatly reduces the available openings the compound to pass through resulting in a slower permeation rate.
He never describes how many days/substance/package precisely, but see Fig 37/p 101, for example, and the preceding discussion. It's certainly more helpful than anything I've yet seen.
Note the 'hit rates' with the dogs, please.
There's more, he does heroin, explosives, it's just all kinds of great. Save it before it's taken down.
Part 2
I would not be surprised if it is possible to determine, to a fair degree, how long ago the bag was vacuum-sealed based on the amount of O2/CO2 present in the bag, if it is still sealed when they receive it.
The usual vacuum-sealer PA/PE film, etc., is ASTM-tested for permeance/permeability - the food industry is very humorless about this stuff and has done an immense amount of research on this. A search for "PA/PE transmission permeance" brings up stats for assorted vacuum-packs. Eyeballing it, it looks like there is the potential to get a fairly close estimate if you are talking about half-hours, not minutes, and standardized conditions (did not suddenly hop over the Himalayas, etc.) But I didn't yet find anything on the use of this in the literature. I may not be using the right language, I will keep checking.
However, if you want to use "vacuum sealed glass containers," the ag extension knows all about canning and can hook you right up.
After reading the dissertation above, paint cans hold a new interest for me. I've used sealed jars for dog training before with success, but I'll have to try paint cans, the hardware store will give me some 'blank' ones for free.
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Sounds like a gold mine fizzy, can't wait to read it later, great work! 8)
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I gather two things from it after just a quick scan over fizzys post
1. We should absolutely be using HDPP bags
2. We should probably be double or triple vac sealing
I also note that he was using a heat seal but I didn't see any mention of vac sealing. I think using a vac seal should add substantial benefits.
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ime most vendors use double vacuum sealed (at least) hdpe bags so this might be one of those pieces of common practice that's actually close to the best possible practice.
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Great find fizzy! Not just for the tracking claim, but for shipping safety with sniffers.
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"Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"
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yep, awesome find fizzy.
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I gather two things from it after just a quick scan over fizzys post
1. We should absolutely be using HDPP bags
2. We should probably be double or triple vac sealing
I also note that he was using a heat seal but I didn't see any mention of vac sealing. I think using a vac seal should add substantial benefits.
While I agree with these points, the sad truth is that the vac sealing procedures the average vendor is using are probably self-defeating. To ensure that the outside of the vac bag is relatively free of contamination would require multiple compartmentalized staging areas, each with its own vac sealer. Additionally, everything would need to be handled with utmost care, like using tweezers to place odor offending substances into the vac bags. Let's be honest, it doesn't require that much sophistication to deal drugs here, and as such you can hardly expect that vendors are going to lengths like this or their equivalent, whatever that may be. While it's certainly better than nothing, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the containment of residual contamination for someone shipping dozens of orders a day. I can just imagine a vendor's spare bedroom with a table with open bags of coke or heroin right next to their vac sealer, and their roll of vac bags resting against a contaminated as fuck scale. Hopefully it's better than that on average, but it ain't like you have to keep your operation up to code and pass inspection every three months, ya know?
That said, excellent find, and great discussion.
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I personally refuse to order from vendors who don't use vac seals for substances that dogs can smell, but feel free to order shit that has absolutely no measures taken against dog hitting on it if you think it isn't helpful to vac seal. Funny thing is that all the literature I can find on drug smuggling organizations lists "vacuum seal shipments" as something that the most sophisticated smuggling operations do, with less sophisticated operations taking no countermeasures or ineffective measures like cover scents.
edit: maybe I should have read your full post instead of just the first sentence before I made a reply to it ;)
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whatever happened to that guy that was offering slaves from africa... we should vac seal one of those. stinky
lolz
But on a serious note - it'd be really interesting to do/see a quantitative study on the efficacy of different methods of sealing and containment. Does anybody know if there's any way to accurately gauge how much is permeating a package? I doubt its within most of our means to access lab equipment or a drug dog.
Actually... I DID just get a new puppy... Maybe I'll start training it ;)
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it actually isn't that hard to train a drug dog
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But on a serious note - it'd be really interesting to do/see a quantitative study on the efficacy of different methods of sealing and containment. Does anybody know if there's any way to accurately gauge how much is permeating a package? I doubt its within most of our means to access lab equipment or a drug dog.
In theory it's not terribly difficult. You need a few high precision analytic balances set up on a very solid surface in a controlled environment (no air movement, dust, etc). Then it's just a matter of trying different packaging techniques, of course with the proper amount of empirical rigor i.e. running multiple trials, using controls, proper statistical analysis etc etc. The only barrier here is the finance to set up a testing facility. Analytic balances ain't cheap, especially if they're reading out to 5 decimal places (~$4000ish), and they need a rock solid foundation to operate on. To bad you can't get grants for this sort of thing, haha.
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but do we have access to any people who have access to the requird things in their day to day work? We really are not properly utilizing the human resources at the disposal of SR.
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I gather two things from it after just a quick scan over fizzys post
1. We should absolutely be using HDPP bags
2. We should probably be double or triple vac sealing
I also note that he was using a heat seal but I didn't see any mention of vac sealing. I think using a vac seal should add substantial benefits.
While I agree with these points, the sad truth is that the vac sealing procedures the average vendor is using are probably self-defeating. To ensure that the outside of the vac bag is relatively free of contamination would require multiple compartmentalized staging areas, each with its own vac sealer. Additionally, everything would need to be handled with utmost care, like using tweezers to place odor offending substances into the vac bags. Let's be honest, it doesn't require that much sophistication to deal drugs here, and as such you can hardly expect that vendors are going to lengths like this or their equivalent, whatever that may be. While it's certainly better than nothing, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the containment of residual contamination for someone shipping dozens of orders a day. I can just imagine a vendor's spare bedroom with a table with open bags of coke or heroin right next to their vac sealer, and their roll of vac bags resting against a contaminated as fuck scale. Hopefully it's better than that on average, but it ain't like you have to keep your operation up to code and pass inspection every three months, ya know?
That said, excellent find, and great discussion.
I agree that having a professional procedure to prevent cross-containmention issues is necessary.
I agree with having a compartmentalized staging area for sure, but not with having different vacuum sealers.
However I don't think you're giving vendors enough credit here. Some of us are amateurs to be sure, but the pros of us are using setups that wouldn't look that out of place in Glaxo or Pfizer's labs. It's not as if the Silk Road invented mail order drugs by any means. That's been going on for about a century.
There are two concerns when packaging drugs, human hair/skin/fingerprints etc and the drug residue.
There *is* in fact a guaranteed methodology I figured out to ensure your packages aren't contaminated before they are sent out. I'd tell it to you, but then I'd have to kill you :-X
In any case, if we are now down to the single digits in terms of nanograms per second with the simple application of vaccum sealing in triplicate with HDPP, then we're down to the 'cocaine residue on the money' level for sure, and we know the post office can't possibly stop every package with that odor signature or they would be all bankrupt within a week.
Here is what I think separates the men from the boys:
- mask for mouth/nose (your breath can transfer DNA)
- hairnet
- alcohol wipes to rub down bags with (removes the possibility of latent fingerprints)
- bleach dip (removes DNA, half diluted with bottled water since bleach is both strong and viscous)
- high intensity UV blacklight (more sterilization, may also reveal contaminated bags)
- UV glasses (UV burns the eyes! the eyes! :-p)
- 2 pairs of surgical gloves (these are special sterilized disposables used in medical operations, not your normal latex gloves)
- HDPP plastic (for the reasons we've discovered in this thread!)
- vacuum packing equipment
- correctly calibrated milligram scales
- tweezers/mini-spoon (those mini ice-cream scoops or a royal spoon do nicely)
- some kind of tiny flat plastic holder/container (so the milligram scales doesn't directly come in contact with contraband)
- opaque plastic wrap for the top layer (prevents visual pin-hole inspections)
- generic high volume business packaging
- thermal label printer (bye bye you fucking tracking dots, ha ha ha!)
- exact postage to within a single stamp (some people have apparently been sending what I think of as "Mrs Weasley letters")
- < 10 grams per package, special procedures for higher quantities per package.
- randomly chosen return address within your zip code.
- randomly chosen post boxes to drop the packages into.
- in case it wasn't obvious, gloves will always be in fashion for us dropping packages in post boxes.
- some of the above paid for with a prepaid card via anonymous proxy or else cash in a store (that is; anything that is going to be physically traveling through the post)
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Something came to mind while reading the "Ordering Lb's of Cannabis Internationally" thread.
I read the glass ampoule thingy and it occurred to me, rather than:
a) looking for a custom glass-blower - opens you up to being traced back to the manufacturer should a pack be intercepted. Unlikely, but...
b) ...or learning to blow glass your self - not fun and you need a fuckton of equipment...
Wouldn't layering fibreglass epoxy around a pack achieve the same purpose? Added benefits:
1. Less brittle, more flexible. Very small chance of a breached pack compared to glass.
2. Thinner, you don't need a lot of fibreglass to create a tough, airtight, near impermeable layer.
3. Lighter; glass *is* heavy.
4. Buying fibreglass gear is cheaper and puts you in a much larger set size.
Obviously *not* for tiny packs unless you're 1 hardworking vendor or employ enough people to make this time efficient. Lets say slightly larger amounts?
Any reasons this wouldn't work?
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u guys know that foodsaver already makes accessory jars made out of Plexiglas or w/e... u just attach the accessory hose to it and it sucks all the air out. they got some big ones too.
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The field trials in that dissertation are interesting in their rates of detection even with the HD plastics, but, as I read it, those were 'aged-in-plastic' samples.
I think the other strong take-away from this is to seal (or over-seal/double-seal) *immediately* or as close to possible prior to sending.
That might be SOP - I don't know - but I haven't seen it explicitly stated thus far.
The graphs in the dissertation are very helpful. Days look like they have the potential to make a difference with a larger parcel coming from a greater distance.
I wonder if detection rates are any higher after a rare 4 day holiday. Doubtful if that is published.
As far as replicating/expanding - The knowledge base exists, and the method is spelled out in clear detail in the paper. This looks to be something that could be easily repeated with an inexpensive small scale in a home environment, but I don't know if that would meet your needs - to the microgram is going to get you information about changes every few days, enough to at least plot the curves. I only have free access to an analytic balance which goes to the microgram, hence not up to spec. Home microgram scales are pretty inexpensive these days and it's not (that) difficult to build a protective environment around one. Maybe Plan C if no one steps up?
--f.
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crossposted from http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=13221
The vapor concentration [of heroin] at room temperature and atmospheric pressure is approximately 1 ppt. This is the lowest value of all the drugs discussed in this appendix, making heroin an extremely difficult molecule to detect from its vapor. In virtually all applications, collection of particulate contamination is necessary to successfully utilize trace detection.
The vapor concentration at room temperature and atmospheric pressure is about 0.25 ppb, or approximately 250 times higher than that of heroin (fig. 1). This vapor pressure means that vapor detection of cocaine is possible in some circumstances, but collection of particle contamination is still highly desirable to maximize the probability of detection.
The equilibrium vapor concentration of THC in air at room temperature and atmospheric pressure is about 61 ppt, making this chemical about 60 times more vaporous than heroin but 4 times less vaporous than cocaine.
The saturated vapor concentration of methamphetamine at room temperature and atmospheric pressure is approximately 214 ppm, making this by far the most vaporous of the illicit drugs considered in this study. In principle, this means that vapor detection of this drug should be relatively straightforward, but particle detection might be difficult due to the tendency of particles to evaporate rapidly.
[LSD's] saturated vapor concentration at room temperature and atmospheric pressure is approximately 1.2 ppt. This extremely low value, similar to that of heroin, means that it is difficult or impossible to detect from its vapor in many circumstances and that trace detection needs to be focused on particle collection.
preventing cross-contamination is very important...
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and here i went about it the wrong way researching and learning new areas of science (for me) after wondering how a dog in a news article found some dope in a pvc pipe in the middle of a gas tank..
i have also invented a dog proof container...
no you can't have one... :P
thank god i stopped tweaking.. who the hell bothers with that kind of shit?^
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professionals?
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and here i went about it the wrong way researching and learning new areas of science (for me) after wondering how a dog in a news article found some dope in a pvc pipe in the middle of a gas tank..
i have also invented a dog proof container...
no you can't have one... :P
thank god i stopped tweaking.. who the hell bothers with that kind of shit?^
yeah tweak is garbage.. the pros just drop lsd :)
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Two things:
I know a guy who is an insect exterminator. He uses a specially trained german shepard to find certain pests. This doggy went to k-9 school with all the other german shepards, most of which graduated and became k-9 police officers. This dog alerts on weed - I have seen it. Its a scary and funny thing to see in action. Maybe I can run some tests on this pooch...
Has anyone else seen or used granulated activated carbon? I saw one package of contraband last year that was vac sealed and packed into a bag full of activated carbon, and vac sealed again. This is used by all kinds of industry to remove odors and colors. Not sure where to get it, though.
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Two things:
I know a guy who is an insect exterminator. He uses a specially trained german shepard to find certain pests. This doggy went to k-9 school with all the other german shepards, most of which graduated and became k-9 police officers. This dog alerts on weed - I have seen it. Its a scary and funny thing to see in action. Maybe I can run some tests on this pooch...
Has anyone else seen or used granulated activated carbon? I saw one package of contraband last year that was vac sealed and packed into a bag full of activated carbon, and vac sealed again. This is used by all kinds of industry to remove odors and colors. Not sure where to get it, though.
The problem is that there's an urban legend that carbon shields product from x-rays. So customers officials have been discovering sheets of carbon-like materials for some time in amateur shipments, and they've probably turned it into a red flag now.
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Well for the most part, if your lb of weed or whatever gets x rayed, you're fucked. But the point is to keep it in the mainstream mail and never have your package go into "further processing" i.e. x-rays.
I do know that carbon does remove smells. They use it in HEPA air filters and vodka processing to absorb all the nasty flavors, colors, and smells. Hell, its even used in clandestine drug manufacture, from what I've read. This is different than a few sheets of newspaper - activated carbon (aka norit) will adsorb almost anything on a molecular scale.
The point is that if you have this stuff in between layers than there are drastically less molecules available to permeate the outer membrane.
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Well for the most part, if your lb of weed or whatever gets x rayed, you're fucked. But the point is to keep it in the mainstream mail and never have your package go into "further processing" i.e. x-rays.
I do know that carbon does remove smells. They use it in HEPA air filters and vodka processing to absorb all the nasty flavors, colors, and smells. Hell, its even used in clandestine drug manufacture, from what I've read. This is different than a few sheets of newspaper - activated carbon (aka norit) will adsorb almost anything on a molecular scale.
The point is that if you have this stuff in between layers than there are drastically less molecules available to permeate the outer membrane.
Well, I haven't done much research into the properties of activated carbon, but if it does what you say it does, then I would recommend putting it on the innermost layer of your vacuum HDPP packing, since I think the drug sniffer electronic equipment will have activated carbon amongst the things that it searches for. I mean, if you were operating such a machine, that's what you'd do yourself, right?
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I wonder if an electronic 'nose' would be able to sniff the difference between carbon and activated carbon, vs carbon from pencil lead, or even carbon used in the ink on the package's label, or carbon from "roasted cacao beans" (that's what you declared for customs, right?)
Maybe.
Fast shipping plus stealth packaging works for now, as far as I know.
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I wonder if an electronic 'nose' would be able to sniff the difference between carbon and activated carbon, vs carbon from pencil lead, or even carbon used in the ink on the package's label, or carbon from "roasted cacao beans" (that's what you declared for customs, right?)
Maybe.
Fast shipping plus stealth packaging works for now, as far as I know.
Carbon is carbon is carbon; it all smells the same unless treated.
Activated carbon works by trapping molecules in tiny holes that run through the granules like swiss cheese. Since different molecules have different sizes you have to pick you grade of activated carbon based on the molecule(s) you're filtering our. If its more than 1 kind of molecule, you'll need a mix of grades in effective proportions.
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I wonder if an electronic 'nose' would be able to sniff the difference between carbon and activated carbon, vs carbon from pencil lead, or even carbon used in the ink on the package's label, or carbon from "roasted cacao beans" (that's what you declared for customs, right?)
Maybe.
Fast shipping plus stealth packaging works for now, as far as I know.
Carbon is carbon is carbon; it all smells the same unless treated.
Activated carbon works by trapping molecules in tiny holes that run through the granules like swiss cheese. Since different molecules have different sizes you have to pick you grade of activated carbon based on the molecule(s) you're filtering our. If its more than 1 kind of molecule, you'll need a mix of grades in effective proportions.
Perhaps this is a bit of a reach, but there are different isotopes of carbon. Now, it doesn't make a difference chemically maybe, but who is to say that a electronic nose can't distinguish different isotopes with some mechanism. And maybe activated carbon has a special isotope...
Again, this is speculative. In any case, if you vacuum pack the activated carbon on the innermost layer of your triplicate or quadruplicate HDPP sealed packaging you should be fine for sure. I'd like to see a test for A-carbon to see how many nanograms per second leave the bag.
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I wonder if an electronic 'nose' would be able to sniff the difference between carbon and activated carbon, vs carbon from pencil lead, or even carbon used in the ink on the package's label, or carbon from "roasted cacao beans" (that's what you declared for customs, right?)
Maybe.
Fast shipping plus stealth packaging works for now, as far as I know.
Carbon is carbon is carbon; it all smells the same unless treated.
Activated carbon works by trapping molecules in tiny holes that run through the granules like swiss cheese. Since different molecules have different sizes you have to pick you grade of activated carbon based on the molecule(s) you're filtering our. If its more than 1 kind of molecule, you'll need a mix of grades in effective proportions.
Perhaps this is a bit of a reach, but there is different isotopes of carbon. Now, it doesn't make a difference chemically maybe, but who is to say that a electronic nose can't distinguish different isotopes with some mechanism. And maybe activated carbon has a special isotope...
Again, this is speculative. In any case, if you vacuum pack the activated carbon on the innermost layer of your triplicate or quadruplicate HDPP sealed packaging you should be fine for sure. I'd like to see a test for A-carbon to see how many nanograms per second leave the bag.
The activated carbon nearest the source of molecule release gets its holes filled up first, effectiveness degrades as more and more of these holes get filled. Eventually the AC directly around the source gets used up and the AC just after it starts getting its holes filled. The holes are created by application of specific temperatures and processes to create specific sized holes and maximise surface area. You're right in saying there may be a slight variation between un-activated and AC due to isotopic variation but then activated carbon is relatively common. Just pick up a pack of Mild Sevens, its in the filter tip.
Its also used in many, many commercial and consumer applications. Not so uncommon to have trace on an envelope i would think. Here's some common info:
hxxp://www.cameroncarbon.com/documents/carbon_structure.pdf
All conjecture till someone tests the theory though... *shrug*
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if I did the math right which hopefully I did taking into account the level of education I'm pursuing. from those figures on the first page "19 ng/sec" permeability of hdpp which due to their molecular similarity im guessing hdpe will be higher but not by much. about 1 miligram of mdma/day can permeate hdpp in the settings of the expiriment. note surface area of polymer, volume of material, and pressure difference inside and outside the materials were not specified. I'm assuming the pressure in and out were the same so the delta(p)=1 meaning it does not affect permeation. and obviously a vacuum seal lower permeation rate due to entropy differential. By how much i don't know I tried to calculate it but there were to many variables unaccounted for to even approximate and i dont wanna throw a bullshit number out there. but just by the permeation equation posted on the first page qm = Perm A Δp / delta we see pressure difference i linearly dependent so being extremely actually almost inaccurately conservative lets say the average vacuum seal reduces permeation by a quarter. we would get about .25 mg/day permeation which still seems suspiciously high to me but i can't/dont want to try to approximate any better right this was kinda a back of a envelope estimation. so average shipping this again seems wayyyy to high in my guessestimation like by a power of 10^3 maybe 10^4...ya that over but the numbers starting out with seem high too. over a 7 day shipping period with single vacuum being extremely conservative starting from numbers in the beginning of the posts about 1-2 mg of mdma would permeate the seal. now getting out of the box is a whole different story and the amount of substance dogs need to smell something is also unknown so total probability of a dog picking out a package over a seven day period can't be calculated. also permeation rate increase over the days as the vacuum decrease so thats another factor to take into account. i would like to end this though saying that just by pure intuition like i said before i feel my numbers are wildly off factor of 10^3. hopefully we can get some polymer engineers, or even better condensed matter physicists to chime in. I'm getting my phd in high energy so i really dont deal with problems like this...ever. it is a very interesting probability to consider though.
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I was reading this thread thinking "I wonder if there are just no engineers and scientists on this board, or if they're just keeping their mouths shut?"
I suppose I'll throw my 2 cents in in, I'm no materials scientist, but worked as an electrical engineer since 1974, I've been exposed to enough MatSci to know whats going on.
First off: DON"T USE polypropene!!!! especially thin PP, the permeability of random organic junk through PP is strongly dependent upon the crystallinity, and if you just get it willy-nilly you have no idea what type of PP that is.
Don't use glass, or plexiglass, or acrylic, or a lot of things. Glass can break, and any bagging that is transparent is bad as it means there's no metallic barrier in it. Never use fiberglass or fiber reinforced plastics, disbonds at the fiber-matrix interface can create channels for scents to travel along.
Finally: don't reinvent the wheel, massive amounts of military and corporate R&D has gone into creating ultra low permeability bags that are perfect for use in this application. Use thick MIL-B-81705C or EIA 583 Class 1 or better heat seal bags!! a good 6 barrier bag has a much much lower permeability than an inch of tire rubber or a slab of plexiglass.
Tyvek/foil/PE or Nylon/foil or PET/foil bagging is the best you're ever going to do and they're widely available.
I can't even count how many thousands of 10mil bags i've cut open and trashed over the years at work. Any military avionics supplier will have dumpsters full of them. I might even have a large spool with a few thousand square feet of it (20 years old) in my shipping container.
In the late 1970's the US military as well as the semiconductor industry realized that moisture absorption into plastic parts (new at that time) could cause all sorts of problems in terms of maneuverability and service life. This led to the development of the modern moisture barrier bagging and industry bagging and moisture control practices.
Moisture moves FAR easier through plastics than most of the aromatic hydrocarbons that a dog might be sniffing for if you use somthing that is good for H2O you'll also be doing a GREAT job of containing larger heavier molecules.
another tip: Don't take the paper from the researcher from "florida international university" as gospel.. He doesn't say much about his test methods, and experiments are easy to screw up. Thin LDPE can suffer from high porosity depending on the manufacturer and processes they use. It can also get worse from various factors such as fatigue and deformation, UV exposure, etc.
We used to say: "nobody believes the analysis except the analyst, and everybody except the test engineer believes the test results"
there's 2 main mechanisms for transport though plastics: bulk diffusion and porous diffusion. In very thin films micro-cracks, pores, and pinholes can dominate and screw your performance up, lesson #1: Don't use thin packing materials, 5-6 mil minimum, anything thinner is probably unacceptable
A neat example is aluminum foil, Aluminum is ABSOLUTELY impermeable to organics, (well in our lifetimes at least), but in very thin films it leaks like a sieve. Why? pinholes and micro-cracks from the rolling process. Take cheap foil and a VERY bright light, cover it in al foil, and take it in a very dark room... see what I'm talking about?
The diffusion rate of the gas or volatile crossing the barrier is dependent on the molecular mass, It will fall off as a function of the square root of the mass, so you can use the published O2 numbers to estimate the performance for just about anything. so for example MPK has a molecular weight of 86 compared to O2 at 32 and so would diffuse through 1.6X less than oxygen (sqt(86/32)).
It falls of much faster as a function of the actual physical diameter of the molecule, on the order of 1/D^3. So a molecule 3X larger diameter than water will flow through micro pores 27X slower.
Anyways, there's tons of info online. If you find something great for fuels (gasoline, kerosene) it will probably be fine for your contraband.
here's a couple links I dug up:
http://www.faybutler.com/pdf_files/HowHoseMaterialsAffectGas3.pdf
http://cool.conservation-us.org/waac/wn/wn14/wn14-2/wn14-204.html
http://www.amerivacs.com/DSspecs.pdf
But for those who don't want to cut corners just Use a decent moisture barrier bag, you can get the 6-mil 3M stuff on ebay, seal & check, throw it in a dishwasher for a bit, put on gloves, walk it to a molecularly clean location, box it and ship it.
Read up on contamination control a bit, tons of info online.
Here are a few points of advice:
Metal films laminates are great, if you can see through the bag don't use it
try to stick with MIL-B-81705C orr EIA-583 Class 1 approved bagging
heat seal it
You don't have to vacuum it (vacuum doesn't matter at all from a diffusion perspective)
use no less than 5 mil thick bagging material (6mil is easy to find)
Test your bagging in a bucket of water (squeeze to make sure no leaks bubble out)
Clean the surface (dishwasher)
Use packaging that has never been exposed to or even in the same house as any drugs.... dogs can detect smells on the order of 500parts per trillion, a single drop of sweat from someone who snorted coke a day earlier is enough to set them off.
but if you do it right even the best dog on earth CANNOT smell through a good nylon/foil/PE laminated bag.
Good Luck
Bob
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shipping metalic foils probably brings its own set of risks though.
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kmfkewm: a 2 mil thick foil of aluminum would barely even be noticed on an x-ray, and I can't think of any other downside. If anyone knows of one though pipe up.
vapor barrier bags are sent through the mail constantly, if you want a bagging material that can pass a dog test, go with the foil-laminate barrier bag.
Bob
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Thanks to papes93 and FarmerBob for posting additional thought provoking concepts.
I really do think that we need a fully fledged clandestine science laboratory at the SR's disposal to generate reliable, tested information.
We would require at a minimum;
- materials science expertise [shipping and security research]
- reagent development expertise [drug testing, mostly drug identification and purity]
- information security, esp. penetration testing on 'typical' vendor/buyer setups, interception chips.
Some of these would be one-off projects to disseminate vital data to the vendors or community at large in the form of something like a quarterly report on the state of the road , but some like reagent development would be perpetually on-going.
The key to the success of such service(s), would be ensuring a disconnect, a physical airgap between SR and the lab. Indeed, it is unlikely it should be collected in one geographical location. Nearly all expensive hardware and resources would be unwittingly supplied by industrial labs and universities our scientists have access to.
This could be an arm of SR itself. After all, this is Quality Assurance in its essence and we may need a trusted arbiter. Coordinating payments from vendors to the scientists taking the risk could be achieved by something like an optional few % additional tax.
Alternatively we could go much further and decentralize by having a market could be setup like the Armory, exclusively dedicated to the purveyors of pure information, whether scientific like the above, or in terms of intelligence on the DEA's modus operandi, the level of activity by the postal inspection task force etc, I'm sure KMF and our coworkers at OVDB for one would welcome such a development.
I realize this is ambitious, but really it's just a matter of organizing already existing components together, after all we already have dozens of different scientists and computer experts all over the world severely in need of cash injections and that's just on this forum, our connections in RL are even broader. The real key, is who puts up the capital or time to make this all possible. Like I said before, the structure of capital flows is what it takes to produce permanent change in the game. In line with that thought, we need much more intel on financial engineering, the methods used to covertly extract and conceal cash from our economy (highly sensitive topic!) and a plethora of methods for buyers to obtain anonymous currency (since that is undoubtedly where operations against the Silk Road will strike to instigate FUD).
I'm aware talk is cheap and we're all busy people, but you've got to begin somewhere! No matter how awesome a system is, if it doesn't evolve in response to the environment, it's going to go extinct.
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I like your enthusiasm Pine, However I don't know that I see the business case behind anyone setting up a test lab. Seems very pricey and very risky to me. I certainly wouldn't want to be the guy people send samples to for purity analysis. (at least not in the USA) For drug analysis I suppose there might be a case to be made if you live in a tolerant country where possessions of small analytical samples won't get you in much trouble, but I'd think such services are already available outside of SR and TOR.
Shipping and Security is pretty straightforward. Be able to pass both X-ray and Dog-sniff test. No need for a research lab there. The info you need to do both of those is already readily available.
As for the IT & computer security side that's less lab and more PC. I'd think there are plenty of coders out there already looking into that (good guys and bad guys and LE)
Interception & tracking systems seem pretty easy to make using PIC micro-controllers or arduino shields that are readily available. You could even just modify a cheap pay as you go phone to call a number when the box is opened. But if its enough product to be worthy of a tracker and it gets to the point where the box is opened by LE the buyer is probably already in deep shit. So again, no need for a lab there, and it's probably best that there be no "standard" technique that LE would start scanning for.
Also a question, and forgive my ignorance, but I've never bought on here before: Are sellers here really just shipping drugs in plastic bagging or food grade vacuum bags?
If so there is no way those packages would make it through a drug sniffing dog presentation.
Best Regards
Bob
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I like your enthusiasm Pine, However I don't know that I see the business case behind anyone setting up a test lab. Seems very pricey and very risky to me. I certainly wouldn't want to be the guy people send samples to for purity analysis. (at least not in the USA) For drug analysis I suppose there might be a case to be made if you live in a tolerant country where possessions of small analytical samples won't get you in much trouble, but I'd think such services are already available outside of SR and TOR.
Well, it doesn't have to be 1 guy. You could setup an intel exchange (a real one...). Information and analysis could be auctioned ebay style. The community decides what's useful and a multitude of offers appear from different parties with access to information/expensive machinery etc. There's always going to be complications, but you'll let the market sort them out for itself.
Shipping and Security is pretty straightforward. Be able to pass both X-ray and Dog-sniff test. No need for a research lab there. The info you need to do both of those is already readily available.
I have to disagree. There's nothing straight forward about Shipping, it takes a whole lot of thought to work out an optimal solution that doesn't make problems for you down the road. The vast majority of vendors, I believe, are using sub-optimal methods through a lack of knowledge on certain issues.
Also, it is not really the intention of the drug smugglers to pass the X-ray and Dog-sniff. The real objective is much simpler, which is to ensure the packages are not flagged for those methods to be used in the first place. X-rays and dogs are hugely effective, but impossible to use on anything but a tiny fraction of all mail. This is why, despite the wide diversity of effective and ineffective methods used, 97.51% of drugs smuggled from the Silk Road get through. That number includes fraudulent buyers, lost mail and other caveats, so actually the number of packages intercepted is tiny. 1 in a 100 at best. And again, a fair proportion of vendors have lousy methods of transport, the numbers for the elite will be an order of magnitude better.
As for the IT & computer security side that's less lab and more PC. I'd think there are plenty of coders out there already looking into that (good guys and bad guys and LE)
I'm using 'lab' in a broad sense, the way it's used in social science. In any case, one of the biggest troubles is that although a considerable number of people on this forum and vendors on SR have great expertise in computers, that cannot remain the case for very much longer. Soon, more and more newbies will get tripped up by elementary gaps in their computer security procedures. Thus; there is a huge demand for straight forward guides, FAQs, How-Tos, whatever you want to call it. tldr; Education.
Basically, the key issue is getting the pros to help the newbs adopt more sophisticated procedures. Most people who hang around this forum already get this, so I'm preaching to the converted there. But the vast majority of buyers definitely are not obtaining information from this forum. I'd hazard a guess from my experience of internet related consumer psychology and say that less than 1% of the buyers on the Silk Road actually post here, and perhaps only 1 out of 10 actually read the forums at any point.
Interception & tracking systems seem pretty easy to make using PIC micro-controllers or arduino shields that are readily available. You could even just modify a cheap pay as you go phone to call a number when the box is opened. But if its enough product to be worthy of a tracker and it gets to the point where the box is opened by LE the buyer is probably already in deep shit. So again, no need for a lab there, and it's probably best that there be no "standard" technique that LE would start scanning for.
Ah! But it's all so much more than that! The latest RFID tags are very sophisticated. They are very tiny, and can be printed onto a piece of paper. Some can extract energy from their surroundings, there's lots of cool tricks with RFID. I don't think it would be possible to pickup the electronic signature of a tag, since whether it is 'alive', can be controlled with different clever means (in short, they are cool are we want them :)).
Also a question, and forgive my ignorance, but I've never bought on here before: Are sellers here really just shipping drugs in plastic bagging or food grade vacuum bags?
If so there is no way those packages would make it through a drug sniffing dog presentation.
Best Regards
Bob
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Yes. But like I said, it's not for the Dog. It's mostly to avoid/deter:
- suspicion by postman/post handlers (weed being rather pungent to the human nose).
- electronic sniffing devices.
If the package got to the Dog or Xray in the first place, then you've already made some mistake, that is how most of us see it.
The second point is becoming increasingly important I feel. Key thing is: although they can detect down to a nanogram of drug residue, there is so much drug residue already inside the postal network, that they are forced to lower the sensitivity of the devices. For one thing, there is cocaine on 90% of the cash dollars in circulation, and cash gets posted in the postal system all the time. Too many false positives would bankrupt them.
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I personally refuse to order from vendors who don't use vac seals for substances that dogs can smell, but feel free to order shit that has absolutely no measures taken against dog hitting on it if you think it isn't helpful to vac seal. Funny thing is that all the literature I can find on drug smuggling organizations lists "vacuum seal shipments" as something that the most sophisticated smuggling operations do, with less sophisticated operations taking no countermeasures or ineffective measures like cover scents.
edit: maybe I should have read your full post instead of just the first sentence before I made a reply to it ;)
I vac sealed for shrooms. Great for making sure things don't shake around and make noise! Besides it just means they stay fresh for that bit extra longer.
-Amush
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There are places in NL that take samples of anything and eventually report back on substance and purity. I think they might even be government funded.
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Pine, I'll disclaimer this by saying I'm no expert on the businesses that operate here, but I suspect sellers won't offer much cash for information (so I still don't see the business case). People like things to be free. So there may be people with technical expertise willing to volunteer info like my knowledge of organic vapor permeation of moisture barrier bags, but I doubt you could establish a working market where that information is paid for.
And if there was such a market or even the chance of it I'd think the people who knew what they were doing would stop giving info away for free. (sellers, if you start using MBBs becaue of me you owe me free samples)
Also, if 97.5% of packages make it through then shipping must be pretty straightforward (at least for the competent sellers). A smart seller would happily use better info to refine his shipping technique, but a seller in the 98%+ success probably doesn't need to PAY anyone for info on anything..
I could well be wrong, and I'll leave it to the MBAs and actual sellers out there to decide whether there's a case for pay-for-info R&D, there's probably many more of them here than engineers/scientists and I've never been good at any business analysis.
RFID though, is a technology well within my area of expertise. My questions for anyone who knows about the subject: What are people hoping to accomplish? Detect when it's been opened, so the guys standing in his doorway during a controlled delivery can whip out a RFID reader scan the package and then refuse delivery? Will that even prevent a search, and has any LE or a lawyers on here given input on that strategy? Maybe in USA, but then again I'm no lawyer.
the electrical design for something along those lines is simple and has already been done for things like continuity sensors, water detectors, etc... it's a minor modification to existing designs documented online. But there's some big downside in RFID in that any RFID can be detected in the "off" state through RF back scatter off of it's antenna. In fact, ANY RF energy harvester can be detected that way. (radios too by the way, passive monitoring of IF frequencies of car radios is already used by billboard advertisers: http://www.marketingvox.com/smart-signs-listen-to-car-radio-target-ads-026337/)
If I was LE in charge of bringing down SR, i'd be encouraging people to embed RFIDs in all of their high-value packages. Even helping them with a standardized design that keeps the thing off until the package is opened, perhaps even selling them to vendors. Let it run for a bit and be accepted as the standard way of shipping high value drugs. Figure out the RF signatures of the new "standard" Then deploy RF backscatter sensors with RFID readers at every post office in the nation to detect the sellers as they bring these in. (just look for RFIDS that are disabled or in an odd state, and record the drop on video). Then use that evidence to coordinate a bust on everyone all at once.
Postal Inspectors probably aren't that good though... and a government mass produced RFID&backscatter sensor would probably run around $1000 each (if apple did it it'd be $100) with a couple million in development costs, so the program cost to monitor 10,000 drop points would be over $12M just for the detection hardware. Labor and coordination of postal insepctors and FBI across the country would be tens of millions more. I don't know SR is a high enough priority to justify that sort of effort.
I'll have to go find the thread() on RFIDs and read up on what they're design is, perhaps they've already solved many or all of the issues.
Bob
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this is very interesting stuff.....glass containers...?? fuck....what about types of plexiglass...?? could it be possible to get containers made from them some how...??? and how would u vacuum seal it without special equipment..??? hmmmm this is really interesting....
And having custom made anything is also a really good way to have attention brought back to you if you are not careful.
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I gather two things from it after just a quick scan over fizzys post
1. We should absolutely be using HDPP bags
2. We should probably be double or triple vac sealing
I also note that he was using a heat seal but I didn't see any mention of vac sealing. I think using a vac seal should add substantial benefits.
Where does one get HDPP bags IRL? Would rather pay cash than use plastic.
/EDIT - are they HDPP or HDPE bags?
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I gather two things from it after just a quick scan over fizzys post
1. We should absolutely be using HDPP bags
2. We should probably be double or triple vac sealing
I also note that he was using a heat seal but I didn't see any mention of vac sealing. I think using a vac seal should add substantial benefits.
While I agree with these points, the sad truth is that the vac sealing procedures the average vendor is using are probably self-defeating. To ensure that the outside of the vac bag is relatively free of contamination would require multiple compartmentalized staging areas, each with its own vac sealer. Additionally, everything would need to be handled with utmost care, like using tweezers to place odor offending substances into the vac bags. Let's be honest, it doesn't require that much sophistication to deal drugs here, and as such you can hardly expect that vendors are going to lengths like this or their equivalent, whatever that may be. While it's certainly better than nothing, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the containment of residual contamination for someone shipping dozens of orders a day. I can just imagine a vendor's spare bedroom with a table with open bags of coke or heroin right next to their vac sealer, and their roll of vac bags resting against a contaminated as fuck scale. Hopefully it's better than that on average, but it ain't like you have to keep your operation up to code and pass inspection every three months, ya know?
That said, excellent find, and great discussion.
I agree that having a professional procedure to prevent cross-containmention issues is necessary.
I agree with having a compartmentalized staging area for sure, but not with having different vacuum sealers.
However I don't think you're giving vendors enough credit here. Some of us are amateurs to be sure, but the pros of us are using setups that wouldn't look that out of place in Glaxo or Pfizer's labs. It's not as if the Silk Road invented mail order drugs by any means. That's been going on for about a century.
There are two concerns when packaging drugs, human hair/skin/fingerprints etc and the drug residue.
There *is* in fact a guaranteed methodology I figured out to ensure your packages aren't contaminated before they are sent out. I'd tell it to you, but then I'd have to kill you :-X
In any case, if we are now down to the single digits in terms of nanograms per second with the simple application of vaccum sealing in triplicate with HDPP, then we're down to the 'cocaine residue on the money' level for sure, and we know the post office can't possibly stop every package with that odor signature or they would be all bankrupt within a week.
Here is what I think separates the men from the boys:
- mask for mouth/nose (your breath can transfer DNA)
- hairnet
- alcohol wipes to rub down bags with (removes the possibility of latent fingerprints)
- bleach dip (removes DNA, half diluted with bottled water since bleach is both strong and viscous)
- high intensity UV blacklight (more sterilization, may also reveal contaminated bags)
- UV glasses (UV burns the eyes! the eyes! :-p)
- 2 pairs of surgical gloves (these are special sterilized disposables used in medical operations, not your normal latex gloves)
- HDPP plastic (for the reasons we've discovered in this thread!)
- vacuum packing equipment
- correctly calibrated milligram scales
- tweezers/mini-spoon (those mini ice-cream scoops or a royal spoon do nicely)
- some kind of tiny flat plastic holder/container (so the milligram scales doesn't directly come in contact with contraband)
- opaque plastic wrap for the top layer (prevents visual pin-hole inspections)
- generic high volume business packaging
- thermal label printer (bye bye you fucking tracking dots, ha ha ha!)
- exact postage to within a single stamp (some people have apparently been sending what I think of as "Mrs Weasley letters")
- < 10 grams per package, special procedures for higher quantities per package.
- randomly chosen return address within your zip code.
- randomly chosen post boxes to drop the packages into.
- in case it wasn't obvious, gloves will always be in fashion for us dropping packages in post boxes.
- some of the above paid for with a prepaid card via anonymous proxy or else cash in a store (that is; anything that is going to be physically traveling through the post)
Great list! One more to add to it: Disposing of used good (gloves, hairnets, whathaveyou) at a random garbage can other than your place of operations.
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Two things:
I know a guy who is an insect exterminator. He uses a specially trained german shepard to find certain pests. This doggy went to k-9 school with all the other german shepards, most of which graduated and became k-9 police officers. This dog alerts on weed - I have seen it. Its a scary and funny thing to see in action. Maybe I can run some tests on this pooch...
Has anyone else seen or used granulated activated carbon? I saw one package of contraband last year that was vac sealed and packed into a bag full of activated carbon, and vac sealed again. This is used by all kinds of industry to remove odors and colors. Not sure where to get it, though.
granular activated carbon = buy at pet stores.
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Wait, strike that. I <3 the interwebs. Sorry for this long damn link, but it is worth it (this is the fulltext link that does not require you to go through ProQuest) - this is fantastic.
Thanks Fizzy great link!
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This thread confirms my idiocy; however, I have yet to meet a prosecutor that knows what "polypropene" or any of those other seven letter syllabub words mean. I doubt anyone in this thread is in jeopardy of an arrest. I'd be nice if your brain power was used elsewhere... where it is needed.