Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: i3lazd on March 04, 2012, 09:32 pm

Title: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: i3lazd on March 04, 2012, 09:32 pm
I heard from a friend that Silk Road is being highly watched by the United States government and the world.  If are outside the United States possibly there are international cyber police that can track you.

I am not 100% sure of this but it seems logical but just informing the community to stay safe! Not to scare! I love this place haha.

Anyways I know a close friend that is in cyber police business and before telling him about Silk Road he knew what it was.
Also he said that agent like him make seller accounts on Silk Road and pretend to be dealers.  They will actually send you some drugs seized by them until you make a bulk order then bust you.

Be careful Silk Road community.  You never know who you are encrypting your  address and sending it to.  My solution would only to buy from legit dealers


I am not sure.  Just heard they sometimes take seized drugs and send them to customers until they make an order for a huge amount then bust them.

Not trying to be a dick or scare you guys just informing on some inside information from a close family member that works for the government.



P.S. Not trying to scare you from ordering but just research your seller's feedback before making an order
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: aligibbs on March 04, 2012, 09:43 pm
Quote
Anyways I know a close friend that is in cyber police business and before telling him about Silk Road he knew what it was.

Wait, I'm a bit stoned, but did you just imply you were going to tell your cyber police buddy that you use an illegal drug website but it turns out he already knew??
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: i3lazd on March 04, 2012, 09:49 pm
Quote
Anyways I know a close friend that is in cyber police business and before telling him about Silk Road he knew what it was.

Wait, I'm a bit stoned, but did you just imply you were going to tell your cyber police buddy that you use an illegal drug website but it turns out he already knew??

No he is a close part of my family.  I brought up selling some stuff I bought on the internet.  He then responded about SR and told me that the government has seller accounts on there.

It seems safe if you just buy from people with good feedback and not mess around too much.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: a_blackbird on March 04, 2012, 09:56 pm
Nothing is 100% safe, and just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

That said....

Does some .gov agency (US or otherwise) actually have seller accounts on SR?  Who knows.  It's impossible to verify or disprove with certainty, but I wouldn't doubt it.  However... would it actually be legal for them to send a buyer *real* schedule I/schedule II drugs?  I don't know enough about the law in this area, but I tend to think the answer to that is no.  Imagine the uproar if it were somehow found out that some kid bought some shit on SR from the FBI and then OD'ed on it.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: radium1911 on March 04, 2012, 10:03 pm
Cyber police? You dun goofed up.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: trancesend on March 04, 2012, 10:06 pm
I don't see the point of LE having a seller account.  I am going to take a wild guess and say that for the prices usually being way higher than on the street, the average user is buying for themselves, not to re-sell.  So they catch a few people with negligible amounts?  With the cost of prosecuting those people and finding the evidence, it's not going to get them the funding to keep fighting the drug war as much as catching a dealer with thousands of pills and kilos of cocaine or weed.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: nospainnogain on March 04, 2012, 10:10 pm
Government agents don't worry themselves with the legality of any particular action or situation. They will do whatever they want to bust people. Anyways, much of the legal ramifications of their law-breaking actions get softened if they actually do manage to bust people.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: i3lazd on March 04, 2012, 10:13 pm
I am not sure.  Just heard they sometimes take seized drugs and send them to customers until they make an order for a huge amount then bust them.

Not trying to be a dick or scare you guys just informing on some inside information from a close family member that works for the government.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: i3lazd on March 04, 2012, 10:16 pm
I don't see the point of LE having a seller account.  I am going to take a wild guess and say that for the prices usually being way higher than on the street, the average user is buying for themselves, not to re-sell.  So they catch a few people with negligible amounts?  With the cost of prosecuting those people and finding the evidence, it's not going to get them the funding to keep fighting the drug war as much as catching a dealer with thousands of pills and kilos of cocaine or weed.

I am not sure.  Just heard they sometimes take seized drugs and send them to customers until they make an order for a huge amount then bust them.

Not trying to be a dick or scare you guys just informing on some inside information from a close family member that works for the government.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: pine on March 04, 2012, 10:36 pm
Government agents don't worry themselves with the legality of any particular action or situation. They will do whatever they want to bust people. Anyways, much of the legal ramifications of their law-breaking actions get softened if they actually do manage to bust people.

Really? Because I can't count the number of times I've heard cases getting thrown out of court because the police forgot to sign the right paperwork, or gave the wrong information, or...

We're not talking about small fry stuff here, murderers have walked free on slip-ups of bureaucratic procedures.

A decent lawyer would have a field day if it were known that the police posted real drugs to people on the Silk Road.

If you look at the rules that govern controlled deliveries, you'll notice that they deliberately replace 90% of the drug with a substitute. This is despite the fact that ten minutes after delivery, there's a team with a door hammer smashing into the house. Apart from the law, they know the press would have wall to wall coverage if the police delivered drugs and didn't manage to retrieve them later.

No, although there may be some sellers who are FBI/DEA/other three-four-five letter acronyms, there are not using real product, that would defeat their purpose. They might try to collect names/addresses to scare the crap out of buyers though.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: amush on March 04, 2012, 10:42 pm
LE with Sellers accounts.... ewwwa.... that has got to suck. You know I often wondered if some of the sellers were LE, but I figured the best way to know who to be able to order off of or not was to see what the feedback on  the forums was like.

People who give out free samples tend to want to because they want to let people know they are legit. I don't know if LE would send out samples.

-Amush
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: TravellingWithoutMoving on March 05, 2012, 12:16 am
...nothing new, is this even within the FBI's remit to fight international drug trafficking involving the internet...aren't the FBI responsible for
   investigating crimes within usa's borders ?!

Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: friendlyoutlaw on March 05, 2012, 12:59 am
Because CLEARLY the thread poster knows what's going on with the "cyber police".

I mean, people who use SR are getting busted left and right. Every day I hear about another person who fell victim to the cyber police vendors.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: tabbenoit on March 05, 2012, 01:59 am
Seems to me an OD or vehicular manslaughter from a user under the influence could cause a lot of grief for law enforcement if they were the provider of said substance.  I'm not a lawyer or anything though....
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: onestopshop on March 05, 2012, 02:16 am
I smell B.S...

if this was true everyone who's EVER had the balls or order bulk from here would have been busted by now and there would be forum posts that would reflect this too.

OP keeps mentioning "I am not 100% sure of this but it seems logical but just informing the community to stay safe! Not to scare! I love this place haha"

but he has said this supposed fact a shit ton of times in a lot of other threads...
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: amush on March 05, 2012, 02:19 am
Seems to me an OD or vehicular manslaughter from a user under the influence could cause a lot of grief for law enforcement if they were the provider of said substance.  I'm not a lawyer or anything though....

Yeah, that is what I was kinda thinking. I don't think you would find LE giving out samples of actual product that actually had some effect just to give themselves reasonable amounts of cred to bust more than the five people who requested the samples.

Especially if the people they had to take to court where high off their tits and did something remarkably stupid. LE would have a hard time explaining to the judge how and why the defendants came to be in possession and able to be in said state.

-Amush
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: nospainnogain on March 05, 2012, 02:28 am
Probably just LE setting up vendor accounts and selling confiscated drugs to make a shit ton of money!!
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: tabbenoit on March 05, 2012, 02:38 am
Now that I'd believe!  I'll be on the lookout for some fat ass cop dropping packages in blue boxes!
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: jollygiant on March 05, 2012, 03:39 am
Probably just LE setting up vendor accounts and selling confiscated drugs to make a shit ton of money!!

It's strange to think this might be more plausible
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: pine on March 05, 2012, 04:03 am
Probably just LE setting up vendor accounts and selling confiscated drugs to make a shit ton of money!!

It's strange to think this might be more plausible


It's happened before lots of times in RL. Remember all that shit in NY. Talk about rent-seeking lol!
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: microRNA on March 05, 2012, 06:01 am
In reference to discussion of whether LEO could put out illegal items onto the black market...

Did no one else hear about the recent stories involving a US governmental agency (maybe ATF?) which released a bunch of illegal weapons, like automatic assault rifles, onto the (street) black market??? The intention was to track the weapons into the hands of the drug cartels, and then bust them that way...

But as usual all their plans got fucked and for some reason releasing more lethal armory onto the streets ended up being a bad idea, go figure. They subsequently lost track of many of these guns and now they are still being used by the cartels to kill police officers (and of course innocent lives too). Oh the irony. It would be funny if it wasnt so depressing.

And you are debating whether LEO can release some drugs onto the streets because it could possibly kill somebody. Seems to me not to be much of an issue for them.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: Dirtyduke on March 05, 2012, 06:06 am
It's not impossible to think they have a vendor account on here, it's probably impossible for them to have a legit vendor account with great feedback though. 

I could easily see LEO spending the 30 BTC to get a couple names and addresses of people that are getting shit in the mail.  They could do that without actually sending shit in the mail.  They wouldn't last long since the ratings would suck, but they could then just open another account. 

You also have to consider the fact that they could bust a real vendor and let them snitch on the people who are buying larger amounts.  There was a huge ordeal in the steroid forums a few years back with a guy named Daniel Cole(aka Superfreak, aka Blackburn Labs) who got busted and then turned snitch and LEO used his list of customers to bust other people.  He cut a deal with LEO and then a few weeks later he was back on the AAS forums selling fake ass shit.  Some rumors were that LEO were the ones actually sending out the fake powders and not him after he got busted, just to keep up the illusion that he never got popped.

Not too long after arrest of that guy their was a HUGE bust called Opperation Raw Deal that was all over the news.  That took out people from here to the British guys that owned British Dragon Labs in Thai Land.

TLDR version: Don't think that just because it's illegal for LEO to sell drugs doesn't mean they don't have informants doing it for them.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: Mecajesus on March 05, 2012, 08:37 am
Because CLEARLY the thread poster knows what's going on with the "cyber police".

I mean, people who use SR are getting busted left and right. Every day I hear about another person who fell victim to the cyber police vendors.
Sarcasm?

On topic, why would LE be targeting buyers, i can see some reasons, but i am pretty sure their main focus is the sellers on here.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: microRNA on March 05, 2012, 12:20 pm
when a pig is hungry it will eat any scraps of food it can get
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: THConnoisseur on March 05, 2012, 12:57 pm
LOL you guys KILL me. Literally I'm dying with ignorance here.

I am not going to take the time to explain all the variables that would go into making a concrete judgement about this or that. That is for each individual to analyze and take the risk with their own judgements. No one can possibly know what LEO is up 100% of the time, and if you think you do, you're dangerous IMO.

What kills me is the fact you guys think the government would not send small amounts for a fear of: being 'illegal', 'can't be used in court', 'consequences for sending people drugs/weapons' etc. LOL As if LEO would admit to doing things such as this. Do you think if they did this they would admit to being the seller? Admit to sending all these small amounts to catch a big fish? I bet you even think this 'seller' just sits in uniform, with a badge and a doughnuts clicking away, recording everything he does to process it in court lol. Wake up.

Guys LEO does NOT play by the rules. If LEO sells you a bulk order, and you get busted, in court, you bought something from the SR and got busted, NOT from LEO or anyone associated with them. LEO is not going to admit to those kinds of things, those kinds of things will NOT be in the paperwork, and will not be exposed for what they are. What little worlds you all must live in inside your head.

We don't play by the (their) rules and LEO operates the same way. You think finding big fish doesn't come at a dirty price? Most the time it does, deaths, murders, stealing, using drugs, casualties. Hell, the seller might not even be a LEO just a 'contact' they would use and NEVER admit to or expose, even to their own. This person would be operating as undercover probably with ZERO affiliation, ZERO connection above ground and below it.

To an extent (much bigger than people here seem to think) LEO does not care. Giving a few people a little dope to catch a big fish and you guys think LEO is worried about the well-being of all the few people who small amounts of dope were sent to, to catch the big fish lol. LEO doesn't care, they got the big fish and 'saved more lives' than the few they should feel 'morally bad' about sending small amounts too. Aside from that, what in the hell makes you think anyone will even know about all those small amounts LEO sent out...NO one will know!

You guys crack me up you really do. Keep thinking LEO practices by the book, keep thinking the whole case/exposures will be tallied up and written in a book on record for the courts. Keep thinking LEO cares about admitting to all the practices it uses and any tactic it uses is legal and conforms to protect individual rights and secrecy. L-O-L.

Guys wake up, it's a cold world and if you think LEO would not go outside their own rulebook, even at the expense of others, to give themselves an advantage is just plain ignorance.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: kmfkewm on March 05, 2012, 03:44 pm
Government agents don't worry themselves with the legality of any particular action or situation. They will do whatever they want to bust people. Anyways, much of the legal ramifications of their law-breaking actions get softened if they actually do manage to bust people.

Really? Because I can't count the number of times I've heard cases getting thrown out of court because the police forgot to sign the right paperwork, or gave the wrong information, or...

We're not talking about small fry stuff here, murderers have walked free on slip-ups of bureaucratic procedures.

A decent lawyer would have a field day if it were known that the police posted real drugs to people on the Silk Road.

If you look at the rules that govern controlled deliveries, you'll notice that they deliberately replace 90% of the drug with a substitute. This is despite the fact that ten minutes after delivery, there's a team with a door hammer smashing into the house. Apart from the law, they know the press would have wall to wall coverage if the police delivered drugs and didn't manage to retrieve them later.

No, although there may be some sellers who are FBI/DEA/other three-four-five letter acronyms, there are not using real product, that would defeat their purpose. They might try to collect names/addresses to scare the crap out of buyers though.

I don't think it would be illegal for them to post drugs. And it certainly wouldn't be illegal for them to get an informant to post drugs and decide not to charge them for it in return for gathered addresses.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: kmfkewm on March 05, 2012, 03:52 pm
Damn a lot of people on this site are naive as hell when it comes to the drug game. I think a lot of people here must have never even been involved with drugs prior to finding SR. Seeing people try to argue that the cops don't care about personal use or even pound traffickers because they only really care about the people moving tons just makes me want to burst out in laughter. You guys know that well over half of the people who are currently incarcerated for drug crimes were arrested with personal use amounts, right? You guys are seriously presenting with an almost clinically significant amount of reality denialism. There are people in prison for having bags with meth residue on them and you seem to think that unless you are busted pumping out ten tons of meth in a mexican super lab that LE just are not going to be bothered with it. Please come back to reality !!
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: kmfkewm on March 05, 2012, 04:00 pm
Operation Raw Deal had more to do with a technical vulnerability than LE busting any given vendor. Everyone on the steroid forums during that time period was using Hushmail for their encryption. Hushmail of course was not good enough to protect them from having their messages intercepted, and LE harvested shipping addresses from Hushmail (they had 7 DVDs worth of decrypted e-mails handed over to them).
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: Addy on March 05, 2012, 04:10 pm
Edit: Just to preface, I'm not targeting any single vendor, just vending on a site such as SR in general, and to emphasize no one here should fully trust anyone.

I think a scary thought is the idea of what corrupt established vendors can do when they go rogue.

Think about it- one way to cash in on your name is to mandate out of escrow transactions, and you'll get a good couple hundred BTC before the smoke clears. That's nice, but why not up the ante and sell your account to someone? And who would be a higher bidder than the govt.?

The viewing access of past transactions, see who's buying a lot (bulk, even) and then the ability to nab the people by fake-selling them a ton of product (after controlled deliveries, or whatever).

Meh. Other than one relatively recent transgression, I stopped smoking weed months ago, but some paranoia remains. I've been called crazy for suggesting some vendors may have incentive to keep buyers' addresses, and this notion may be even more far-fetched... but it's my firm belief anything is possible, when considering people's motives regarding money.

Anyhoo, I think this is unlikely, but still a real possibility.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: TalkingHead on March 05, 2012, 06:04 pm
Did no one else hear about the recent stories involving a US governmental agency (maybe ATF?) which released a bunch of illegal weapons, like automatic assault rifles, onto the (street) black market??? The intention was to track the weapons into the hands of the drug cartels, and then bust them that way...

But that was in Mexico, not in the states. They would NEVER do that here, right? It was the ATF, by the way.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: THConnoisseur on March 05, 2012, 06:33 pm
Damn a lot of people on this site are naive as hell when it comes to the drug game. I think a lot of people here must have never even been involved with drugs prior to finding SR. Seeing people try to argue that the cops don't care about personal use or even pound traffickers because they only really care about the people moving tons just makes me want to burst out in laughter. You guys know that well over half of the people who are currently incarcerated for drug crimes were arrested with personal use amounts, right? You guys are seriously presenting with an almost clinically significant amount of reality denialism. There are people in prison for having bags with meth residue on them and you seem to think that unless you are busted pumping out ten tons of meth in a mexican super lab that LE just are not going to be bothered with it. Please come back to reality !!

This is very true, but where people get confused is whether LEO is actually spending money and resources to seek out these small amounts/users and the answer to that question is NO. The reason, then, that you have all these people will small amount sin jail is for the fact that most of the time, no resources are really required. You don't often see someone driving around smoking a blunt with LBS in the car...however how many times do you think people smoke the only dime they have in the car? ALL the time.

So people are more lax, more open with smaller amounts and I think you are right in the fact that LEO does not care, at that point how big it is, they will bust you. Most people only use personal amounts and that is why there are more in prison, not because LEO wastes resources on every tip they come accross.

Situations matter as well, I may only have a few grams but theoretically if I am selling to children, you bet their ass LEO would spend the resources to bust me. However, LEO usually won't spend resources and time busting someone at home/ordering small amounts. However if a cop sees you with personal amount they aren't going to just forget about it either, they will arrest you. The whole personal amounts vs. drugs busts comes down to many other things than just being worth their time.

They will arrest anyone for any amount, but it takes a certain situation (normally an amount) for them to seek YOU out. I tend to believe a lot of people in jail were doing stupid things like smoking a blunt in the car (even with personal amounts) and driving around like a retard. You have to remember that most (not all, I know there are poor souls in jail) population in prisons who are there for personal amounts probably were not being very careful. Does this mean LEO spends $ investigating small users too? Not really, it just means more people use personal amounts than large amounts and these poeple usually get busted without LEO having to do really anything other than search them (no big investigations etc.)

As wrong as I believe it is to put people in jail for drugs, right now, that is the way this country runs- like it or not so we all need to be careful with ANY amounts and never use/talk about them openly. You just never know and that is how you/us/we should operate.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: kmfkewm on March 05, 2012, 06:56 pm
people with personal use amounts normally have dragnet operations aimed against them, not targeted investigations. So for example, an interception of a small order is what will get you in prison (targets people who get drugs via mail), more so than the feds identifying you are a small buyer on SR and then trying to actually find you (targets YOU getting drugs via the mail). But the distinction between targeted and dragnet can get kind of thin. What if FBI find a way to deanonymize all Tor users? Then their dragnet operation against 'people who use darkent for drug trafficking' is going to do a pretty good job of targeting 'you'.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: somethinglike on March 05, 2012, 09:42 pm
The truth is no-one knows which sellers are LE and which aren't. At any given moment a vendor could have been compromised in some form.
That isn't paranoia, it's just realism.

Just because this has been going strong for x amount of time, doesn't mean that the whole thing can't come crashing down at somepoint. It might not be tomorrow, next month or even a year from now, but it will always pay to be hyper aware of any vulnerabilities in the system. Like rats, LE will try to exploit any cracks they can find.

It should go without saying, but for vendors scamming junkie buyers should always be a distant second on the priority list of things to be concerned about, and LE always #1.  It might seem that the likes of the DEA are playing catch up to this world right now, but as outsiders we simply don't know what level resources have been given, or will be applied in the future to tracking deals here. Given that those resources are decided on a country by country basis, the cross border nature of SR is one of its biggest strengths.

One thing's for sure, our community has set all kinds of precedents and changed a key part of the drug trading landscape irreversibly. Long may it last.

Complacency's the freedom killer.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: pine on March 05, 2012, 10:51 pm
Government agents don't worry themselves with the legality of any particular action or situation. They will do whatever they want to bust people. Anyways, much of the legal ramifications of their law-breaking actions get softened if they actually do manage to bust people.

Really? Because I can't count the number of times I've heard cases getting thrown out of court because the police forgot to sign the right paperwork, or gave the wrong information, or...

We're not talking about small fry stuff here, murderers have walked free on slip-ups of bureaucratic procedures.

A decent lawyer would have a field day if it were known that the police posted real drugs to people on the Silk Road.

If you look at the rules that govern controlled deliveries, you'll notice that they deliberately replace 90% of the drug with a substitute. This is despite the fact that ten minutes after delivery, there's a team with a door hammer smashing into the house. Apart from the law, they know the press would have wall to wall coverage if the police delivered drugs and didn't manage to retrieve them later.

No, although there may be some sellers who are FBI/DEA/other three-four-five letter acronyms, there are not using real product, that would defeat their purpose. They might try to collect names/addresses to scare the crap out of buyers though.

I don't think it would be illegal for them to post drugs. And it certainly wouldn't be illegal for them to get an informant to post drugs and decide not to charge them for it in return for gathered addresses.

I think the 2nd is more likely. This is not based on some naivety about dirty LE practices, it is based on blowback. If there were ever a bunch of people perpetually trying to cover their asses more than politicians, it is the police. They live in fear of blowback, they know the press is always hungry for story. They hate lawyers because a lawyer looks for 'plot holes' in their stories. Lawyers love playing with narratives.

It is not about the DEA or local LE being 'morally upright'. It is about their almost exclusive self interest in career progression and fear of anything that might influence their review panel, which is a fairly murderous process in of itself. It is also relatively unlikely that the Fourth Estate is corrupted and in league with the DEA or local LE, because their interests do not fundamentally coincide.

Dog bites man is not a Story. Man bites Dog is a story. Journalists know that a LEO getting caught with their pants down is 100 times more lucrative a story than some drug dealer getting busted, which is seen as business as usual.

In fact I think the most likely reason why LE would not play by the book, is because an underling is deliberately attempting to 'boost' his superiors or competition in the ranks. You see, that is the danger of a conspiracy, it becomes vulnerable like a soap bubble the larger it gets, eventually somebody in the system has self interest against the conspiracy and all hell breaks loose. Again, I refer people to the NY situation.

tldr; It's a complicated tangled web of interests.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: nospainnogain on March 05, 2012, 11:39 pm
I wouldn't underestimate what the government bureaucracy would be willing to do to bust people on the silk road. If they are able to bust one buyer on SR, and if that buyer happens to have packaging from other purchases or incoming packages, it would be a major clue as to the whereabouts and identities of some major vendors on SR. A silk road bust for LE would be a major victory in their eyes and a major loss in ours.
Title: Re: How do know new Seller accounts are not the FBI?
Post by: jpisbetterthanme on March 05, 2012, 11:43 pm
Research. Lots and lots of research. I was going to say "trust" but ... I don't trust anyone :-D

Also risk/reward factors in here, and general hope that Nobody Cares. I still maintain that Big Brother isn't going to bust in your doors to arrest you if you buy 1/4 oz of weed.

Some of the other points made here are very good as well. Just like with anything else, it's best to thoroughly know what you're doing. Be smart, be sane, and be safe.