Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: StExo on July 05, 2013, 01:23 pm
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I've spent the good part of today reading through this weeks posts and found a few ideas floating around, one of which is now barely relavent to the debate anymore if you've paid attention to the news of this year. One of the most common statements I read, particularly from US citizens is "Well police can't do x or y because they have to follow the law/constitution/etc". Let us stop kidding ourselves and realise something - the law is not there to protect you but to prosecute you and limit your freedom. For every defence you have in law there are probably 5 or 10 workarounds that the lawyers at organisations such as the NSA, GCHQ, MI5, CIA, Interpol, FATF etc have stored up and when that doesn't work for them, politicians turn a blind eye to the case where it is at all feasible despite obvious violations of the laws they make.
You should not rely on the laws and rights of an individual to protect you, if the NSA and GCHQ have been collecting so much metadata for so long undetected and continue to do so then it isn't exactly infeasible to suggest everything you do is being collected. Who knows, Snowden may be wrong on them collecting metadata, they make just do that to filter or tag information and then store the entire document in some kind of archive, nobody knows for sure that has so far come out in public.
Assume you are rogue and you must protect yourself, especially the US/UK citizens here, you are alone and the laws and rights of your country will not be there when you need them because as with everything complex and designed by government, when they can make it complex enough to boggle the mind of the layperson, they can surely work it to their advantage and you will be left looking like an asshat demanding your rights only to find you missed the smalltext.
Vendors/Buyers - You are responsible for protecting yourself, not the law, so don't rely on it.
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+1
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they can surely work it to their advantage and you will be left looking like an asshat demanding your rights only to find you missed the smalltext.
Thats what lawyers are for i thought? And yes, the law can help u just as it helps the law enforcements. Dont go in the edge crying 'the whole world is against me and i cant do anything' but go and read the small text.
Id like to add that most laws are in fact there to protect the mass. Obviously. If there was no law there would be human hunting all day long. Not only in the 'i want to kill u' way.
Only thing i really hate is drugs being Limited. Everyone should be allowed to do what they want to do unless it is hurting someone else in any way. Its their decision. I believe they are scared many people will die or have serious problems from using those drugs they would usually not use because they cant reach them. But i think that would addup to the people who wouldnt usually get addicted to drugs and then die from them. They see something illegal people do and think 'hey, look at them, they are doing something which is hard to reach for the mass, and i have the opportunity to try it aswell'. The chances are way bigger he do wants to try if it is illegal because that makes it hard to reach and kinda like 'something special'.
I do think that specially such people have major problems with drugs. A human will know what is good for him and what not if he has the chance for a balanced decision. This decision gets outbalanced by the fact that it is hard to reach and might not be reachable anytime soon again if he doesnt take the chance now.
I think the positives of legalizing drugs out-weight by far the negatives. I really hope the LAW is realizing that sometime soon because im really sick of it. I would like to do what i love for a living without hiding and always having to be scared to go into jail for something a few outdated people came up with. For doing no harm to anyone. There would be anybody to judge me if there was no law about it. Nobody would come to me say U KILLED MY SON or something, they knew it was their sons decision. Not the sellers one.
There should be special regulations then for sure, like for example not driving a car for 48 hours or whatever, but this bridge will have to be crossed when its happening.
Let alone the fact the govs would make SO MUCH money with it that actually goes into even worse criminal activities..... Cant believe the politic is so blind to it... And the worst of ALL that i would like a politican to explain who say DRUG LAWS ARE GOOD AND NEEDED
, why in gods name is Alcohol allowed then???? I would like a logic answer to that. Specially related to cannabis. Why is Cannabis forbidden and Alcohol allowed? PLS explain!
Politics has made bad choices in the past that had to be corrected. And this is one of them.
I think politicans should be chosen after an iq test and everyone of them should be a genius. I think we have way to many dumb politicans who lead the world in a bad way. I think this could be fixed by only allowing super geniuses (like myself obviously :D) in the position of deciding what to implement as a LAW and what not. And specially be open to new things (which most intelligent people are. They are intelligent because they are open for new things to learn)
Most politicans (just like most humans all together) learned that 'drugs are bad' since they were a child. This is so deep in most humans. That is because they only get to hear bad things from them. They never get in touch with them ever nor do they relatives or people they have something to do with. Thats why they should not have the rights to judge about it. Because they only see the one side of it - the bad one. So they cant make up a decision based on facts. The only decision they can make up about drugs is 'Alcohol should be legal' because i want my wine in the evening..... Really?
What happens actually is they forbid people to study these drugs to make them less toxic, to study them to find all possible side-effects to make people even more aware and the decision to possibly take them even more unlikely. To study them to make it a perfect experience, to study them to even go further in his own mind and maybe find ways to cure actually none-curable illness. They actually help the bad people making money with it. Possibly in dirty labors with dirty end-product to even harm those, they supposedly want to help with the exact same thing, even more. They are so ugly and dumb in this case.
But to be fair, some laws are right. Even if they could possibly harm me because i break them, i see them as absolutely needed. There would be sheer chaos in this world without law.
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they can surely work it to their advantage and you will be left looking like an asshat demanding your rights only to find you missed the smalltext.
Thats what lawyers are for i thought? And yes, the law can help u just as it helps the law enforcements. Dont go in the edge crying 'the whole world is against me and i cant do anything' but go and read the small text
Unless you have enough money to do an OJ Simpson then they are only of limited help, especially in the US with plea bargains which really sway lawyers into getting you to accept them so their own statistics are messed up if you are fully charged, they just usually just want what makes them money with the least effort.
As I said, the law can also be ignored, even more so as a small fish in the ocean like us, how many more examples do we need in the world when something which blatantly goes against everything the law is supposed to stand for happens and politicians and beaurocrats come out trying to justify themselves, followed swiftly by lawyers on their payroll justifying their actions under some small text. Lawyers are helpful, but if you are against people who are doing this for their living then just 1 or 2 lawyers can't do everything for you and even less if the major agencies are after you for months because it is very likely as the investigation goes on, the lawyers they have are racking the legal charges up against you. It is common practice for tactics like those used against Al Capone, to charge him with tax evasion since he couldn't be charged with much else.
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I don't know I believe both sides have very valid points on this one
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+1
+ 2
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I gave all you good karma. If I ever god forbid need a lawyer I'm hiring someone like u guys!
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Some laws are good, but the problem is when people put the law on a pedestal above all else. They become drones that are programmed by the law, regardless of what the law is. They would hunt down Jews and send them to burn to death in concentration camps if the law directed them to do so. They see the law as some form of God on earth that must be blindly followed. These are the most dangerous people in the world, and they don't even realize that they are essentially evil because as far as they are capable of thinking, the law is good and must be followed, regardless of what variable the law is replaced with at a given point in time. The rule of law is the most important thing to them, they don't even really give a fuck what the law is so long as the law rules. They also get into the bad habit of thinking that every single aspect of life needs to be regulated by law, they want laws laws laws, laws for this and laws for that, laws for the fishes and laws for the bats (to paraphrase Dr. Seuss). It is like if they cannot go to the law to find an Answer then they are completely fucking lost, and the law becomes their Bible and they need it to answer all of their questions and to completely direct their morality. These are the same people who will always support the police no matter what they do, because the police are the ones enforcing their sacred laws. Oh did a cop shoot a drug user who got caught with a joint and ran? Sucks for the drug user, should have followed the almighty law! Did somebody get sentenced to the gas chamber because they refused to denounce their faith as a Jehovah Witness? Sucks for them, the law is the law.
Really the world is not going to fall apart without laws. It isn't like without the law everybody is just a defenseless mindless target for crime, and it isn't like the law keeps all the sociopaths in check. People who worship the law have the strange personality characteristic of thinking that everybody else worships the law as well (for example, democrats think that making guns illegal is the answer to gun crime, this is because they think that the law is an all powerful God that criminals will not dare to defy). Really we only need a few laws, don't rape, don't steal, don't kill, don't harm. Essentially everything else is a derivative of these, for example don't sexually assault, don't molest, don't commit fraud, don't commit battery, etc. The general theme is that the only things that should be illegal involve direct unwarranted harm to others.
I personally am a big fan of private defense agencies, the abolition of the state and the privatization of all property.
I also think that b0m is extremely naive. He has apparently had a big gulp of the government kool aid. Drugs are illegal because it gives the government more control over the people. It essentially criminalizes half of the population. Then they can treat us as their slaves, they can send us to private prisons and they can funnel money to their interests and their corporate friends. Drugs are not illegal because of falsely perceived harms caused by them, if that were the case the government would be all over legalization and harm reduction, considering the vast majority of damage caused by illegal drugs is preventable with basic regulation and education. Drugs are illegal because it gives the politicians power, it gives the police power, and it is a trillion dollar a year industry. In fact, a lot of crime is only crime because it funnels more money and more power to the elite classes.
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I'll tell you what I see all too often on these forums - people who seem to believe that cutting corners with their security can be justified because if the police can't actually prove something and prosecute, then everything will be OK.
"Buying bitcoins isn't illegal"
"All they can prove is that you bought something on SR, they can't actually prove what it was"
"As a small time buyer they wouldn't go after me"
And this real one recently:
"Even if LE wanted to run a honeypot and catch buyers, what could they possible charge you with for sending someone some BTC and typing your address in a box (encrypted or not)? Wanting to get high? In what countries is that crime?"
So let's put this one to bed here and now, as the title of the thread says Let's stop kidding ourselves.
Yes, if you're a small time buyer, you may be a low priority. But if you don't encrypt your address, then in the event of an infiltration you're not a low priority any more, you are low-hanging fruit.
Even if the police can't charge you (and I believe they could in many cases), the story doesn't end there. They don't need proof to place you under surveillance. And being put under surveillance is *a bad thing*.
Don't cut corners with your security.
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Amen!
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+1
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+4
We need a revolution. This is a downward slope into total government control that I do not want to be a part of.
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+4 still because I can't give karma yet. Nonetheless I agree!
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Some laws are good, but the problem is when people put the law on a pedestal above all else. They become drones that are programmed by the law, regardless of what the law is. They would hunt down Jews and send them to burn to death in concentration camps if the law directed them to do so. They see the law as some form of God on earth that must be blindly followed. These are the most dangerous people in the world, and they don't even realize that they are essentially evil because as far as they are capable of thinking, the law is good and must be followed, regardless of what variable the law is replaced with at a given point in time. The rule of law is the most important thing to them, they don't even really give a fuck what the law is so long as the law rules.
**APPLAUSE**
**TEAR ROLLS DOWN EYE**
Fuck yeah!!! Anyone who justifies their actions with "the law is the law" is the definition of evil. They are no better than robots or any kind of programmable interface that relies on logic and has no conscience to check their decision making.
Our consciousness and ability to reflect on ourselves is what separates us from animals and "intelligent" technology as a whole. When we forfeit that ability, even for the sake of comfort, we become slaves to whoever makes the rules -- we lose what makes us human!!!!
Man is not supposed to be a God to man. Limited rules are necessary for society to function, but take it too far and what you have is total control of humans by humans. Perhaps the antichrist of the bible isn't so fake after all. It doesn't have to be a single man with magic powers; a global establishment that cements itself as a sort of living God to humans fits the mold quite well.
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Some laws are good, but the problem is when people put the law on a pedestal above all else. They become drones that are programmed by the law, regardless of what the law is. They would hunt down Jews and send them to burn to death in concentration camps if the law directed them to do so. They see the law as some form of God on earth that must be blindly followed. These are the most dangerous people in the world, and they don't even realize that they are essentially evil because as far as they are capable of thinking, the law is good and must be followed, regardless of what variable the law is replaced with at a given point in time. The rule of law is the most important thing to them, they don't even really give a fuck what the law is so long as the law rules.
**APPLAUSE**
**TEAR ROLLS DOWN EYE**
Fuck yeah!!! Anyone who justifies their actions with "the law is the law" is the definition of evil. They are no better than robots or any kind of programmable interface that relies on logic and has no conscience to check their decision making.
Our consciousness and ability to reflect on ourselves is what separates us from animals and "intelligent" technology as a whole. When we forfeit that ability, even for the sake of comfort, we become slaves to whoever makes the rules -- we lose what makes us human!!!!
Man is not supposed to be a God to man. Limited rules are necessary for society to function, but take it too far and what you have is total control of humans by humans. Perhaps the antichrist of the bible isn't so fake after all. It doesn't have to be a single man with magic powers; a global establishment that cements itself as a sort of living God to humans fits the mold quite well.
I came here to quote this too. In a capitalist world, power and money are your gods, are ever-present and will always have value. Laws keep the money and power in the hands that want them most - and those tend to be the ones who already have money and power.
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Throughout the world's so-called democracies we see an increasing reliance on 'secret' courts and other adjudicating bodies determining legaility of state action in private, well protected from the prying eyes of the public. As Sen Wyden and otehrs have intimated, the people have little clue how laws have been 're-defiined' by these courts and most have no understanding of what they have lost in the name of counter-terrorism. The media and the companies that own them are part of the state apparatus now and behave as such. I think a key reason why there have been so many revelations recently concerning the surveillance activites of various states and the systematic destruction of personal liberties is that these are precursor to what's to come. As our economies continue to collapse and policies of currency debasement and asset inflation continue, the average person will see their life style and standard of living greatly reduced. To keep a lid on things and protect the institutions of global power, I think we are being tested to see how react to evidence of the removal and destruction of our rights and liberties. We will see greater state intrusions and the continued roll back of rights and freedoms all under the auspices of various 'wars', like the current 'war on terror' - 12 years long and still going strong!
When Snowden came forth with his evidence of massive blanket surveillance of US citizens and others, many said the first repsonse will be to smear the messenger and shift people's attention to the personality of messenger, carefully avoiding any real discussion of the message. And this is exactly what has come to pass. The US government's current attacks on whistlblowers (unprecedented in US history), is having the desired effect of scaring away those who would come forth wth evidence of government illegality. We are on a very dangerous path, but most simply won't aloow themselves to realize it.