Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: waffleking on April 12, 2012, 10:45 pm
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just trying to get an opinion on how people would rank the security of each of those options:
text vs. email vs. phone call
obviously never talk about SR outside of these forums or on any of those, but when talking drug talk in general, which method is the safest and which is the least safe? talking non-encrypted e-mail/text here.
thanks for the input!
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I would say that emailing someone through tormail through tor and encryption is light-years more secure than any phone connected to a contract or text message, say you are a target phone tap and getting warrants for anything under your name would be the first thing
even if you have a burn phone if they somehow manage to get the number then its no good and saying anything incriminating would be downfall if someone that wanted to arrest you has it on recording with Your voice
I wouldnt be surprised if there is already big dealers who use it now instead of phones, times are changing and phones are dead
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just trying to get an opinion on how people would rank the security of each of those options:
text vs. email vs. phone call
obviously never talk about SR outside of these forums or on any of those, but when talking drug talk in general, which method is the safest and which is the least safe? talking non-encrypted e-mail/text here.
thanks for the input!
If you are sure the party on the other end is clean get new prepaid cell phones and thats fairly safe for a while. But keep in mind that all cell phone calls can be intercepted in most states without a warrent. E mail is bad if your using clearnet. Texting is probably no better than using a cell phone for a phone call unless its texting from a new prepaid phone 2 another prepaid phone
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Ever watched The Wire? The dealers use burners (prepaid cell phones) for all their drug biz. They have a guy drive up and down the highway buying one or two at each store. But, the source eventually gets lazy (and tempted by his girl toy) and starts buying several phones at each location. The cops end up following him and getting a pre-emptive tap on the unpurchased phones before the burner source picks them up.
Hands down, TOR is the way to go, preferably from a different access point each time.
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Tormail seems the safest route.
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i think i didn't explain the context of my question very well...
the question everyone seems to be answering is, "if i'm a drug dealer, how should i be communicating about drugs with clients."
the question i was asking is, "are texting, emailing, or making phone calls to a friend to talk about personal use amounts of drugs all equally unsafe (or safe), or is one a better alternative than another?"
hope that clears it up a little!
thanks for all the comments!
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i think i didn't explain the context of my question very well...
the question everyone seems to be answering is, "if i'm a drug dealer, how should i be communicating about drugs with clients."
the question i was asking is, "are texting, emailing, or making phone calls to a friend to talk about personal use amounts of drugs all equally unsafe (or safe), or is one a better alternative than another?"
hope that clears it up a little!
thanks for all the comments!
I get what you are asking exactly and have the same question. Since we are probably not ever going to be under surveillance as casual users of recreational chemicals, a casual conversation about drugs with friends comes up. It would appear that if one is under surveillance or u are nervous that you might be, then Tormail sounds like a good option. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough because I leave VM, talk on my cell and txt friends about partying with specific substances and amounts. Most of my friends are not crypto-tor kind of people and would not be keen to start an IT course from the friendly crypto specialists on SR. Maybe, since we have chosen to invest the time and energy to come to the SR, we should respect all of the others who are here and try to use a modicum of security sense when talking about any SR transactions though. Guess I'll have to revisit that unused Thunderbird/Tormail acct that I set up the first week I was lurking here and walk the walk
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what about encrypted phones? im not talking about an app but a phone that was built to be encrypted.
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afaik texting and e-mailing are the same thing just with different user interfaces
I wouldn't use anything that isn't securely encrypted
you can securely encrypt text and e-mail and fairly securely encrypt streaming voice
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what about encrypted phones? im not talking about an app but a phone that was built to be encrypted.
Last I looked into it, phones that are built for the 'encrypted voice' niche market cost several thousand dollars per unit (a quick google search shows this one which is selling for $3,000: NOKIA E71 ENCRYPTED) and they usually only work if you use them with someone else who has the same phone. Android phones are imo the clear winners when it comes to secured communications with cell phones, they have apps that encrypt text voice and instant messages (and the entire phones storage), and they are compatible with any other Android phone, and they cost a fraction of what a purpose specific encrypted phone costs (not to mention the encryption apps are free).
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Android Smartphone + Jabber w/ OTR. Can even route it through tor if you so choose.
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i think i didn't explain the context of my question very well...
the question everyone seems to be answering is, "if i'm a drug dealer, how should i be communicating about drugs with clients."
the question i was asking is, "are texting, emailing, or making phone calls to a friend to talk about personal use amounts of drugs all equally unsafe (or safe), or is one a better alternative than another?"
hope that clears it up a little!
thanks for all the comments!
I get what you are asking exactly and have the same question. Since we are probably not ever going to be under surveillance as casual users of recreational chemicals, a casual conversation about drugs with friends comes up. It would appear that if one is under surveillance or u are nervous that you might be, then Tormail sounds like a good option. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough because I leave VM, talk on my cell and txt friends about partying with specific substances and amounts. Most of my friends are not crypto-tor kind of people and would not be keen to start an IT course from the friendly crypto specialists on SR. Maybe, since we have chosen to invest the time and energy to come to the SR, we should respect all of the others who are here and try to use a modicum of security sense when talking about any SR transactions though. Guess I'll have to revisit that unused Thunderbird/Tormail acct that I set up the first week I was lurking here and walk the walk
Ya, this is exactly what I am getting at!
Even more specifically, I have a friend who hasn't even heard of SR, but he/she gets pissy if I mention any sort of drug talk over text/email but is happy to talk about it over the phone. Trying to find out if that is a justified distinction or if text/email and phone conversations are equally unsecure.
Thanks again for all the input, guys!
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They can get a court order to pull of your previous texts (to a certain timeframe) so if you must use a phone, then a phone call would be best to discuss anything.
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They can get a court order to pull of your previous texts (to a certain timeframe) so if you must use a phone, then a phone call would be best to discuss anything.
I agree to an extent. They don't need a warrant to read your texts but they do need one to target you specifically.
This is how I see it: Any digital text, in any form, unless encrypted end-to-end, is dangerous. Big brother is constantly upping the ante in terms of how much data they can record and monitor. If you're sending something in plaintext, assume it's being recorded and monitored. This includes e-mail, texts, IMs, Facebook chats, and just about anything else you can type. All they need to do is run a search to find communications containing specific terms (related to drugs, terrorism, kiddie-porn, or anything else they don't want the general public doing) and get a search warrant based on that information. Does that happen often? Probably not. Will it become more prevalent? Most definitely.
Check out the big cover article in Wired recently. The NSA is building the largest government owned data center in the world. It will consume more power than most small cities. What do you think they're going to do with all that computing power and storage? If you need some hints, these are good starting points:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
https://www.eff.org/nsa/faq
Phone conversations certainly aren't safe but if they don't already have a warrant, they're probably isn't anybody actively listening to your conversations. I personally don't believe there's enough computing power for them to convert all of our phone conversations into searchable text, but with this new data center, anything is possible. For the time being, if you can't talk in person, I would talk on the phone unless you have reason to suspect there's an open warrant.
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Android Smartphone + Jabber w/ OTR. Can even route it through tor if you so choose.
Well said Laughing Man,
If you have an Android phone there are a few options open to you when it comes to protecting your messages.
The company Whisper Systems have released two apps, RedPhone and TextSecure - one is for encrypting voice calls and one for encrypting your SMS respectively. Sad to say Redphone works in the USA only! Both can be downloaded free of charge (See : http://www.whispersys.com) for links to the apps themselves and more information.
It's far easier and cheaper to do as Laughing Man says and downloaded an XMPP app to your phone. Both the app Beem and the app Gibberbot can be shunted through Tor through using the program Orbot and both also support Off the Record Messaging (OTR) which will encrypt each message. Most importantly once the conversation is over anyone could encrypt a message in the same way you had so it would be impossible to prove you had sent a specific message.
Obviously these apps are only as good as the device they're installed on. Make sure you get a phone with a recent version of Android which supports full device encryption. At the very least install your chat software onto a removable SD card which you can easily dispose of if things start taking a turn for the worse.
If you aren't blessed with a smart phone I would suggest you use an old school pen and paper cipher in your text message. I have started a thread in the "Off Topic" area about these if such things interest you. :)
V.
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Android Smartphone + Jabber w/ OTR. Can even route it through tor if you so choose.
Well said Laughing Man,
If you have an Android phone there are a few options open to you when it comes to protecting your messages.
The company Whisper Systems have released two apps, RedPhone and TextSecure - one is for encrypting voice calls and one for encrypting your SMS respectively. Sad to say Redphone works in the USA only! Both can be downloaded free of charge (See : http://www.whispersys.com) for links to the apps themselves and more information.
It's far easier and cheaper to do as Laughing Man says and downloaded an XMPP app to your phone. Both the app Beem and the app Gibberbot can be shunted through Tor through using the program Orbot and both also support Off the Record Messaging (OTR) which will encrypt each message. Most importantly once the conversation is over anyone could encrypt a message in the same way you had so it would be impossible to prove you had sent a specific message.
Obviously these apps are only as good as the device they're installed on. Make sure you get a phone with a recent version of Android which supports full device encryption. At the very least install your chat software onto a removable SD card which you can easily dispose of if things start taking a turn for the worse.
If you aren't blessed with a smart phone I would suggest you use an old school pen and paper cipher in your text message. I have started a thread in the "Off Topic" area about these if such things interest you. :)
V.
I wouldn't use anything that's closed source like things from Whisper Systems.
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email definitely, even regular emails like AOL are safer than cells
cells usually link to a name, and emails don't if you access them using TOR or some proxy
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Android Smartphone + Jabber w/ OTR. Can even route it through tor if you so choose.
Well said Laughing Man,
If you have an Android phone there are a few options open to you when it comes to protecting your messages.
The company Whisper Systems have released two apps, RedPhone and TextSecure - one is for encrypting voice calls and one for encrypting your SMS respectively. Sad to say Redphone works in the USA only! Both can be downloaded free of charge (See : http://www.whispersys.com) for links to the apps themselves and more information.
It's far easier and cheaper to do as Laughing Man says and downloaded an XMPP app to your phone. Both the app Beem and the app Gibberbot can be shunted through Tor through using the program Orbot and both also support Off the Record Messaging (OTR) which will encrypt each message. Most importantly once the conversation is over anyone could encrypt a message in the same way you had so it would be impossible to prove you had sent a specific message.
Obviously these apps are only as good as the device they're installed on. Make sure you get a phone with a recent version of Android which supports full device encryption. At the very least install your chat software onto a removable SD card which you can easily dispose of if things start taking a turn for the worse.
If you aren't blessed with a smart phone I would suggest you use an old school pen and paper cipher in your text message. I have started a thread in the "Off Topic" area about these if such things interest you. :)
V.
I wouldn't use anything that's closed source like things from Whisper Systems.
Open Source is very important - I see they've made the source code available for peer review, though it would be nice for Joe Public to see the nuts and bolts of it too as they say. It's certainly safer than making an unsecured call using a phone.
Another solution would be to use a VOIP app over a secure VPN - I think most Androids phone support this feature? I see also that it's possible to set up a secure SSH tunnel from an Android phone - I imagine it would be possible to shunt your VOIP software of choice e.g Skype through this as it is on desktop machines?
V.
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this is all great information. thanks all!
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email definitely, even regular emails like AOL are safer than cells
cells usually link to a name, and emails don't if you access them using TOR or some proxy
If you want to do business on SR and be taken seriously use Tormail plus PGP encryption for your messages which will make sure they can't be traced and it they're intercepted they're useless. There's an excellent guide to getting set up with this on the forum but any problems feel free to post on here.
V.
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email definitely, even regular emails like AOL are safer than cells
cells usually link to a name, and emails don't if you access them using TOR or some proxy
If you want to do business on SR and be taken seriously use Tormail plus PGP encryption for your messages which will make sure they can't be traced and it they're intercepted they're useless. There's an excellent guide to getting set up with this on the forum but any problems feel free to post on here.
V.
Yeah, I have a TorMail. I was just mentioning that I think even without one e-mail is still safer.
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I have little doubt that virtually all text messages in the US are being archived... and possibly personal email communications as well. I worry that any texts I send or receive could come back to haunt me years from now. But what about phone conversations? I bet the records of who called whom are archived, but what about the actual conversation audio? Intuitively I feel like talking about drugs over a cell line is better than texting, because the voice content can probably only get you in trouble if somebody is eavesdropping RIGHT NOW.
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I was wondering the same thing. Once, I was pretty fucked up, talking on the phone with a friend, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I'm going to share my 2C-X with so and so." I felt like such a jackass for saying it and immediately hung up the phone in paranoia. But I have no legal record and LEO never busted down my door. Additionally, the other night I was tripping on 25i-NBOMe and wouldn't even answer my friend's phone calls because I get so conspiratorial on certain psychs. I try to limit my drug chats to face-to-face communication, and most certainly would never speak of SR over email, text, or the phone.
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I was wondering the same thing. Once, I was pretty fucked up, talking on the phone with a friend, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I'm going to share my 2C-X with so and so." I felt like such a jackass for saying it and immediately hung up the phone in paranoia. But I have no legal record and LEO never busted down my door. Additionally, the other night I was tripping on 25i-NBOMe and wouldn't even answer my friend's phone calls because I get so conspiratorial on certain psychs. I try to limit my drug chats to face-to-face communication, and most certainly would never speak of SR over email, text, or the phone.
If you must use the telephone, try one of the apps I mentioned above to encrypt your voice / SMS if you've a smartphone or use a pen and paper cipher in an emergency (I've posted a separate thread on a simple 'book' cipher).
Alternatively stick to using SR and all these worries disappear!
V.