Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: clayeaston on May 07, 2012, 03:40 am
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Hi,
I am currently in the process of writing an article about The Silk Road for a journalism portfolio. So far I have been able to interview a friend who uses the site, but I am interested in talking to some other people about why you use SR. I would love to hear from buyers and sellers, if you would be willing to talk about why you like SR, perceived dangers of SR, or really anything you are willing to divulge. I have no interest in your personal information and I hope people do not write this off as a scam. If anyone is interested in helping me I would greatly appreciate it, you can pm me or just post something inline with the thread.
Thanks all, and happy shopping
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what publisher are you with?
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Not with a publisher, just for a journalism class I am taking.
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What school r u at and what is the article going to be about?
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I am an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. The article is just an assignment, it probably won't be published. I thought it would be really interesting to write about the silk road in the context of how it could change drug trade, how SR will subvert laws and regulations, advantages and disadvantages of the site, what scares users about purchasing from the silk road, and why the silk road works despite the anonymity and reliance on the honor system. I am not interested in any personal information, I just want some input from SR users.
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I use this site because it is essentially guerrilla warfare in the war on drugs. Use the enemy's (read, the state) own systems against them.
Turning the USPS into the biggest traffickers of drugs in the United States, priceless.
Plus, it is the only way I know how to get high quality drugs that I want.
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Hi,
I'm a seller based in England and I offer people a way to exchange Bitcoins for cash and vice versa - I'd be happy to answer any questions you have, perhaps when your article's ready you could share it on here? I'm sure it'd make for an interesting read.
V.
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How about we NOT discuss SR and all stay out of jail. Also by staying quiet the idiots can't find us. WIN/WIN.
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Watching this thread out of interest and boredom. Mostly the second one.
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I would absolutely be willing to share a copy of the article once its done, I really appreciate that I have already gotten a couple responses.
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Keeping my eye on this. I would love to read the final product.
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Clay's only asked me questions newcomers to SR ask 100 times every day - I'm happy to talk about the website in general terms. Who knows, it may even drum up some business! :-D
V.
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You can PM me over on the SR Main site if you have a question list and I'll do my best to answer them. I've been vending on here for about a year now. I won't answer any specific questions regarding my location or anything about ME, but if you want the philosophical elements and the logical progression on how this thing plays out (pros, cons, effects, etc.), flip me a PM with a question list and I'll get back to you at some point in the next couple of days.
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Post your questions here and let's see what we think about them :) If people feel comfortable answering them I'm sure they will...
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Post a basic survey tool of 10 questions, and list an email, some of us might get back to you...
thats the only way I can see anyone doing this. What would your Internal Review Board say?
Anonymous pms equal military intelligence though these days so maybe they won't have a problem with it
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Post a basic survey tool of 10 questions, and list an email, some of us might get back to you...
thats the only way I can see anyone doing this. What would your Internal Review Board say?
Anonymous pms equal military intelligence though these days so maybe they won't have a problem with it
The questions were all fairly routine and to be honest could largely be answered by trawling through the comments on the forum so I don't think we need be too concerned, still you can't be too careful. :)
V.
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So far about 6 people have gotten back to me through pms, and although it may not seem credible to some people I think that maintaining anonymity is the most natural way for this interview to be conducted. That seems to be the basis for the entire website. However I will post some questions so you all know what you are getting into before you want to talk to me:
1) Are you a buyer or a seller?
2) How long have you been using The Silk Road? And how did you find SR?
3) What change do you think SR can bring about in terms of drug trade?
4) Do you think there are any moral issues in using the site?
5) What do you think about legal issues, and consequences regarding SR?
6) Do you think SR or similar sites have the power to subvert laws and regulations?
7) Do you have any safety concerns using SR?
8) What do you think about the sites reliance on anonymity, and what I still see as the honor system to some extent?
9) Anything that you find noteworthy or would like to tell me about The Silk Road!
Some more questions aimed at vendors:
1) Do you act in drug trade off SR or are you exclusive to the website?
2) What appeal does trade through the internet have over face to face sales?
3) What appeal does drug trade hold for you? Is it purely monetary?
If anyone would like to answer any of the questions I appreciate it greatly. If you are uncomfortable answering the questions that is quite alright, I am not here to try and get anyone in trouble or something like that. So far you guys have been very understanding and willing to explain the site to me... I do not have a great back ground in computers so some of the technical aspects of SR still confuse me. Anyway pm me or respond inline with the thread if you would like!
Thanks! :)
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Sorry it took so long but after I finished it then I went into summer mode and apathy swept over me. Thanks for those who offered to help, and I hope you guys like it.
Everyone loves their drug dealer, a sincere bloke who always has a toke or a bump for a friend in need. He is a guy that you genuinely enjoy spending time with and really get to know well. You call him up out of the blue and he is more than happy to help you out. He might even drive out to your house. He will always be there for you for a fee, at least until he runs out, or he gets caught, or changes his phone number, or you find a better guy, or for no better reason than you quit. Actually, take the drugs out of the equation and you probably would not know this guy. You certainly would not spend time with him. Maybe no one likes their drug dealer. Maybe its time to get rid of the drug dealer.
In the early winter months of 2012 a young man, who we will call Andy, decided to buy some drugs off the Internet. Four days later, a package arrived under a fake name to his apartment. The contents of the envelope were a large amount of benzodiazepines, including Lorazepam and Klonopin. Interestingly enough, Andy wasn’t arrested. In fact, no one cared.
The method by which Andy obtained these substances was a website called The Silk Road. The Silk Road is an online bazaar dedicated to the distribution of drugs and all things illicit. But there is no central source for illicit goods on The Silk Road: buyers and sellers trade with each other. What makes the Silk Road so useful for illicit transactions is the complete anonymity of the process. It allows buyers and sellers to trade money for illicit goods without ever revealing their identities.
The Silk Road has two main ways to maintain anonymity, the Tor router, and an online currency known as Bitcoins. The Tor router hides the users identity by using a worldwide volunteer network of servers that create layers of encrypted information that is then re-encrypted a number of times before the information reaches its destination. Bitcoins are a form of currency that hides a user’s identity by destroying the money trail between buyer and seller. Think of them as an online form of cash. Like cash, it is possible to know how much is out there, but you cannot know who controls it.
Now let’s go through the process of buying drugs. When I arrived at Andy’s house we sat down in his living room and he pulled out his laptop to log on. Andy is very cautious with The Silk Road, so he prefers to keep the Tor program on a USB flash drive so there is no evidence on his computer. Once we are on the Tor network he types in the URL, enters his username, password, and passes the human verification. Then in the backlit glow of his laptop I am stunned to see a sophisticated marketplace of escapes. Once logged in, you can simply browse for your desired product, add it to your cart, and check out. There are even ways to rate the product, read reviews, narrow your search, and choose domestic or international sellers. The Silk Road is like Amazon is to books, only with drugs, and lots of them.
How do you change your cash into Bitcoins? Andy told me that this is probably the most time consuming and nerve racking part of the process. First he goes to the convenience store and buys a Green Dot MoneyPak. The MoneyPak is a prepaid cash card that will never require any personal information to buy or redeem. But it is not so easy to change the MoneyPak into Bitcoins. Andy has to go into The Silk Road, and find someone with a high enough user submitted rating that is offering to do the transaction for him -- for a fee, of course. Once Andy has chosen a fellow user he will send them a personal message with the information to take money off of his MoneyPak as well as the account to send the Bitcoins to. After that it will be anywhere from six hours to three days before the Bitcoins are in Andy’s account.
The reason this is so nerve racking is that this is an anonymous website, on a secret network. Would you ever trust your drug dealer with your wallet for three days and expect it to be returned safely? Better yet: would you trust a complete stranger to hold onto your cash and hope that they would deposit it into your bank account? In Andy’s case it has always gone to plan, and he received the money, short a 10-15% processing fee, and then it was time for some happy shopping.
When it came to the shopping, Andy was a bit of a veteran with a laundry list of purchases. He tends toward psychedelics almost exclusively and reports to have ordered a number of chemical analogs to drugs like LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin mushrooms. In addition he purchased some MDMA, and Methylone, both popular club drugs, MDMA being the base for ecstasy and Methylone being a chemical clone. He also bought the aforementioned benzodiazepines. In his history of using the website he reports only one item that was not delivered to him.
There is often a system of refund, although it varies from seller to seller. In the case of the undelivered LSD, the seller offered two refund options. The first was a refund of half the price of the LSD. The second option was that the seller would try and resend the drugs at no additional cost. The Silk Road has created a system of accountability and a sense of professionalism that is not typical in the drug trade. If a seller has frequent undelivered packages, you do not buy from them, and if a buyer has a high percentage of requests for returns you can choose if you would like to sell to them or not. As Andy put it, “The Silk Road has some accountability because, unlike the guy on the corner, the vendors know what they are selling and have a reputation to maintain.”
One of the most fascinating aspects of the seller’s reputation is the user forum that is part of The Silk Road. Once you make an account you are urged to browse the forum to learn a little bit before making any purchases. I never made it past The Rumor Mill, a portion of the forum dedicated to user reviews of products. Three of the biggest threads are about heroin vendors, cocaine vendors, and meth vendors. There is a thread dedicated to every drug; however, these three were prominently posted on the front page because they have the most frequent use. Under each drug specific thread you can find a list of sellers, a list of scammers, and ratings on the sellers as well as their product. People gave testimony to how the buying experience went as well as a testament to the quality of the product. It truly read like an Ebay review, right down to the title. It was not unusual to read, “Finalized early, fast shipping, great packaging, can’t wait to try” or, “Great communication, prompt delivery, product exceeded expectations.” Then the users go on to review the drug further. They may even compare it to another seller’s product so you really get a sense for who has the best stuff.
To make the experience more convenient, you don’t have to go into The Rumor Mill to get a quick overview on the seller. When you click on a product, the seller’s rating comes up, in addition to comments from the last ten transactions. Sellers are ranked in comparison to the other sellers, as well as given a customer satisfaction rating, and the number of transactions the seller has closed on. Really, once the money is in your account the rest is as simple as: research, decide, and buy. Then there is the ordeal of receiving a package.
Shipping drugs in the mail is a felony, because you are making someone else act as a drug mule unknowingly. However, between Andy and The Silk Road forum, I received some tips on how to not get caught. According to Andy, you should buy domestically so the package isn’t going through customs. Although this route offers a limited selection, and may have higher prices, it is your safest bet. Also, use your real name on the package. If the postman is delivering to your house every day for the last five years and today there is a strange new name, it looks suspicious. Remember, it is not illegal to have your name on a box of drugs. Simply deny, deny, deny. As long as you never have possession of the box, you can maintain that anyone can send anything to anyone else.
The only way you can be caught and charged is called a controlled delivery. This is a process in which a plain clothes police officer will try to deliver a package to you. If you do not answer the door, however -- which you will not have to do because all packages from the Silk Road will be marked to not need a signature upon delivery -- then they can do nothing but confiscate your drugs. Granted, this may mean that you shouldn’t use the website, but there will be no criminal charges.
Does this mean that there is a viable way to change the drug trade, and forever reduce crime associated with drugs? Unfortunately not yet. In recent months a very similar website was brought down. The Farmers Market, like The Silk Road was an online drug trade on the Tor server. The Farmers Market had one critical pitfall, they would accept many different forms of payment like PayPal, Western Union, or mail cash drops, and all of this money was going to one of a handful of venders who ran the site. Unfortunately it is very difficult to dissociate yourself from most forms of electronic payment. In hindsight it is very easy to say that they were making key mistakes that will be avoided in the future, but it is a reminder that these websites are not bulletproof.
The Silk Road does not have the capacity to revolutionize the drug trade just yet. The market for online drugs, although growing rapidly, is still small compared to the street drug trade. It is not surprising that most people are not interested in online drug sales when you consider the desire for instant gratification associated with drug use. If you are looking for one hell of a night, or a great weekend The Silk Road cannot deliver on short notice. A case can certainly be made that the drugs on The Silk Road will be higher quality than what you find at your drug dealers place, and he cannot match the variety offered online. However recreational drug use tends to be spur of the moment, and an addict wants a constant supply readily available. So it is not surprising that many Silk Road users use local street dealers to compliment their online purchases.
I got the chance to interview a number of Silk Road users anonymously via the forum, and found that although they are hopeful about The Silk Road, no one sees it as a means to an end. Out of the 8 people I was able to interview it seemed their motivation for using The Silk Road was to escape the brick and mortar world of life in the drug trade. They were tired of dealing with “shady men” who were carrying an inferior product. It is no secret that drugs have become big business, and like anything else a great deal of effort has been put into doing less work for more money. One vendor who goes by the name Anarcho wrote to me saying,
… I have streamlined how I deal with customers as much as possible and attempted to ensure they get the highest quality product for the best price, and it is shipped in the most secure manner possible.
Anarcho explained his view of the real world economy as deteriorating, while the online economy is flourishing. In his mind it is the last frontier to business, and it offers a huge advantage over street trade because it takes the violence aspect away from drug sales. In his eyes The Silk Road can change the stigma of the drug user. The members of The Silk Road do not want to be labeled as “huddled in a corner, unshowered for weeks, ‘strung out’ crazies.” Most of the users I interviewed alluded to having professional careers and lives outside of drug use. The drugs they purchased were only a small part of the person they are.
At its core the website is a good thing. There are sections of the forum devoted to addicts seeking help. People told gripping stories of their battles with drug addiction and talked about the extent of the damage drugs caused. Other users offered to act as support for those struggling with drug addiction. It was surprising that on a website dedicated to the distribution of drugs many people were concerned with helping struggling addicts. There were also sections of the forum that offered information on dosing instructions to help avoid the potential overdose. One user I interviewed who wished to remain nameless told me, “The site has a rule: nothing on here is sold that has the intent of harming others.”
So maybe The Silk Road hasn’t gotten rid of the drug dealer. Maybe they offer a better solution, by bringing the drug dealer to the forefront and letting his peers judge him, you know who you are dealing with. Under the shroud of secrecy there is an immense dedication to honesty, and without that honesty the website would fall apart.
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just saw this now. Nice writeup, and glad I could help.
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just saw this now. Nice writeup, and glad I could help.
I enjoyed reading this!
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That makes an interesting read for sure!
I wonder how the 'outside world' will perceive SR though. I consider it to be the ebay for controlled substances, but reading the article i suppose some people may still get the impression of some online gang that pushes drugs by the truckload.
If you ever do a follow up, i think it would be important to emphasize that SR doesn't only cut out the street dealer, but a large part of the intermediate network too. SR may be seen as underground, dark, criminal and what not, but i think there should be some emphasis on the problems it can solve too. A system like this will, eventually, make a large part of the drug traders obsolete as it allows direct transfer from producer to customer, and a route to pay for the product in bitcoin in return.
While SR may make drugs slightly more accessible to the general public, i think the story of shortening supply lines is far more intesting. It is a classic story on how internet trade can cut out middle men - and in this case be a helpful thing in reducing drug trade crime.
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glad you guys enjoyed reading, and thanks for the suggestions ben!
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Its interesting being pretty new to read stuff like this, so thanks.
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Good read, thanks for posting.
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I'm ex-CIA currently living in New York state who the government believes to be dead after a failed mission years ago in South America. I don't expect anyone to believe that, but it's true. I use SR because I want to get high and the government has a piece of paper that says that if I do that they can get men with guns to lock me in a room for an arbitrary period of time, so I can't buy the drugs in shops, and this is a reliable way of getting them. Period.
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I'm ex-CIA currently living in New York state who the government believes to be dead after a failed mission years ago in South America. I don't expect anyone to believe that, but it's true. I use SR because I want to get high and the government has a piece of paper that says that if I do that they can get men with guns to lock me in a room for an arbitrary period of time, so I can't buy the drugs in shops, and this is a reliable way of getting them. Period.
so why would you put this information here? dont you think its a little TMI?
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I'm ex-CIA currently living in New York state who the government believes to be dead after a failed mission years ago in South America. I don't expect anyone to believe that, but it's true. I use SR because I want to get high and the government has a piece of paper that says that if I do that they can get men with guns to lock me in a room for an arbitrary period of time, so I can't buy the drugs in shops, and this is a reliable way of getting them. Period.
so why would you put this information here? dont you think its a little TMI?
Because its so absurd no-one would possibly believe it
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Kappacino=AWESOME!!
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Nice read, wonder what grade it got you. And did it start a big discussion? Since you're from the USA and we all know how tight they are on drug-(ab)use ;D