Services like these give Tor and related projects a bad name. Taking down illegal market places is part of the police's job and this is definitely a success story. The article is lacking in details a bit, but it seems they've taken it down using regular old police work as they mention an "undercover operation". This proves once more that the weakening of security for everybody is not needed to catch criminals.
> Services like these give Tor and related projects a bad name
In more ways than one.
What if this had been a tor website that was sharing documents proving government or police corruption? And yet somehow, the police did manage to shut it down. It goes to show that the tech needed for fully anonymous websites may not be good enough yet.
Any sufficiently anonymous website that could be used for good reasons can also be used for bad reasons. If Tor works, we have the good at the bad. If Tor doesn't work, we have neither.
>It goes to show that the tech needed for fully anonymous websites may not be good enough yet.
The tech will never be good enough. Even if we had magic unexploitable webapps hosted in the platonic realm of pure forms whose privacy is protected by magic cryptography, darknet markets would still get busted. Darknet markets require support staff, managers and engineers to run the site. The humans who run such sites will always be exploitable.
It may be parallel construction, but in a kind of cynical way we can publicly praise it as good traditional police work. It takes credibility away from demands for special or clandestine access.
When we call it parallel construction we buy into the surveillance communities marketing... that surveillance it is effective.
I suppose that if you have one administrator in a cell, it's probable that you will get the login credentials after a while.
The question is how to put them in a cell to begin with, but I don't think that it requires some super high tech or shady wiretapping. The publicly known lawful interception laws are most likely good enough for finding almost anyone accessing a know site.
As the current situation is in regards to islamistic terrorism in Europe, I really expect the law to be used to its full extent.
Unfortunately, the harsh stand on drugs play both criminal organizations and islamists in hand as they can make good money on even relatively harmless drugs. I'd prefer a legalization and regulation on those, in order to decapitate the black market.
