Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: FiveSeven on January 13, 2012, 10:43 am
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Hey Silk Roaders,
I've just discovered your fascinating website (and the darknet in general) and it's been really interesting trawling through the forums, I just had a few thoughts I'd share. Please forgive me if i've overlooked something incredibly obvious or if it's been dealt with before, but I feel there are some merit to my thoughts.
First, it goes without saying this community is driven from the ground up by the word of mouth and anecdotal evidence of anonymous members. This would suggest there could be a certain vulnerability against hostile LE methods. If LE really monitor SR and these forums (Let's assume they do) , why aren't they attempting to disrupt the community, i.e giving false negative feedback, scamming sellers out of their cash, spreading rumours about increased parcel detection rates, etc. Just attempting general chaos, which would in turn undermine the reliability and security of the website and it's trusted sellers. While I can't see any significant evidence this is happening currently (You'll always get a few bad eggs) what's stopping it from occurring in future? Sure, it's easy to disregard the ramblings of a new member abusing a previously considered trusted seller as defamatory and hence something that should be disregarded, but what's stopping LE from posing as an ordinary user for several months, making reports of receiving packages and just generally being a reliable member of the community who's opinion can be trusted, but then beginning to spread false information. Given that there is no link between the forums and the official transactions, this would be remarkably easy. If someone claims they have been receiving packages successfully, who's to say otherwise? At the moment the status quo seems to be one of mutual respect among most members, but it seems to me this balance could be tilted at any time. There may come a time in the future where LE begin to utilize these methods.
Perhaps I'm overestimating the reach of the government/s. Naturally these sort of tactics would be unlikely to result in any convictions of buyers or sellers, so perhaps that's why it has yet to occur. After all, agencies seek tangible results in order to prove themselves worthy of funding. Still, the community should be vigilant. It would only take one individual using multiple accounts to create a rift in the community, assuming it was done with appropriate planning. Food for thought.
My other question is regarding Australia, where I reside, although it could be applied to any country with a limited selection on SR. It's clear from a cursory glance of the market that Australia doesn't get a lot of choice. As of when I checked today, there were a few cannabis sellers, one X seller, no acid or DMT (These are largely the substances I'm interested in). In some way it's not surprising as our traditional drug market has always been a bit sparse (Particularly my state which is not on the eastern seaboard. This begs the question, why don't more Australian sellers buy overseas and resell? This seems like it would be an extremely profitable venture. i.e buy some blotter from a reputable SR seller for $8-10 a tab, sell domestically for $30-40 a tab. This would be great for buyers too as it would allow people to pay a premium in order to avoid customs. I think the community would readily accept markups for this more secure service, we're already used to paying high prices for our narcotics, both on the street and on SR. A good example would be novocaine selling X for $40 a pop. As he says, yes it's better value to get powder from overseas but you can't beat the convenience of being able to get pills domestically.
Of course there are issues such as building buyer trust, but if you were already selling things domestically then surely it wouldn't be a problem to simply add to your product line. I can't really see any major issues with this, of course you're taking the risk of losing the occasional package from your international SR supplier but that's all the luck of the draw, assuming you weren't selling huge quantities you could easily turn a good profit in relative safety. This sort of middle-manning would be best suited to smaller amounts naturally, as large, frequent transactions from overseas might be likely to draw attention. But if people are willing to buy X for 4 times the international price, as novocaine has proven, why wouldn't the same apply to acid/DMT/anything else? Particularly acid as domestic shipping detection rates would be almost nil I would imagine. A greater selection would only prove beneficial to the community, and it also might allow some sort of compromise for people who are against international buying because they've been stung by purported selective scamming (But that's another topic altogether).
Hopefully you've got through this wall of text (Thanks if you have) and can now tell me if my thinking is flawed, thoughts?
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Why dont you try doing exactly that? Blotter is practically impossible to detect in the post as it is mainly paper, which is the principal component of most letters.
Buy some, tell your mates, profit!!
It's how I got into dealing back in the day, I had a connect for good coke at cheap prices, my friends were used to paying higher prices for the same product. I just had to drive 40 miles, pick up, drive home and then wait for people to come round and buy it for 20% more than I paid for it.
Acid is probably one of the easiest ways you could make some profit in Oz.
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I'm not from AUS, but I wondered the same thing.
As for LE, as much as I hate to admit it, not ALL agencies are corrupt. Most are, but not all. So, where's a cop to go, when he can't raid the evidence locker?? Seems to me, it's a good place for them to get their dope, too. Fuck, the entire White House, and Congress is addicted to Ambien. One of em ( I forget their names, they ain't THAT important) even admitted to enjoying the waking dreams....we call them hallucinations.
How would being rude disrupt the forums? There's lots of us rude people.
You can receive packages all day long. Finding out where they come from, or pulling prints from them is a more difficult task. If you read around the forums, you'll see a slew of people who use it to avoid the violent realm of the underworld, that the drug war has created.
On SR, you can see a person's buying stat's, if you can find their profile. Or maybe that's just for vendors?
I'm still in utter awe of this myself, and have some serious paranoid thoughts about it sometimes, so I have kept to just studying, so to speak. It's all above my head.
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Why dont you try doing exactly that? Blotter is practically impossible to detect in the post as it is mainly paper, which is the principal component of most letters.
Buy some, tell your mates, profit!!
It's how I got into dealing back in the day, I had a connect for good coke at cheap prices, my friends were used to paying higher prices for the same product. I just had to drive 40 miles, pick up, drive home and then wait for people to come round and buy it for 20% more than I paid for it.
Acid is probably one of the easiest ways you could make some profit in Oz.
@Cache
I would do that (sell on SR), however I'm young and still live my parents, so it's not worth the questions. Plus I'm relatively new to illegal dealings in general, I think if I had my own place and had a few year's experience dealing with the tactics authorities use it would be a viable choice. I may do some friend2friend dealing with some stuff I buy but that's probably it, for now anyway. I don't intend on ruining my future with a conviction anytime soon :D
@SuperDimitri
I'm not saying LE being rude on the forum would be a useful tactic, I'm saying people tend to ignore those who are rude here, as they are generally idiots. However if an agency was to play it smart (and let's face it, they have people who have decades of experience manipulating people and distorting the truth) that would be considerably effective.