I think (but could be wrong) that you can look at a bitcoin's history and see who's given to whom and use that data to trace who the person is, if they weren't careful. (Eg: if they bought from a bitcoin exchange in the US which could have it's logs subpoenaed)
Anyways, those drugs have to get delivered somehow. I could see them tracing it that way - old fashioned detective work. Also there's the comedy option that Silk Road is a giant sting operation. The FBI has infiltrated other illicit markets (mostly carding forums). I saw a talk by the FBI agent who was profiled in Poulsen's book. He's not the most technical guy in the world, but he's _damn_ good at undercover work. As in, he convinced a carder forum to change their hosting to an FBI controlled server, where they then siphoned up IPs and then went to Eastern Europe and worked with the local authorities to have the main carders prosecuted. -- Greg Norcie (g...@norcie.com) GPG key: 0x1B873635 > ... a related question is "How much 'Illegal/Questionable' traffic > through exits actually *is* law enfocement?" It's not all of it, > of course. Might not even be most of it. Unless they have > automated crawlers... > > Still, it is a little surprising they can't trace bitcoin yet, > though. Maybe they can. I think my bet is also on Silk Road not > surviving in the long run for that reason... It's very interesting > to watch, for sure. It's like we're getting an extra season of The > Wire, except in a much weirder world that couldn't possibly exist > except in some Sci Fi novel. > > > > > _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing > list tor-talk@lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk > _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
