The NY Times has a wild story about federal agents attempting to monetize the Dark Web. Their story involves bitcoin and Silk Road, the illicit network, and can only be described as new-age. We live in interesting times.
The agencies that investigated the Baltimore-based agents included the Internal Revenue Service, the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco, the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the inspectors general for the Justice Department and Homeland Security, according to the complaint.
It charged that the former agents “abused their positions” to defraud the government and others “all for their own financial enrichment.”
Mr. Force, for example, created fictitious online personas that were not officially sanctioned by the investigation in order to communicate with Dread Pirate Roberts, the target of his investigation, the complaint says. Using one of those personas, Mr. Force sought to extort $250,000 from him in exchange for not providing the government with certain information.
Mr. Force, who used the undercover identity Nob in communicating with Dread Pirate Roberts, also created the fiction that he had sensitive law enforcement information that had been provided to him by a corrupt federal agent named Kevin who was part of the Silk Road investigation. In August 2013, for example, Dread Pirate Roberts paid Nob about $50,000 in Bitcoins for “ ‘Kevin’s’ inside law enforcement information,” the complaint says.
Mobsters used to hand dirty cops cash in brown paper bags. Plain and simple. Agents are now creating undercover identities to siphon off Bitcoin and exploit illicit digital networks.
This story raises a difficult question: how will the government deal with the Dark Web?
While much of the focus is on cyber security governance, the Dark Web is an ungoverned digital marketplace. Before it was closed down, you could buy pretty much anything on Silk Road — drugs, rare animals, illegal weapons, or “services” of various kinds. Further, digital currency vexes traditional financial tracking, one of the system’s best weapons. The convergence of digital autonomy, digital currency, and de-centralized processing — buyers and sellers can be anywhere — will mean government needs to do a far better job understanding the system’s stress points.
In the meantime, the Dark Web is having a party.
Originally published at brendanhartdotcom.wordpress.com on March 31, 2015.
