The FBI announced last week that law enforcement agencies including the bureau, the Department of Homeland Security and Europol have arrested 26-year old San Francisco resident Blake Benthall (below) who was allegedly the operator and administrator – under the handle “Defcon” – of the online drugs marketplace Silk Road 2.0, just a year after the original Silk Road’s alleged mastermind, Russ Ulbricht, was also arrested in San Francisco.
According to related court documents, Benthall was charged last Friday with narcotics trafficking, as well as conspiracy charges related to money laundering, computer hacking, and trafficking in fraudulent identification documents – which Benthall reportedly “admitted to everything”.
“The website [Silk Road 2.0] has operated on the “Tor” network, a special network of computers on the Internet, distributed around the world, designed to conceal the true IP addresses of the computers on the network and thereby the identities of the network’s users,” according to the FBI.
The globally coordinated effort involving 17 nations dubbed Operation Onymous – obviously as opposed to the “anonymous” Tor network – has reportedly led to 17 arrests and a seizure of more than 400 “hidden services” and darknet domains, $1 million in bitcoins, $250,000 in cash plus a variety of drugs, gold and silver.
It later emerged there were actually just over 27 sites seized – including Silk Road 2.0 – instead of more than 400 as initially reported: the FBI spokesperson David Berman later clarified the 400 URLs amounted only to a dozen or so sites.
However, several pertinent questions surfaced:
– Is Tor still safe given the FBI has obviously broken (how?) into it?
– Is the world really a safer place after the FBI shut down a major “darknet” marketplace? What makes the authorities rule out the emergence of a more secure, bigger and effective Silk Road 3.0? (The FBI said in its press release that “Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cyber-criminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”)
– How much of taxpayers’ monies were spent to make these 17 arrests in 17 nations with this global operation?