On Mon, 2013-08-12 at 10:30 +0200, rysiek wrote:

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While I'm certainly not saying "I don't buy it", how does this reconcile with the reality of The Silk Road still being in existance. One would think that governments would use these techniques against the site if for nothing more than to catch/punish them for all the tax evasion going on.

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Yeah, that's a conundrum.

No it isn't. The government agencies that could potentially attack Tor to bust the Silk Road would *never* care about the level of drugs moved through it. They care about the people multiple levels above TSR, drastically higher up in the supply chain.

Is there any evidence of this? From all appearances, they care about nothing so much as preserving and expanding their funding.

Remember, TSR sends drugs *through the mail*. You can't successfully *mail* enough drugs for the NSA/DEA to care.

NSA surely doesn't want the publicity, but the DEA is always in search of positive press. If they have to listen to 100K conversations in order to bust one kid, picking up a few hundred Oxycodone pills at the Post Office, is there any reason to suspect they wouldn't do so?