All Is Pointless in the Online Front of the War on Drugs

After a brief launch delay, the much-touted Silk Road 2.0 is now up and running. And the Feds are on it.

Yesterday, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, issued a formal statement on the newest deep web bazaar to rise up from the rubble of the original Silk Road marketplace, which shuttered last month in a joint US-UK takedown. The announcement came mere hours after SR 2.0 went live, and is almost as rational as it is blunt.

That SR 2.0 went live just a month after its predecessor went dark "underscores the inescapable reality that technology is dynamic and ever-evolving and that government policy needs to adapt accordingly," Carper said. "Rather than play ‘whack-a-mole’ with the latest website, currency, or other method criminals are using in an effort to evade the law, we need to develop thoughtful, nimble and sensible federal policies that protect the public without stifling innovation and economic growth."

Never mind the obligatory "protect the public" bit. (This is the War on Drugs, or something. What do you expect?) Or that there's no getting around the fact that e-commerce started with drugs and will die with drugs, too. Or that technology, to say nothing of the human compulsion to get high or make money (or both), will always stay a few steps ahead of legislation. If Carper isn't merely blowing smoke—if the launch of the SR 2.0 indeed signals a shift in the way the Feds go after illlicit online marketplaces—how would a post-whack-a-mole online drug enforcement apparatus shake out? How could the Feds snuff out all today's new deep web shops, of which SR 2.0 is just one heavy hitter?

By paying a lot more attention to the United States Postal Service. If there's one thing keeping the domestic flow of illiegal wares alive and well it's the belleaguered snail-mail service, which along with FedEx shuttles nondescript, drug-laden packages to buyers day in, day out. In theory, the Feds could begin intercepting loads of product bought and sold over something like the SR 2.0 if it invested more of its technological wherewithal—tracking metadata and RFIDs, say—into parsing out suspect parcels.  Too bad the sheer volume of daily mail is still too vast to make something like that possible, at least right now. It's also an open secret that a lot of postal  and parcel workers knowingly let illegal packages slips through the cracks without batting an eye.

The Feds could also build out more "nimble" approaches to cracking down on anonymizing software like Tor and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, both of which fuel the deep web's marketplaces. But too bad Tor is as secure as ever. And too bad bitcoin is not just booming, but seemingly unfazed by the still-volatile vibes throughout the dark net. To that point, Carper's committee "intends to have that conversation, among others, at our hearing this month on virtual currency."

Good luck with that.

@thebanderson