The War on Drugs is a war on human rights. The US government has limited our freedom of choice. To many other humans, both of our past and into the future, most likely would find the lack of freedom deplorable and unheard of. Yet some highly skilled IT guys have brought us one step closer to gaining back our freedom by creating The Silk Road.
Before I get any more in depth with this post, I must disclose again that most drugs are controlled and highly illegal. All the information (and mounds more) are all public information and I am not enabling any reader to conduct in any behavior stated below. With that said, this is your life so take care of it, but also never let anyone tell you what's good or bad, you have the right to freely discuss and research this with yourself. Any curious mind would definitely try the below at home ;) I will say all the below is safe enough that there are students on this campus already using the site to compensate for the lack of available intoxicants in Winston.
The Silk Road is an anonymous online black market which uses top of the line security features to create a virtually secure, unregulated place of commerce.
If you are more of a history buff, you might remember that the Silk Road was a route that goods, culture, and even disease traveled from China to the rest of the land mass. (Image) This path was essential to the evolution of man. IMO we can now relate our 21-century Silk Road as another "road" that has the potential to do just that. 
The Silk Road, which launched in 2011, did not start as a place for the largest online drug market, but rather a place for commerce that is able to not be regulated by any government. "Silk Road doesn’t really sell drugs. It sells insurance and financial products, says Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor Nicolas Christin. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re selling T-shirts or cocaine. The business model is to commoditize security." (Forbes) SR has provided perhaps the best free-market that has ever been developed.
HOW IT WORKS
From the leader of Silk Road, Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR)
"Greetings, and thank you for your interest in Silk Road! It is my dream to give individuals like yourself the freedom to do as you please, so long as you do no harm to others. Silk Road exists to give you that freedom, so you can buy and sell any substance you like, regardless of what anyone else wants. I believe it is your body, your money, and no one else's business but your own. Many innovative technologies, not to mention blood sweat and tears, have come together to make Silk Road possible, so please, be a part of my dream and take full advantage it.
That being said, extreme caution is warranted when using Silk Road. Powerful mind altering substances are available here and I encourage you to use them responsibly and with full knowledge of their effects. We have a vibrant community of helpful people and whole discussion boards dedicated to responsible use, computer security, legal concerns, and helpful customer support staff. Use these resources and educate yourself before jumping into your first purchase.
Simply using Silk Road makes you a part of this revolution, but I hope the curious among you will want to see how deep this rabbit hole goes. Silk Road is built on powerful technologies and profound philosophies, and is at the cutting edge of a trend in society that is empowering individuals to stand up for their basic human rights and throw off the shackels they were born into.
There are many ways to get involved and quickly make a positive impact on your own life and in the lives of others.
BREAK DOWN
The Silk Road is not easy enough for say your grandparents to use, but anyone with a little computer experience and a desire to do so can easily access the network. The Silk Road is powered by The Tor network and bitcoins, providing an almost completely anonymous method for users of the market place.
So now let's dive in. Silk Road offers a how-to site. This should be your first place to go to start in this community.
Other than this site, everything else SR related must be accessed via The Tor network. It is basically an anonymizing mix network which sends your internet communications through random routers which makes it practically impossible for your IP to be traced back to your location. Bitcoins are a virtual currency which is a little more complicated to the new user because it involves more effort on your part and well, its your money and everyone is a little cautious to the security of it. Bitcoins is the only non-government regulated form of currency that is powered through a peer-to-peer network. It is not going away and again, this has the potential to change global society. Here is a brief on the ever-growing new form of finance.
Below will be a plethora of resources to research more and how you can buy Bitcoins. I assume that you will do the research any way, so I'm not going to explain exactly how you should go about it.
LOG ON
So once you follow the easy instructions on how to download the TOR bundle, which is both the control panel which enters you on to the network and then the browser. Once you are on the browser you go to silkroadvb5piz3r.onion, log in, and BAM you have what one could consider the Amazon of drugs.
WHAT'S THE CATCH?
It really is a very simple process, so whats the catch? To be honest, as a small time user there is very little risk of getting in any trouble. The FBI, DEA, NSA, and US senators are well aware of the site and the funny part…they can't do a damn thing about it. It has been up for two years, they have moved very little in infiltrating the organization, they are actually concerned that it might not be able to be shut down. This is not just a problem the US government faces, but government agencies worldwide also have no control over.
As we have seen in previous posts, but also just in media, there is no law enforcement agency in the world that has the resources that could actually take down the drug war and the SR is no different. The SR actually is a very small portion of the black market, with an estimated annual $30-45 million annual revenue in 2012 compared to the 2003 UN estimate of $321.6 billion generated worldwide.
The fact the drugs are sent through the mail and then delivered to your door worry many newbies that the package could get intercepted. To the Silk Road's estimates, less than 1% of packages are intercepted and usually these will result in customs or USPS from confiscating the package. There are no reports of any agency arresting anyone buying small amounts of drugs from the Silk Road. They are mostly interested in the merchants and people buying massive quantities of the drugs. Almost all of the prosecutions in the world involving the SR had to do with other mishaps not actually involving the site, such as drug dealing in the "real world" or users posting information on non-encrypted software, deviating from the Silk Road recommendations.
A list of tips from an anonymous Redditor, presented for what they are worth (not all are necessarily important):
This guy’s mistakes:
- Getting 41 pounds of weed sent to him. That’s a lot of weed.
- Getting weed sent through the mail at all (it’s easy to detect).
- Signing under a false name.
- Signing for a package at all35.
- Had a scale in his house at the time of delivery.
- Never sign for packages. Never get them sent under false names. Do not open them immediately. Never have paraphernalia or anything incriminating in your house at the time of delivery. Always use bitcoin. Use PGP wherever possible. Always ask for a lawyer but otherwise don’t talk to cops.
General:
- Be sure to read both the guides for seller’s and buyer’s on Silk Road.
- Make sure that your vendor ships via USPS. Rationale: USPS must get a warrant to open your mail. Also, USPS handles much more mail than UPS or FEDEX. I don’t know this for sure, but I’d bet their screening/tracking of suspected drug importers is probably laxer than UPS/FEDEX.
- Order only from domestic sources. Rationale: If it doesn’t cross an international border, it doesn’t have to go through customs screening.
- If you must order from overseas, order from UK or Germany, not Netherlands or other common drug source country. Rationale: Anecdotal reports suggest that shipments from common drug source countries get closer screening.
- Order small amounts (gram or less). Rationale: Law enforcement has limited resources. Odds are, they’re not going to bother with small amounts.
- Use your real name and address on all forms. Rationale: Anyone (such as a vindictive ex, or an enemy) could send you drugs. If you get caught receiving mail with drugs in it, you can deny that it’s yours. A fake name destroys your plausible deniability, as it indicates an intent to deceive.
- Order normal stuff to your box on a regular basis. Rationale: You want to make your box stand out as little as possible.
- Refuse to sign for any drug package. Rationale: Remember, those drugs aren’t yours. If you sign for it, it’s evidence that you were expecting the package.
- Don’t order too many drugs at once. Rationale: Many vendors don’t include any identifying info., so you may end up with a bunch of packets of white powder, with little idea of what’s in each packet.
- Use GPG to encrypt your messages to the vendors. Rationale: While this doesn’t protect you if the vendor is compromised, it does prevent your name and address from being stored “in the clear” in Silk Road’s database.
- Don’t order out of escrow. Rationale: Your only protection from bad vendor behavior is their reputation and escrow. And some vendor’s don’t care about their reputation.
- Read up on vendor’s in the forums. Rationale: You’ll get a much better idea of their product quality than you can get from their official ratings/reviews alone.
NOW THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT
As DPR stresses, one of the most important elements of buying from the SR is
immersing yourself in the community through the forums. There is a wealth of information there which will both guide your experience but also give you a sense of peace to the current security status of the ever changing Internet. Between the sub Reddit and the forums directly on the SR you will be able to get far more information than you ever wanted.
Far more important than the drugs themselves is the philosophy behind the whole Silk Road.
I close this week with DPR himself in a conversation with Forbes,
Do you feel any moral guilt about selling highly addictive and dangerous drugs to users and even to dealers? Don’t drugs like crack and heroin have harmful effects on your customers and on society? And couldn’t even children manage to get access to them through the Silk Road?”
On the contrary, I am proud of what I do. I can’t think of one drug that doesn’t have at least some harmful effects. That’s really not the point though. People own themselves, they own their bodies, and it is their right to put into their bodies whatever they choose. It’s not my place, or the government’s, or anyone else’s to say what a person does with their own body. Giving people that freedom of choice and the dignity of self-ownership is a good thing.
If someone uses drugs, then goes on to hurt other people, then of course they should be held accountable for their actions, whether they were using drugs or not, but to paint all drug users as “harmful to society” and try to throw them all in cages is despicable and does much more harm to communities and families than drugs ever could. Further, using children to appeal to people’s fears is irresponsible. There are many dangers facing children, the least of which include obtaining Bitcoins, configuring their computer to access Tor and Silk Road, navigating the site to make a purchase, and getting the package delivered past their parents. It is the responsibility of parents and those they trust to educate their children about drugs and everything else they will have to make decisions about in their life. Again, not my place, or the government’s, or anyone else’s.
What we’re doing isn’t about scoring drugs or “sticking it to the man,” it’s about standing up for our rights as human beings and refusing to submit when we’ve done no wrong. Silk Road is a vehicle for that message. All else is secondary.
Do you see Bitcoin or other anonymous payment systems as as something that could fundamentally transform society? Or do you think it will always exist at the fringes?
It already is transforming society. We’ve won the State’s War on Drugs because of Bitcoin, and this is just the beginning. It’s really part of a larger transformation, driven by peer-to-peer technology and the internet as a whole. The people now can control the flow and distribution on information, and the flow of money. Sector by sector the state is being cut out of the equation and power is being returned to the individual. I don’t think anyone can comprehend the magnitude of the revolution we are in. I think it will be looked back on as an epoch in the evolution of mankind.