If Jeff Sessions is the George W. Bush of the drug war, today was Operation Dark Net Storm.

If Jeff Sessions is the George W. Bush of the drug war, today was Operation Dark Net Storm.

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Today, the United States federal government put the Dark Web down, and the bell seems like it's about to ring.

After Silk Road and Silk Road 2.0 both got hit hard by the World Bank... erm... international law enforcement agencies, everyone really assumed that more markets would spring up in place. After all, Silk Road 2.0 enjoyed even more success after it's predecessor was taken down. Silk Road 2 went down, and AlphaBay and Hansa sprung right up with pleasure, enjoying even more popularity after the publicity of the Silk Road take down hit the mainstream media.

The drug war was in the limelight, and it had law enforcement on the ropes. I mean, Dread Pirate Roberts only went down because of crappy admins and poor OpSec. Federal investigators knew they got lucky there. Dark Marketplaces used Onionland like a never ending playground: when one fell off the slide into the abyss, there were five more waiting on the top for the quick free fall into infamy.

This take down is different. Onionland, as the Tor "dark web" is affectionately called, only operates as boldly as it does because of the inherent, baked in security features inherent in the Tor network. Encryption is strong, marketplaces are hard to reach and even harder to breach, and most of the administrators know what they're doing. The sites are locked down, only accept cryptocurrencies, and oftentimes use transaction mechanisms that maximize trust and anonymity. 

AlphaBay was even more robust, as a source tells me. They had a custom coded API and the site was even more secure than most. The source said that while there was a drug presence on AB, the majority of the economy was in carding. There evidently was some kind of tension between users on different sites: drug dealers set up certain styles of sites more geared towards trafficking, and fraudsters tended to set up carder markets. Both acknowledged that their site would do much better with both markets, but AB definitely seemed to be more geared towards selling batches of stolen credit card information. This earned it a pretty bad rep, according to my source.

The scary part of the takedown is not the takedown.

An admittedly smaller site, Hansa, was breached first. According to my source, it was less popular and didn't have security on the level of AlphaBay, but still had a pretty good flow of traffic. Federal law enforcement breached Hansa over a month ago. In a clearly joint operation, after the Hansa marketplace was breached, federal law enforcement kept the site up and running, siphoning user data off on a daily basis. They then seized and shut down the AlphaBay marketplace.

Now, if you were an observer during the Silk Road take down, you know what happens when a Dark Marketplace goes down. Users simply flood the next most known market, and it happens fast. Investigators said that the userbase of Hansa increased by a magnitude of eight after the AlphaBay takedown... flooding the site that was now under the watchful eyes of international law enforcement with traffic that they assumed was private. 

That is the scary part of the investigation. For a month now, federal investigators have been running the most popular drug and firearm marketplace on the web. They tracked transactions, but likely let the business go on as usual, letting small fish go to catch the White Whale.

The Dark Web took a terrific hit, and I'm not just talking about the drug and human traffickers.

With each big raid, the credibility of the Dark Web takes a hit. The Dark Web isn't Dark because of the drugs and child pornography. It is dark because it's supposed to be safe from intrusion, infiltration, and surveillance. Every time there is a big publicity take down like this occurs, the Dark Web loses credibility as a surveillance evasion mechanism and a platform for free speech. 

I'm not calling Sessions's continuation on the war on drugs an intentional act against free speech. I don't think the old coot had any idea about that kind of implications. He's just really trying his darndest to keep his job and make sure that nobody has fun, the DEA keeps their coffers full, and he gets his sweet, sweet "Conservative against drugs on our streets" cash. He doesn't know that dissidents use Tor, and that the media attention is further bastardizing the former DoD project as nothing but an outlet for the black market trade. 

And that's okay. Take the AlphaBay+Hansa bust as a big win for the deep state, intelligence agencies, and good guys alike, and a bad loss for druggies, child molesters, and... good guys alike as well.