Why did it take the FBI so long to shut down Silk Road?

By Mike Power
Journalist and author of the book, Drugs 2.0

Why did the FBI take so long to shut down Silk Road, the drug-dealing web-site? Because the Tor software used by Silk Road — and developed by the US Navy — makes users very hard to identify, unless they make mistakes, as Silk Road’s founder eventually did. The risky part was delivery: “One dealer would deliver you an empty box or envelope for a small charge, just to get the mailman used to delivering packages from overseas”

Until it was shut down by law enforcement, Silk Road had everything: Norwegians selling Cambodian mushrooms, Canadians selling Afghan heroin, and Brits selling concentrated cannabis tinctures from ancient Nepalese cannabis landraces. Most of the products there were illegal, but whether you wanted a quarter gram of heroin or a gram of glittering Peruvian escama de pescadococaine, you were in the right place. Buying was as simple as Amazon or eBay: a simple matter of adding the goods to your shopping cart, and paying for them. The money was held in an escrow account hosted at the site, and although you had to supply a delivery address, this could be encrypted, and then deleted as soon as the goods turned up.