But the Silk Road wasn't truly anonymous because buyers had to disclose their address to at least one person. It's surprising that so many people were willing to send their addresses to anonymous criminals who could, at any time, turn into DEA informants. Furthermore, vendors must mail the package; seeing as how it's not terribly hard to see where packages come from, many vendors are probably vulnerable to simple surveillance of some mailboxes in a region.
These people were only getting away with it because law enforcement lacks the resolve and infrastructure to prosecute small scale buyers. To put this another way, we could hold them accountable, or at least introduce risk associated costs into the system, but law enforcement choose not to. (After browsing SR enthusiast forums, it starts to seem as if the whole community is predicated on the common belief that buyers are immune from risk... it's delusional!) If I'm wrong, and it's not so easy to bust these people, then I'm sure we'd just legislate a solution.
I'm getting at this: Real world actions do not automatically become anonymous because they're coordinated online. That's not my most brilliant observation, but the consequence is that, aside from digital crimes (DDOS, website defacement, copyright infringement, child porn), internet anonymity doesn't generally enable us to significantly screw up the so-called meatworld with complete unaccountability unless we're exploiting the government's technological time-lag.
So when I talk about internet anonymity, I'm trying to speak of our right to communicate anonymously. That's it. I think the same is true for most people.
Finally, I just want to add that "natural rights" have no scientific basis in our current understanding of the universe. Objectively, cultures confer rights to their members; it's probably an adaptive mechanism involving many factors. In a strict materialist and scientific world, "natural right" is a broken concept.
> the Silk Road wasn't truly anonymous because buyers had to disclose their address to at least one person.
Did they really? I never used Silk Road so I can't say from experience, but it seems like it'd be more likely that they had to disclose an address, not necessarily their address. Like, "ship it to this P.O. Box" would qualify as disclosing an address, without necessarily giving up their actual place of residence.
If Silk Road (or sellers using Silk Road to connect with buyers) was actually verifying addresses and then requiring people to post their real, legal place of residence, that's just... wow. I'm trying to imagine how dumb you would have to be to agree to that when you know what you're about to do is illegal. Pretty dumb!
EDIT: Though now I'm wondering, if the DEA were able to track a drug transaction back to a P.O. box, how hard it would be for them to get the name and legal address of the person who took it out. Would they need a warrant? Are there anonymous mailbox services?
For whatever reason, that community generally believes that it's a liability to have the drugs sent to a false address or PO Box. I think they're relying on being able to plausibly deny that the drugs were mailed to their house by mistake, which doesn't hold up if you're observed collecting drugs from some other location.
Regarding your question about the mailbox services, I don't think there is any mailbox service that escapes the reaches of the DEA. I've actually been wondering what the next evolution of the Silk Road would look like if law enforcement decides to target the mail. I think this is interesting because whatever method the SR community works out has the potential to lower the cost of fairly normal economic behavior in totalitarian regimes by introducing the threat of a cheap black market, thereby undermining the government's power to tax. It will be fascinating to see mechanisms and effects of a technologically coordinated black market, delivery and all.
These people were only getting away with it because law enforcement lacks the resolve and infrastructure to prosecute small scale buyers. To put this another way, we could hold them accountable, or at least introduce risk associated costs into the system, but law enforcement choose not to. (After browsing SR enthusiast forums, it starts to seem as if the whole community is predicated on the common belief that buyers are immune from risk... it's delusional!) If I'm wrong, and it's not so easy to bust these people, then I'm sure we'd just legislate a solution.
I'm getting at this: Real world actions do not automatically become anonymous because they're coordinated online. That's not my most brilliant observation, but the consequence is that, aside from digital crimes (DDOS, website defacement, copyright infringement, child porn), internet anonymity doesn't generally enable us to significantly screw up the so-called meatworld with complete unaccountability unless we're exploiting the government's technological time-lag.
So when I talk about internet anonymity, I'm trying to speak of our right to communicate anonymously. That's it. I think the same is true for most people.
Finally, I just want to add that "natural rights" have no scientific basis in our current understanding of the universe. Objectively, cultures confer rights to their members; it's probably an adaptive mechanism involving many factors. In a strict materialist and scientific world, "natural right" is a broken concept.