06.26.16
And if you gaze long into the abyss…
The abyss also gazes into you.
Words to take seriously if you’re reading about the so-called Dark Web.
Tipped by the always timely Pine View Farm, I send you to a tech podcast at the Guardian, entitled “Inside the darknet” by Chips and Everything.
As far as it goes, not bad, although the professed need to have lawyers with you when browsing through TOR made me laugh a bit. Plus, it was my understanding that TOR was at least partially underwritten as a potential tool for whistleblowers in foreign countries.
What the tech podcasters don’t know, or chose not to mention, is that the FBI, as well as British law enforcement, have infiltrated the darknet, posing as buyers as well as sellers in sting operations. It’s an open secret because if you’ve followed the newspaper listings on various criminal cases (just look in the Ricin Kooks tab), you’ll see this has been so.
Most recently, in the news, a handoff from the FBI to the Brits in the case of Mohammed Amer Ali, a Liverpool man, who thought he was buying ricin.
Ali was actually dealing with the FBI:
Mohammed Ammer Ali, 32, carried out extensive research on the “dark web???, eventually arranging to buy 500 milligrams of the lethal substance.
But, unknown to him, his online vendor was in fact an FBI agent who tipped off UK police.
Detectives organised for a “controlled delivery??? – with a fake consignment of ricin being sent to Ali’s Liverpool home in February 2015.
The next day, Ali was arrested and his home searched by officers clad in chemical protection suits …
It was a fairly standard case if you follow the newspaper’s timeline. The only stickout point is the nature of the so-called ricin shipment.
The theoretical amount, alleged to be enough to kill 1,400. No such amount of pure ricin has ever been accumulated. It is a number with no traction in reality.
And if perhaps think I’m commenting only from second-hand information, full disclosure: I’ve been expert consultant to a federal public defender’s office in a case that involved sale and purchase of materials vended on the darknet.